In terms of a career I would absolutely take a job at Google. In terms of what I really want to do I would co-found my own thing with a handful of really awesome people.
Poll: Given the opportunity would you work at Google?
41–50 of 82 posts
Re: Poll: Given the opportunity would you work at Google?
#42I would jump at a chance to work there, but mostly if I didn't have to go through an interview process. I hear it's quite difficult to get through.
I had one phone call and one day of on-site interviews. The hardest part was dealing with an idiotic recruiter who didn't know how to use email.
Google might have been hard to get into ten years ago, but times have definitely changed.
Re: Poll: Given the opportunity would you work at Google?
#43Even though it seems like it would be pretty cool, I said no for a couple of reasons: 1) I'm not sure I could hack it there. While I consider myself to be a good coder (and people tell me so), I don't consider myself to be a top-notch guru ninja coder. I also don't have a CS degree, and I tend to get a little lost when people start getting into CS theory. 2) I have a (probably irrational) aversion to working at reall…
re your 2), I was in the Navy for six years, and now work at Google. There's virtually no comparison at all. Sure there's a bit of what you might call "bureaucracy" at Google, but only enough to keep things from going off the rails, and people actively work to keep that to a minimum. It's nothing, nothing, nothing like the Navy. (I worked at COMUSNAVEUR for ~18 months, so am even familiar with 4-star Admiral staff level bureaucracy.)
I enjoyed my time in the Navy because of my shipmates. I've really enjoyed my time at Google because of the interesting work and absolutely fantastic people I work with.
Just my two cents...
Re: Poll: Given the opportunity would you work at Google?
#44no because chances are all your skills will go towards doing some mundane task. you heard of a land grab...well Google is in the process of doing a talent grab, hiring engineers left and right, so chances are unless you made a name for yourself, you'll be stuck doing something stupid
I'm curious why there's this perception that the vast majority of Google engineers work on mundane stuff. Yes, there's mundane work in any job. There is less of it in Google than in other places, even including the startups I've worked at, because when you operate at Google-scale, even simple things become an interesting technical challenge. It's sorta hard for me to point out specifics because most of Google's inter…
It comes down to math. Google has 25,000 employees, and let's say 100 different projects. They have a higher percentage of engineers than most companies, so you end up with quite a large # of people on every project.
Sure the guys who made a name for themselves are working on something cool and doing big things. But some peon? They are stuck doing the mundane busy work that the big guys don't want to bother with.
It's like automotive design...most people go to design schools thinking they'll be designing cars, but in the real world, you end up being one out of the five designers working on designing the side mirrors.
Re: Poll: Given the opportunity would you work at Google?
#45no because chances are all your skills will go towards doing some mundane task. you heard of a land grab...well Google is in the process of doing a talent grab, hiring engineers left and right, so chances are unless you made a name for yourself, you'll be stuck doing something stupid
I'm curious why there's this perception that the vast majority of Google engineers work on mundane stuff. Yes, there's mundane work in any job. There is less of it in Google than in other places, even including the startups I've worked at, because when you operate at Google-scale, even simple things become an interesting technical challenge. It's sorta hard for me to point out specifics because most of Google's inter…
> even simple things become an interesting technical challenge.
It depends on your perspective. This also means that you can spin for a year or more just getting one feature out the door.
I think I had about 10 meetings over six months on whether addresses for Google Checkout would contain two or three address lines, and whether we needed a separate field for France's CEDEX postal codes. Some of this was justified as it involved complicated negotiations with external vendors too, and I had to negotiate with the guy who was hired to unify Google's internationalization libraries for Java.
But seriously, I'm not sure this was the best thing I could have been doing with my life.
If I remember correctly we simply came around to the exact same hacks I proposed on the very first day.
Re: Poll: Given the opportunity would you work at Google?
#46I go back and forth on this one. It'd certainly be a fun place to work, and you'd get to play with some cool tech. If I was just starting out, I'd jump at the opportunity.
Nowadays, I see a lot of downsides. First, it's a full-time on site job, which is something I left behind almost 10 years ago, so it'd be tough to go back. Probably more importantly, I doubt they could offer me the kind of salary that would tempt me away from consulting.
At this point, the only reason I could see myself working for a big company again would be if one of my products made it onto their radar and I found myself acqu-hired. Even then, I'd probably look at it as a necessary evil that came with a nice payday. Given all the stories of founders getting absorbed by the Googles of the world, waiting out their obligatory 2 years, then jumping ship, it just doesn't seem like a good fit for somebody with an entrepreneurial mindset.
Re: Poll: Given the opportunity would you work at Google?
#47I've been working for myself for 13 years and love it, but I'd work at Google for a while to add some amazing people to my network, get to have some killer discussions with people at the top of their game (and perhaps build stuff with them) and because it'd look good on my bio (exactly the sort of reason they wouldn't hire me, I suspect). But unless I invented a major new protocol or programming language, I doubt they'd pay me enough to maintain my current lifestyle anyway, given most of their campuses are in notoriously expensive locales.
Ultimately, I think there are probably more exciting possibilities getting into the skunkworks or R&D departments of companies like LivingSocial, Groupon, Twitter, or any position at a smaller, progressive company like GitHub. They might not be jobs for life but you're going to be doing exciting work, learning new stuff, and meeting some interesting folks for sure.
Re: Poll: Given the opportunity would you work at Google?
#48No, but one of the big reasons for that is that they base everything in England in London (with the exception of a small sales office in Manchester), and I don't want to move there.
Re: Poll: Given the opportunity would you work at Google?
#49I am a senior in college from Cupertino. My biggest problem with working for Google is that if I sign to work for them I won't know what I'll be doing. That means I can get stuck in any job in any field, and that is a big turnoff.
Doesn't stop me from applying though :)
Re: Poll: Given the opportunity would you work at Google?
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find the idea of bringing a personal project into the office and having a committee decide whether I own it or not, to be rather distasteful. The obvious course of action is for developers to universally stop signing over their rights willingly like this. Nobody should ever have to sign these invention clauses to be employed.
It's about avoiding situations where your work and your personal life are in conflict ("conflict of interest") and many employers ask you to sign such a thing. If you're not working on something similar to what the employer is working on, it's not a problem. If you're working on something that will compete with what your employer is doing, there's a problem. If you were running a sports team, you wouldn't let your em…
If you're not working on something similar to what the
employer is working on, it's not a problem.