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Jobs at Google (1999)

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Re: Jobs at Google (1999)

#81

Post by urda »

exoducks wrote: post #79
urda wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > fellas > Not just men! Men, Women, and everything in between. fella (fel·la) - nonstandard spelling of fellow, used in representing speech in various dialects. So we follow 'fellow': fellow (fel·low) - a person in the same position, involved in the same activity, or otherwise associated with another. And so we can conclude that this is completely fine . It can easily be reasoned that the GP was using it to refer…

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fella https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/fella Nearly every usage of "fella" I've heard has had a "male" implication. At least in US English.

> Nearly every usage of "fella" I've heard has implied that it referred to a male.

Neat, and I've heard it implied multiple times to refer to generic groups of people, in US English as well too just like you. The thing though we need to consider is definitions, facts, sentence context, and even the auhtor's intent much more heavily then both of our personal experiences.

It can easily be argued based on context that the author's intent was to refer to a group of people generically, they even used the "nonstandard" and generic version of the word.

Personal anecdotes do not make facts.

Re: Jobs at Google (1999)

#82

Post by godelmachine »

FrojoS wrote: post #76
godelmachine wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's informative. Thanks! I had read an article where they elaborated how getting into Google is a lot more difficult than getting into Harvard.

Its not. There rejection rate is higher, though. Still, a person who gets into Harvard is more likely to also get into Google than vice versa. Google gets more applications per open position, so they also have to reject more. Lots of people think "Why not give it a shot and apply at Google." Very few think the same about Harvard. Also, I would say it takes more effort to apply to a university. They will require essay…

Makes sense.

Re: Jobs at Google (1999)

#83

Post by DonHopkins »

santix wrote: post #52

I like how you could send your resume as a text file but it better be ASCII.

And please don't email code samples through BITNET because each IBM SYSOP has their own different home brew set of EBCDICASCII translation tables. (That's why C has trigraphs!)

Re: Jobs at Google (1999)

#85

Post by [deleted] »

mbrumlow wrote: post #45
learnstats2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest they were incorrect in their claim not to be influenced by those things - that's why they have a diversity problem now. Edited to add: In 1998 I probably would have read this and cheered it as a place where diversity was recognised and welcomed; in 2018 I read it as "we don't feel we have to do anything about our unconscious biases, which we're satisfied with"

(warning typing on bumppy airplane ride on tiny phone, where is my emacs again ?) Given how successful how successful they are and how right they were on so many other things it is hard to tell if they were incorrect or not. But while we are at it let's talk about unconscious bias. This is brought up a lot. If it does exist and is affecting people's decisions why do we always talk about it in thr manner you just have…

[deleted]

Re: Jobs at Google (1999)

#86

Post by zinclozenge »

FrojoS wrote: post #76
godelmachine wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's informative. Thanks! I had read an article where they elaborated how getting into Google is a lot more difficult than getting into Harvard.

Its not. There rejection rate is higher, though. Still, a person who gets into Harvard is more likely to also get into Google than vice versa. Google gets more applications per open position, so they also have to reject more. Lots of people think "Why not give it a shot and apply at Google." Very few think the same about Harvard. Also, I would say it takes more effort to apply to a university. They will require essay…

It also probably costs money to apply to Harvard.

Re: Jobs at Google (1999)

#87

Post by nielsole »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #54
stillworks wrote: post #9

Interestingly, Requirements for Staffing Manager -BA/BS, MS or Ph.D. degree -Intelligence to interview the brightest in the world Ph.D for Staffing Manager ? I guess that's not the case currently ?

It's reminiscent of that Zen anecdote in Raise High the Roof Beam : http://www-users.math.umn.edu/~brubaker/3592H/dukemu-salinge...

That is a good story.

I guess though they had their "A players hire B players hire C players" in mind.

Re: Jobs at Google (1999)

#88

Post by chubot »

Senior Operations Analyst -- Knowledge of scripting languages (Korn Shell, Perl and/or Python)

Korn shell surprises me! I thought that Google was always a Linux shop, and never used any other Unix. Was Korn shell ever popular on Linux, as opposed to bash?

I didn't use shell back in 1999, but I thought that bash was already popular back then. bash was apparently the first program that Linus Torvalds got running on Linux, back in the early 90's.

I saw a bit of early Perl at Google when I worked there, but it was mostly all Python. I never saw any Korn shell, although I guess bash is compatible with Korn shell, so maybe that's what they meant. Or it was written by a recruiter who copied from other common job postings at the time.

Re: Jobs at Google (1999)

#89

Post by exoducks »

urda wrote: post #81
exoducks wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fella https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/fella Nearly every usage of "fella" I've heard has had a "male" implication. At least in US English.

> Nearly every usage of "fella" I've heard has implied that it referred to a male. Neat, and I've heard it implied multiple times to refer to generic groups of people, in US English as well too just like you. The thing though we need to consider is definitions, facts, sentence context, and even the auhtor's intent much more heavily then both of our personal experiences. It can easily be argued based on context that t…

> Personal anecdotes do not make facts.

That's precisely why I provided links to two dictionaries. Not the definition google spoon feeds you when you type in "define fella"

Re: Jobs at Google (1999)

#90

Post by throwawaymath »

throwaway0255 wrote: post #74
inerte wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rarely, but yes. Overall Google was notorious for demanding degrees from top universities.

How true is this today?

Not really true at all. Having no degree at all may present an obstacle in entering the interview process if you don't have strong experience to make up for it. But once you've entered the process as a candidate, the type or lack of degree will have absolutely no bearing on whether or not you're given an offer. It may be used past the decision phase when the hiring committee is deciding how to level you, but if so that will only be meaningful if they're slotting you for the first two levels or so.

Everything becomes easier with a degree, doubly so with a degree from a top university. But they only use that as a factor in deciding who to interview; all they care about when deciding who to hire is interview performance. Someone without a degree should be optimizing their search by convincing hiring managers or employees to refer them into the process directly, thereby short circuiting the recruiters.

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