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Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

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Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#181

Indians occupy most of the management positions in FAANG, and even though developers from other races/groups do very well during the interview process(I participated in), they barely pass, because they are not from the chosen race. I would be highly surprised if Management in FAANG is not at least 80% of Indians, so please don't even bother applying here (yep, worked for AA and now G).

This is quite obvious in Silicon Valley but nobody talks about it because they are then called “racist”.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#183
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it really isn't: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/

Ok let's say you make $300k/yr at a FAANG. Lose 40% to taxes and you're looking at $180k/yr. Living in SV your expenses will roughly be at least $45k/yr. So you save $135k/yr (180 - 45). That's great, but a far cry from being a millionaire in just a few years. Of course as you get promoted your comp increases, hitting $500k gross at L5, but that takes more than a couple years to achieve.

> Lose 40% to taxes and you're looking at $180k/yr.

Who's paying 40% taxes on $300k/year? Your math is wrong straight off the bat. Including 401k and match, this hypothetical person is making at least $200k after taxes. Even more if they're married or have a dependent or two.

And as others have noted, $135k/year will make you a millionaire in 7 years even if it's cash under your mattress. You'll make it there even faster if you invest it in an index fund like most people would do.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Depends on what you do at Google. I imagine they have multiple PhDs working on those projects. For your bog standard SDE these interviews have very little to do with the day-to-day job.

In all honesty, there are not that many "bog standard SDEs" at Google. That's not what the company is hiring for: it wants engineers who are comfortable with complexity, whether measured in technical challenge (Tensorflow, Dart etc.), robustness (cloud, GSuite) or extreme scalability (Gmail, ads, search etc.) A PhD is clearly not the only path to that skillset, but it's not unusual either. Separately, I'm sorry the o…

> That's not what the company is hiring for: it wants engineers who are comfortable with complexity, whether measured in technical challenge (Tensorflow, Dart etc.), robustness (cloud, GSuite) or extreme scalability (Gmail, ads, search etc.)

How confident are you about that assertion?

A lot of Googlers are doing generic web/app work that happens elsewhere from those I've talked to. Not HQ tho so maybe it's different out there

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#185

Indians occupy most of the management positions in FAANG, and even though developers from other races/groups do very well during the interview process(I participated in), they barely pass, because they are not from the chosen race. I would be highly surprised if Management in FAANG is not at least 80% of Indians, so please don't even bother applying here (yep, worked for AA and now G).

You probably didn't intend to sound so racist. You participated in the process and you discriminated based on race? You aren't Indian, yet you still got hired?

What's your point?

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#186
post #73
post #3

I'd be curious to know if this is typical. As someone that's never interviewed at Google but idly wondered at moments if I'd ever work there this sounds hellish. Not necessarily the exercises themselves (although they seem to have nothing to do with what any developer does day-to-day), but the sheer number of them and the amount of preparation required. I already have a full time job, I don't want to take on another…

Let's look at it from another perspective (and this holds true for most FAANGs): A month of serious work and preparation can land you one of the most paying jobs on the world which will make you a millionare in a few years if you play it right. Most people (especially if they didn't win the birth lottery by being born in CA, USA) go to schools and colleges for YEARS and YEARS to come even a few steps towards what you…

Let's put it the other way though - there's an enormous amount of noise in the interviewing process, even the people responsible for the process admit this. So you can spend months preparing for a Google interview but you get put in the wrong role and get rejected for it, you can bump into an asshole in the interview process, you can simply screw up because of the pressure, or maybe they simply have some different set of skills they have in mind for that role. There's a thousand things that can go wrong.

So yeah, you can spend ages preparing for an interview, but remember you're probably topping your odds out. A genius well prepared might have a 90% success rate, if they don't prepare that's 0%. But not many of us are a genius and none of us are 0% prepared. So maybe you're actually boosting your odds from 40% to 50%.

Then finally, you've got your dream job! Oh but actually 3 things are possibly true. 1: You're surrounded by people who walked the interview in which case you are going to be sprinting to keep up and actually your job is going to be incredibly difficult. 2: You're surrounded by people who also had to desparately prep for the interview for months- so none of you are well suited to the job, actually google is interviewing for the wrong things and actually your life is going to be tough. And 3: Anyone who can't afford to spend months prepping for Google won't be working with you- anyone with any responsibility in their personal life probably won't be able to afford to do this stupid prep work and so they're simply never going to work there, so you're now in this homogenous leet code clique.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#187

“You can pass every interview with A grades and still not get a job, because a senior Googler decides that you're the wrong person to be hired.” Google doesn’t need you. They probably already have a clone of you. They have gobs of rank-and-file SWE effort on reserve should one of their key products fail. The process is designed to entertain the hiring manager and certain key employees. They don’t want you for your pr…

> This other Googler likely already has a competing offer— that’s how he got promoted last year.

Source? I'm very skeptical this is true. I am not a huge fan of Google's promotion process but it isn't that bad.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#188

“You can pass every interview with A grades and still not get a job, because a senior Googler decides that you're the wrong person to be hired.” Google doesn’t need you. They probably already have a clone of you. They have gobs of rank-and-file SWE effort on reserve should one of their key products fail. The process is designed to entertain the hiring manager and certain key employees. They don’t want you for your pr…

They hire people they don’t need, to build products they’ll kill in a few quarters. Must be weird working in a company with one well-identified money fountain, and then endless side projects that don’t really matter at all

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all honesty, there are not that many "bog standard SDEs" at Google. That's not what the company is hiring for: it wants engineers who are comfortable with complexity, whether measured in technical challenge (Tensorflow, Dart etc.), robustness (cloud, GSuite) or extreme scalability (Gmail, ads, search etc.) A PhD is clearly not the only path to that skillset, but it's not unusual either. Separately, I'm sorry the o…

> That's not what the company is hiring for: it wants engineers who are comfortable with complexity, whether measured in technical challenge (Tensorflow, Dart etc.), robustness (cloud, GSuite) or extreme scalability (Gmail, ads, search etc.) How confident are you about that assertion? A lot of Googlers are doing generic web/app work that happens elsewhere from those I've talked to. Not HQ tho so maybe it's different…

A lot of the requirements around generic web development at Google requires deep knowledge of things. Not always algorithms specifically, but I've also never been slowed down because someone wasn't familiar with a concept I was working on (or able to catch up very quickly).
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