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My Google Internship

goldsborough.me

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Re: My Google Internship

#81

Post by cromwellian »

chrisseaton wrote: post #52
cromwellian wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 humi…

> I left the office at 5:40pm tonite I can't tell if this is supposed to be evidence that you don't work long hours or an admission that you do.

BTW, keep in mind, many people stay late or come in late to avoid traffic on the 101.

Re: My Google Internship

#82

Post by Cyph0n »

NamTaf wrote: post #63
goldsborough wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they did mean it for real. They didn't directly give me feedback on how to improve it, other than "go home, man". It's a personal choice in the end :)

For a defined 3-month internship where your primary goal is to suck up as much experience as possible at a young age during said internship, I think you can give insane work hours a pass and just accept that they're making the most of the short-term opportunity. Just don't let it become habit in a fulltime job and you'll be sweet.

Even for a 3 month period, I think 16 hours is overkill. I would say 12 hours is the upper limit. This is just my opinion of course.

In any case, good on Google for warning people about that, especially younger interns/employees. Some people just get into the lifestyle and end up realizing what they lost way too late. Work isn't everything. It's important to wind down by doing things other than what you do at work/school, such as exercise, meditation, or a just developing a hobby in general.

Re: My Google Internship

#83

Post by amputect »

chmln wrote: post #58

Great read. However, he lost me at > Googley to stand up for diversity and inclusion, such as protesting against binary gendering on toilets Is it Google's business? Why should Google be involved? Why cater to 0.6% of the population, at the expense of convenience for the 99.4%? At my last job we had "non-binary", "all-inclusive" bathrooms. They're just awkward. Not the stalls themselves, but having to share the bathr…

Yes, it is, but I think the implementation matters. In my building on the Google Kirkland campus, we have men's and women's bathrooms in a few different places, and also one place where there's 5 single-occupancy unisex bathrooms and one mother's room. It's great! It doesn't take any space away from the other bathrooms, and it accommodates people who are uncomfortable in the cisgender multi-person bathrooms for whatever reason (maybe they're somewhere in the QUILTBAG or maybe there's totally unrelated physical or psychological reasons they prefer single-occupancy restrooms).

My understanding is that we're not trying to strike down all the barriers and make all toilets unisex, but there definitely are people who are working to make sure that every building has at least one of those unisex single-occupancy bathrooms, for people who need it. It doesn't cost Googlers anything except at most a couple of conference rooms.

Re: My Google Internship

#84

Post by i336_ »

home_boi wrote: post #43
linkregister wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yikes.

Re: My Google Internship

#85

Post by draw_down »

gmurphy wrote: post #26
steven777400 wrote: post #3

I 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 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.

One of the best things you can learn is that nobody knows what they are doing.

The only problem is when the people you're interviewing with don't know that yet.

Re: My Google Internship

#86

Post by burkaman »

crucifiction wrote: post #67
rubicon33 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What it should be, is sad. These types of questions are often very different from actual work. The fact that you have to study or train for an interview process specifically, is absurd. Just being qualified for the job, should suffice.

Actually its good. If you study for months on interview questions to be able to pass the interview, you have "gamed" the system to get in and will likely be washed back out in 1-2 years depending on the mercy if your leadership team. People who spend the night before brushing up on their CS and passing the interview are those that actually pass (and stay and grow) and that is who the company really wants. Its just ha…

Why do you think this is true?

Re: My Google Internship

#87

Post by bubersson »

chmln wrote: post #58

Great read. However, he lost me at > Googley to stand up for diversity and inclusion, such as protesting against binary gendering on toilets Is it Google's business? Why should Google be involved? Why cater to 0.6% of the population, at the expense of convenience for the 99.4%? At my last job we had "non-binary", "all-inclusive" bathrooms. They're just awkward. Not the stalls themselves, but having to share the bathr…

In SF office, the Unisex toilets are nicer and more spacious.

Re: My Google Internship

#88

Post by chmln »

amputect wrote: post #83
chmln wrote: post #58

Great read. However, he lost me at > Googley to stand up for diversity and inclusion, such as protesting against binary gendering on toilets Is it Google's business? Why should Google be involved? Why cater to 0.6% of the population, at the expense of convenience for the 99.4%? At my last job we had "non-binary", "all-inclusive" bathrooms. They're just awkward. Not the stalls themselves, but having to share the bathr…

Yes, it is, but I think the implementation matters. In my building on the Google Kirkland campus, we have men's and women's bathrooms in a few different places, and also one place where there's 5 single-occupancy unisex bathrooms and one mother's room. It's great! It doesn't take any space away from the other bathrooms, and it accommodates people who are uncomfortable in the cisgender multi-person bathrooms for whate…

Honestly, its largely a non-issue. Presenting people with choice and accommodating e.g. mothers is common sense.

It is the fact of protesting such matters at work that threw me off in the first place. Opinions shouldn't be crammed down people's throats.

Re: My Google Internship

#90

Post by hiddencost »

lambda_func wrote: post #53

Nice writeup. My favorite part is >> simply practiced interview questions for about three to four months, every day, from morning till night. I then had three phone interviews around November, which I passed. It's interesting (& funny) to see both high schoolers and experienced people spend similar amount of time (~several months) practicing for these types of technical interviews.

Uh, I think the culture that normalizes this kind of extreme approach is really unhealthy and creates a very false mythos around this process. You can see from his other comments that the author will likely burn out if they don't learn how to take care of themselves.

This whole thing feels like myth making. Googler's aren't perfect space aliens.

I spent ~ 6 hours prepping for my interviews, and got an offer. About half that time was cramming Stroustrup's "A Tour of C++" for my C++ interview, since I hadn't used it in a year or so. The other half was going through the most common data structures and algorithms and refreshing my memory.

The coolest thing I used in my interviews was Union-Find.

FWIW, the company I left was actively hiring and I had interviewed 15 candidates in the preceding two months, so I was used to the process.

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