Hey--congrats on a really successful internship! I'm glad you had fun, and maybe we'll see you when you've wrapped up your studies, too. :)
My Google Internship
41–50 of 270 posts
Re: My Google Internship
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
In that midpoint form I mention there's a box you can tick if you want to do "conversion" interviews at the end of your internship. Since I still have two more years of uni I didn't tick that box.
IMHO you're on the right track. Just try to get some fun while you're in the university because you ain't gonna find that environment (parties, girls, friends, etc.) elsewhere. Even if you do find something similar, sure as hell won't be the same.
> university because you ain't gonna find that environment
It's also hard to make absurd amounts of cash having fun during university too (well, at least it's like that in the US).
Re: My Google Internship
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When you realize all of the toys are part of an extremely successful strategy to keep you at the office as long as possible Ugh, I can't believe how often I see this repeated with zero evidence to support it. I work at Google. The office is a ghost town by 6:30. The work life balance on every team I'm aware of is great . Saying the perks are some underhanded strategy to keep people around hugely insults the intelli…
I agree. I know a couple of outliers at Google who work long hours, but even the business folks aren't working much more than 45-50 hours per week. None of the engineers I know work more than 40 hours per week. I've heard that some engineering teams at Amazon and Apple work long hours, but never heard it about Airbnb, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft (last 5 years), or Uber.
>Uber
Some teams do
Re: My Google Internship
#44Kind of ridiculous IMO that Google does not extend offers before leaving the internship. In cases like this, it really does not make sense.
It does. All interns that receive good evaluation feedback are offered to transition into full-time employees and this transition may not even require interview loop.
It always requires a partial interview loop (the "conversion" interviews) now; they changed it in the last year or two.
Re: My Google Internship
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really hate reading people believe they aren't skilled enough or won't be good enough to work at Google. When you realize all of the toys are part of an extremely successful strategy to keep you at the office as long as possible, and that Google is a huge company that has to hire thousands of people every year, you realize that this view that Google is "the best place to work" or that everyone who works there is a…
Not sure why this is downvoted, it's mostly true. At this point, getting an offer from Google has nothing to do with engineer skill. Only one thing matters, spending time studying algorithms/data structures and being able to quickly pattern match it to random problems. It's just like cramming for a final exam in college. Massive amount of info pushed into short-term memory and then after finals week, flushed out. Has…
almost every other good tech company interviews using the same types of questions
Re: My Google Internship
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought the same thing once, but applied anyway on a whim. Have now been at Google for 11 years. It can't hurt to try.
How did you apply? What experience, skills, and education did you have when you applied?
A Googler posted on their blog that they were looking, so I emailed him and he referred me. At the time I had dropped out of an EE+CS degree, had four years of suit-wearing professional experience writing enterprise webapps in PHP and ColdFusion, was halfway through a part-time Masters Degree in Design, and had a bunch of small JavaScript/C++/Art side projects. They hired me as a SWE, am now in UX.
I won't pretend that I wasn't very lucky in timing, interviewers, etc, but you won't get anywhere if you don't roll the dice.
Re: My Google Internship
#47Sorry, it seems like some kind of pseudo-utopia for people who want to feel special and intelligent all the time. People in silly spaceship themed rooms, meditating or hacking upside down, or maybe in sensory deprivation chambers for deep focus? It all screams: I'm entitled to coddling and acceptance--nay, encouragement of my eccentricities--cause I'm special. I just don't know if that's healthy or necessary, if Goog…
Or maybe it’s just for the sake of fun! There are some eccentric people out there, but I don’t think the point of having upside-down work areas is to cater to eccentricities.
Re: My Google Internship
#48> It’s Googley to stand up for diversity and inclusion, such as protesting against binary gendering on toilets So if I support binary gendering on toilets, I'm not welcome at Google? Why has it become necessary to subscribe to a particular set of political beliefs in order to work for Silicon Valley firms?
Because assholes who care about things that aren't really their business are difficult to deal with.
Re: My Google Internship
#49I love reading accounts like this. It's fun and well written and I enjoy the photos too. I work in a cube farm of grey cubes on boring LoB applications. I know I'll never be skilled enough (or, more correctly, I'll never be ambitious enough to become skilled enough) to work at Google et al but it's really fun to sample the experience from the outside. :)
I really hate reading people believe they aren't skilled enough or won't be good enough to work at Google. When you realize all of the toys are part of an extremely successful strategy to keep you at the office as long as possible, and that Google is a huge company that has to hire thousands of people every year, you realize that this view that Google is "the best place to work" or that everyone who works there is a…
I left the office at 5:40pm tonite, about majority of my team had already left.
Most Googlers I encounter are extremely humble. I'd say one of the most valuable things about Googley culture is the lack of prima donna alpha-male macho-engineer behavior. Because Google has so many highly skilled engineers, and because it frowns in general on being an egotistical jerk, it's hard for even huge egos not to adopt some humility.
How can I think I'm the bees knees, when I work at a company that employs Rob Pike and Jeff Dean?
I've worked at IBM, Oracle, and several mid-sized companies over my 20 years as an engineer, and while many of those companies had high quality engineers, I'd say the biggest benefit of Google is the Company culture it created, not the skill levels of the people.
Re: My Google Internship
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really hate reading people believe they aren't skilled enough or won't be good enough to work at Google. When you realize all of the toys are part of an extremely successful strategy to keep you at the office as long as possible, and that Google is a huge company that has to hire thousands of people every year, you realize that this view that Google is "the best place to work" or that everyone who works there is a…
Not sure why this is downvoted, it's mostly true. At this point, getting an offer from Google has nothing to do with engineer skill. Only one thing matters, spending time studying algorithms/data structures and being able to quickly pattern match it to random problems. It's just like cramming for a final exam in college. Massive amount of info pushed into short-term memory and then after finals week, flushed out. Has…
I'd say getting an offer from Google means nothing, but successfully working there for a few years at level 5 or above, does count for something. If you are recruiting for a startup, as my wife's recently did, the difference between the Xooglers she hired and non-Xooglers in terms of productivity and code quality was large.
This would likewise apply to seasoned ex-Facebook, Twitter, Square, Amazon, etc engineers. These are likely people who had to work with teams on reliable complex systems that serve a big audience. It won't matter for the prototype you use to get seed funding, but I'd argue it matters for the eventual rewrite.