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google.com/humans.txt

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Re: google.com/humans.txt

#81
to me this reads as "Google is built by a large team of engineers, designers, researchers, robots, and others..." but frankly we don't really care enough about them to bother naming them. Come, join the great "team" of faceless cogs.

Re: google.com/humans.txt

#82
post #39

i was cofounder at a startup a long time ago, and wrote most of the backend code. i put a humans.txt in there, and updated it every time we had a new employee. then the CEO fired all the best engineers, and I decided to leave shortly after because sometimes in life you gotta let go. the company is still (miraculously) around these days, although all of the original engineers are long gone. the humans.txt is still acc…

At a previous job, the equivalent to this was `make babies` which would output the names of all the kids that were born to engineers. The unwritten rule was that you'd text someone the good news, and then, that person was to add the name to the list and create the commit. That would serve as the birth announcement to engineering.

Re: google.com/humans.txt

#83

Would love to help them out, if I can get an interview...

To be very honest: don't waste your time It is certainly a common desire of a lot of people to work there. And it certainly can be achieved if you have the technical skills But the advantages of a position are overrated, and the disadvantages, underrated. Certainly, not everywhere you can work on Google sized problems, but other place have interesting problems as well, and you'll feel your work to be more valued

Going to work at Google doesn't mean you'll work on Google sized problems, either. I certainly didn't; it was not a fun experience.

Re: google.com/humans.txt

#84

Oh, this is FOR humans? Years ago I made a "human.txt captcha project" to prevent wasting precious CPU cycles on non-robots http://www.mrspeaker.net/2010/07/15/humans-txt/

It looks kind of interesting. Do you have anything explaining how it's supposed to work? Are you determining if people are humans by their attempt to answer the math questions?

When it says "you are one of them?" does that mean I'm a human or a robot? I'll answer an addition, but then it will ask something like "43 >> 86 = " or " ~ 76 = " and it's like "wtf is going on here?" as the counter ticks down.

Re: google.com/humans.txt

#85
post #39

i was cofounder at a startup a long time ago, and wrote most of the backend code. i put a humans.txt in there, and updated it every time we had a new employee. then the CEO fired all the best engineers, and I decided to leave shortly after because sometimes in life you gotta let go. the company is still (miraculously) around these days, although all of the original engineers are long gone. the humans.txt is still acc…

From my own experience: probably no one cared to touch that server because no one knows what apache foo is running on it and they had better things to do than to worry about what the long time ago guys left there as long as no one complains.

Re: google.com/humans.txt

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best meritocratic way (i.e. not dependent on your CV too much) to get invited to an interview with Google is to be top 1000 in Google Code Jam. Study algorithms a lot, practice on CodeForces and TopCoder. If you work hard on it, in some year you will be on top of Google Code Jam. Recommendations is good to have but it won't help you to be successful on the interview. Practice algorithms a lot, ... I mean literall…

Where does the "top 1000" come from?

My logic is simple.

There is qualification round, round 1a/1b/1c, round 2, round 3, onsite finals.

Advancing to round 1 won't impress anyone because qualification round is easy.

In order to advance to round 2 you have to be top 1000 which is pretty difficult but achievable.

Advancing to round 3 is very difficult, I think it's way beyond interview level.

Re: google.com/humans.txt

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That. As an ex-Google engineer, I'm often asked why I quit. I usually reply with a soccer analogy. If you're a decent player, and somehow you're bought by Real Madrid, you won't see much real action. There are enough superstars (technical and political) who get to do exciting stuff to keep you relegated to tedious, menial tasks.

Good Analogy Real Madrid salaries for "average talent" are probably more competitive as well

Google is known for paying way above market average, but there's also the question of levels. I'd venture to say that most Google engineers I know work two levels below their capability. The concentration of talent is one thing, but the promotion process is so tedious that folks just tend not to go for it. As a result, what you call "average talent" will more than likely get less compensation at Google than they otherwise would. Certainly that was my case, even though money played no part in my decision.
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