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Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#81

Post by tazzy531 »

raldi wrote: post #17

It's a large enough place to have many microcultures. Geo (Maps, Earth) is totally different from, say Android. YouTube's culture is nothing like Search and GMail's. And so on. So after you join, go meet other teams and get to know the big picture. Then, you can seek a transfer to wherever you think you'd best fit in.

When I got the offer, I interviewed the 6 teams from two product areas before I accepted the offer.

This is always good advice whether the offer is from Google or a Big Bank.

Talk to the manager, talk to your coworkers. Once they give you the offer, their job is to market the job to you. Use that as an opportunity to interview your future coworkers. When I was considering finance job, I've even gone as far as asking the future coworkers to implement different algorithms and/or talk about their system architecture. If it was too crazy, it was an immediate sign that I won't be happy there.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#82

Post by mdwrigh2 »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #31
michaelochurch wrote: post #18

Google's problem is that most of the work is shitty legacy maintenance. If you can get on one of their machine-learning or research projects and have a good manager, you'll have a fantastic experience (and I say this as a notorious Google detractor). Take the offer seriously but negotiate extremely hard on project allocation because it's really hard to transfer to a good project if you start in the wrong place, so yo…

As Google customer I wish there were more strong professionals at Google who like legacy maintenance. Today I received email from Google AdSense about change in their system. The only important part of the change was not even mentioned in that email: AdSese lost my payment information (alongside with all other AdSense users I assume) so I have to re-setup payment information again. Strong team would be able to preser…

I would highly doubt that they dropped everyone's payment information. Think about how much money would be lost from people not willing to overcome the inertia and re-entering their payment info.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#83

Post by dennisgorelik »

mdwrigh2 wrote: post #82
dennisgorelik wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Google customer I wish there were more strong professionals at Google who like legacy maintenance. Today I received email from Google AdSense about change in their system. The only important part of the change was not even mentioned in that email: AdSese lost my payment information (alongside with all other AdSense users I assume) so I have to re-setup payment information again. Strong team would be able to preser…

I would highly doubt that they dropped everyone's payment information. Think about how much money would be lost from people not willing to overcome the inertia and re-entering their payment info.

It could be that management hopes for that -- due to publishers' inertia AdSense will delay payments them.

I wonder if that delay would improve GOOG Q3 revenue results.

Edit: it seems I guessed incorrect (due to GAAP).

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#84

Post by tazzy531 »

offer_today wrote: post #77
DannyBee wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, while this was once true, this is no longer true at all. You should know exactly what team you will be working on before you ever get an offer.

That agrees with my experience. I got team information yesterday and expect an offer today.

My advice is reach out to the team and talk to the engineers on the team. Even meet up with them for a Google lunch.

This is the best way to align everyone's expectations.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#85

Post by tazzy531 »

noone_er2 wrote: post #8

can you please post the way you prepared for technical interview. Just what you think can help someone who is preparing for it. what kind of questions they asked ? any thing to watch out for..

When I interviewed, I studied this book cover to cover for 3 months prior to the interview. It definitely came in handy: http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steve-Skiena/d...

There's also lecture videos here: http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~algorith/video-lectures/

Learning data structures that you don't use often, like bit arrays, come in handy for interviews, especially for when they ask you to optimize your solution. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_array)

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#86

Post by mdwrigh2 »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #83
mdwrigh2 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would highly doubt that they dropped everyone's payment information. Think about how much money would be lost from people not willing to overcome the inertia and re-entering their payment info.

It could be that management hopes for that -- due to publishers' inertia AdSense will delay payments them. I wonder if that delay would improve GOOG Q3 revenue results. Edit: it seems I guessed incorrect (due to GAAP).

You report revenue and expenses during the quarter in which they were earned, not when they're paid. So a delay in payment wouldn't change their Q3 filings at all.

Beyond this, Google makes a profit from having both sides continue to participate. The more ads they can show, the better. Hampering one side of this equation for temporary gains that only really improve how you look to Wall Street (not how you're actually performing) is silly, and seems completely counter to how Google typically works.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#87

Post by [deleted] »

groby_b wrote: post #74
encoderer wrote: post #29

I've never worked for Google, but here's some thoughts on your offer. These may all be obvious to you, but for the benefit of everybody.. 0. You have an opportunity of real power to shape your financial future in the small window between when an offer is made and when an offer is finalized. These negotiations commonly take a few days. In those days, your effective hourly rate for your strategizing and execution of th…

As somebody who took an offer from Google a year ago: I debate the merit of point #1. I openly shared what I was making (including bonuses), and I got an offer that I was quite happy with. No negotiation required. In fact, I do make a point of telling HR departments that I don't negotiate. They have one shot to make me an offer, and either it's good enough or not. As far as I can tell, this has worked fine for me so…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#88

Post by sadga »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #83
mdwrigh2 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would highly doubt that they dropped everyone's payment information. Think about how much money would be lost from people not willing to overcome the inertia and re-entering their payment info.

It could be that management hopes for that -- due to publishers' inertia AdSense will delay payments them. I wonder if that delay would improve GOOG Q3 revenue results. Edit: it seems I guessed incorrect (due to GAAP).

That's not how GAAP works.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#89

Post by tazzy531 »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #31
michaelochurch wrote: post #18

Google's problem is that most of the work is shitty legacy maintenance. If you can get on one of their machine-learning or research projects and have a good manager, you'll have a fantastic experience (and I say this as a notorious Google detractor). Take the offer seriously but negotiate extremely hard on project allocation because it's really hard to transfer to a good project if you start in the wrong place, so yo…

As Google customer I wish there were more strong professionals at Google who like legacy maintenance. Today I received email from Google AdSense about change in their system. The only important part of the change was not even mentioned in that email: AdSese lost my payment information (alongside with all other AdSense users I assume) so I have to re-setup payment information again. Strong team would be able to preser…

I don't want to speak on behalf of AdSense, but there are often good reasons for this.

In the project that I did for another product, we required users to re-enter their payment information to revalidate the account and ensure that the user still had access to the instrument. That process was done to protect the user's instrument.

As I said, I don't want to speak on behalf of AdSense and I'm not familiar with their processes to speak with any authority.

In any case, the change and the reason should have been very well documented and messaged to you (we go through a lot of internal user testing even on these mundane processes). If not, please reach out to the consumer operations team, they should be able to resolve your concerns.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?

#90

Post by azylman »

srik wrote: post #71
evmar wrote: post #45

(Eight years at Google here.) It's changed a lot over the years and has certainly disappointed me many times, which any xoogler can also tell you. But every time I've considered leaving I've been unable to imagine some other work that gives me the same combination of high freedom and good compensation. I've also seen the occasional person pull a michaelochurch. I've been lucky in that my random fun hacks have been se…

What is the michaelochurch controversy that keeps getting referred to?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4460296
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