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Why I Studied Full-Time for 8 Months for a Google Interview

190 points by avinassh 10y ago

charlieegan3 10y ago
This has been posted quite a few times in the last few days: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=why%20i%20studied%208%20months%20for%20a%20google%20interview&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=why%20i%20studied%208%20months... Most of the relevant comments are at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12649740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12649740
ctvo 10y ago
Did he actually get hired?
- qntty 10y ago
  According to his linkedin, he's still studying.
  - trendia 10y ago
    To be honest, studying for 8 months isn't so bad. A lot of us studied for 4 years (to get a degree).
    - user5994461 10y ago
      If not 5 or 6. #Countries with little tech jobs where one MUST have a master's.
- Fluid_Mechanics 10y ago
  Rejected for being over 30.
  - sizzzzlerz 10y ago
    I've been expecting somebody to point that out. Google is notorious for finding excuses to reject otherwise competent interviewees who happen to be above a certain age. They always hide behind "You're a great candidate, but..." and then list a weak excuse to not give them an offer. It's illegal and immoral but almost impossible to prove.
bshimmin 10y ago
I feel like this is some sort of promotional piece, but I can't quite get the angle - is he a fictitious individual made up by Google? Is this an attempt by Apple to make Google employees look weird? Is he a real person who's looking to publish a book? Perhaps it's entirely legit, but it just seems so, so strange to me.
- minimaxir 10y ago
  There are very many engineers (e.g userbase of /r/cscareerquestions) whose sole purpose in life is to get a job at one of the Big 4.
  - bshimmin 10y ago
    I can perhaps understand that sort of attitude from people fresh out of their computer science degree, or even after half a dozen years of miserable grind in the workforce - but this guy looks to be in his forties, has (apparently) already had a successful career... and yet he has a blog called "Googley as Heck" and his LinkedIn headline is "Future Googler". Is this not all a bit weird?
    - mason55 10y ago
      Getting older doesn't guarantee that you will grow out of your social awkwardness
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - __derek__ 10y ago
      We're well into the Age of the Personal Brand Gospel. Accepting that fact makes things like this easier to understand.[1] You may want to pick up a copy of Infinite Jest to help guide your transition. [1]: Yes, still weird.
      - pokler 10y ago
        'Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.' - DFW (from IJ)
sixtypoundhound 10y ago
Sorry, the concept here is mildly depressing. Go study for 8 months to be awesome, focusing your time on subjects directly related to improving your awesomeness. If your awesomeness happens to match a need at Google, great. Otherwise, you're still awesome and will wind up somewhere worthwhile....
marsrover 10y ago
> Wherever I end up, I’m going in as an entry-level software engineer. I’m not going in with 15 years of software engineering experience because I simply don’t have it. When it comes to this stuff, I’m the equivalent of a fresh CS grad. Talk about selling yourself short. You've been a web developer for 15 years. I would think you've progressed a little further than entry-level.
- hahamrfunnyguy 10y ago
  You'd be surprised! I've interviewed many "veterans" (and worked with a few!) who just don't have the chops. In the world of web development, the developer who knows just enough to skate by without a proper understanding of algorithms and design patterns seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Kudos to him for acknowledging it and trying to do something about it.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    > Kudos to him for acknowledging it and trying to do something about it. That's a bad strategy for himself. He shouldn't acknowledge it and he should go to work for one company that do not care about that.
  - arenaninja 10y ago
    I predict downvotes for my reply here, but I'm genuinely asking a question. You're not wrong that some developers will simply skate by, but is the developer wrong to simply skate by? Specially as a web developer, I think too many people think that the barrier of entry is high, and it really isn't. The majority of technology I know how to work with I have picked up out of necessity to make something work (or work better). Even database internals I know little about how they work, because I don't think there's an inherent need. I've worked with many database engines (usually whatever the business wants to use), and I just know enough about DDL/DML and indexing to make things work (note that I'm talking about SQL/noSQL DBs here). I re-invent the wheel constantly in different languages for pet projects that will never even see GitHub. I act out some of the more modern tutorials to get me more familiar with how other people code. But at no point have I yet had to stop and say "this damn bubble sort isn't fast enough!" I don't even use an ORM, but I think the majority of web developers don't know SQL and just use an ORM, and I think that's still OK, because they haven't hit the point where they need to use raw SQL to address a performance issue. But when they do, wouldn't they be as likely as I have been to look up documentation, StackOverflow and the rest of the web to get what they need done? And isn't that enough? If the guy sitting next to me knows how to implement a performant/redundant/concurrent database solution from scratch, he shouldn't be sitting next to me in the first place, he should be working on improving database software! And I'll use his tool when he ships it, but that still doesn't make me a caveman.
simmons 10y ago
I started reading this thinking it was nuts to put so much effort into targeting one specific company. But by the end, I couldn't help but admire his willingness to set a goal and put in some serious work to accomplish it!
fdsfsaa 10y ago
This guy is sad. All those people on Quora who ask unending questions about Google are sad. They're suckers. They've eaten up Google's marketing. You want to know the reality? Whatever's special about Google is long gone. Management let the smoke out a long time ago. Nowadays, Google is just another big software company, with all the opaque politics, purposelessness, and random nonsense that comes with being a big company. It's sad to see people strive to be a faceless drone.
- scarmig 10y ago
  How can you say that? Google gives an expensive Christmas gift every year!
  - user5994461 10y ago
    And free food all year along!
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
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- JonDav 10y ago
  I try to let new grads know this and they still fall for it. Just like when Goldman Saks comes calling. They just do not see these companies and the experience for what it is.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - ceras 10y ago
    I don't think it's fair to say people are "falling for it." Their motivations may just differ from yours. For example, say you're interested in earning a lot of money as a software developer - where else are you going to work that's clearly better?
preordained 10y ago
Something wrong with this guy...all this future Googler talk with disclaimer asides about "what if I don't get hired"...and yet he's talking about how you can do it and your success plan. Anyhow, in general it's getting really weird hearing more stuff like "Google is the best" and "I just have to work there". I question your judgement if you are making these sort of statements as an outsider. At least join the party before you drink the koolaid.
- ubercore 10y ago
  Honestly, if I'm a hiring manager at Google, this would turn me off. I wouldn't reject him outright, but it's a yellow flag in terms how effective he'd actually be performing his job.
mathattack 10y ago
Isn't it really, "Why I studied full-time 8 months for a Google job." This is actually shorter than the 4 years of a BS in Computer Science for the Google job.
untog 10y ago
It fascinates me the extent to which he regrets not getting a Computer Science degree, and says it impacts how hireable he is. Obviously, data point of one here, but I don't have one and it hasn't come up once in my career. You may not see web development and software engineering as different positions. Both involve programming and craftsmanship, but software engineering adds to it knowledge of data structures and algorithms, compiled languages, memory considerations, and understanding the impact of coding and architecture decisions on the machines where they reside. I think that's a simplistic view of what "web developer" is these days. I work in the web for most of the time and I absolutely have to do deal with memory considerations as well as code and architecture choices. And if you're a full-stack developer you're likely dealing with some kind of compiled language on the backend. In brief, Google is a company that hires smart, creative people, and treats them well. Google rewards merit, encourages big ideas, and gives employees the freedom to make good decisions for the user. I very much question that, in 2016.
- Tannic 10y ago
  Google is a multinational corporation just as interested in exploiting everything as any other conglomerate. Form determines function at that scale.
- duderific 10y ago
  > It fascinates me the extent to which he regrets not getting a Computer Science degree, and says it impacts how hireable he is. Obviously, data point of one here, but I don't have one and it hasn't come up once in my career. Same here, except for when I interviewed at Google. :) I was interviewing for a frontend position, and I got through the interviews ok and was passed along to a few departments. Payments was interested in hiring me, so I got passed back to the "hiring committee" who has the final say. I started receiving emails from the Google recruiter (who was the go-between between me and the hiring committee) with specific questions about my degree (Anthropology from Berkeley), the timeframe I attended and what my GPA was. In the end, they decided not to hire me, even though the Payments team had expressed interest in hiring me, even saying "we'd love to have you on board." I can only conclude that it was specifically because of my education (or lack thereof).
jefferson123 10y ago
This should not be promoted as a case study, or a success story for people to aspire to emulate. I hope this guy the best, but he obviously has some mental issue and he's trying to find solace in talking about it publicly.
- rhizome 10y ago
  What's the obvious part?
  - jefferson123 10y ago
    I think it's the goal he chose that is making it obvious: devoting his time on earth to landing an entry level job at some company -- a hyper materialistic and anecdotal "goal" at best. Calling it a goal is funny because it has no value for life, to go all Nietzsche about it. This is just drinking the capitalistic kool-aid and confusing it with something loftier. I call this a mental issue.
    - rhizome 10y ago
      Nietzsche had his own mental problems, not the least syphilis, but in the spirit of life's values let's go to the text: "Much that passed for good with one people was regarded with scorn and contempt by another"[1] 1. http://4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/15 http://4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/15
gravypod 10y ago
> I’ve spent thousands of hours reading books, writing code, and watching computer science lectures, all to prepare for the Google software engineer interview. Shouldn't you just be doing this anyway if you want to be a good computer scientist? That's how you learn. You constantly take in new information and attempt to apply it and Computer Science is one of the most enabling fields of this form of learning since 1) we all love to churn out an "Experiment" every once and a while and have it fall into being a small side project that makes us a few k and 2) almost EVERYTHING is free! All the info is made by basement-dwelling nerds who sit at home and build cool ass shit and as such they put it all on the internet! Being one of these basement dwelling nerds, it's frigin amazing to have a wealth of all of the fields best research at my fingertips just a google away and I love learning this stuff not for an inevitable goal of "Being a Googler (tm)" but instead of furthering what I know about the world. If the author is reading this, good on you for learning but don't worry about being a googler if you can do this then you're better then the average googler because you're in the top 1 maybe 2% of all computer scientists if you continually want to learn more. Google even thinks that way, look at their higher level employees like Rob Pike, people who think programmers must be limited because they aren't able to think as well as him about abstractions. Don't waste your time at google. Start a company, build something amazing for yourself or do contract work for others, write these blog posts to get more clients, and make the world a better place. If you're this smart you don't need to run a hamsterwheel for a huge Google-sized corporation.
- stonemetal 10y ago
  >Shouldn't you just be doing this anyway if you want to be a good computer scientist? Rather depends on the material. Writing code to learn something new, yes. Writing the same linked list inversion routine over and over, so that you can do it flawlessly on a white board during an interview not so much.
- linkregister 10y ago
  I agree he's way ahead of the game; being an engineer at Google would be a step back unless: 1. He gets placed as a staff engineer or director. 2. He gets a new shiny project that for some reason he has reasonable autonomy over. Otherwise he'll get tired of the big-company politics. I can't imagine why a self-starter like this would want a set of bosses. He's already at the next level, building his own companies (likely an app here and there). He may not be making millions but he's got the fundamentals down. I would think that most folks on HN would much rather be able to own their own businesses rather than being an employee at a large company. Edit: further down some commenters investigated and figured it out: this blog post is marketing for a Google interview-prep training he intends to run. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13195257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13195257
tayo42 10y ago
How are these people that study for what ever company so certain they'll even get an interview? I'm still waiting for Google to acknowledge my application from last year lol.
- tempw 10y ago
  he has a referral, it's said on the post.
  - Retra 10y ago
    And now he has the post, so even Google can google the magnitude of his devotion to them.
    - JupiterMoon 10y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13195131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13195131
  - tayo42 10y ago
    Oh skimmed it. I guess I missed that. Although I still feel like Ive seen that attitude of studying for these interviews like they're guaranteed to come. Maybe more people have referrals then I think
dudul 10y ago
It reads like a PR piece. If it had stopped at "Now I want to be called a software engineer and I'll study for that", it would have been a nice story about setting goals, and working to get there or whatever. But the whole "Google is so freakishly awesome dude! I need to work there!! it's the most better company in the world!" is kind of a turn off. I can't believe that Google Careers site actually recommend that candidates should study "Cracking the Coding Interview, 6th Edition". This is completely nuts to me.
- deeteecee 10y ago
  honestly, that book has become like the standard now. i agree that it's completely nuts but here i am, reviewing it even after being in the industry for at least 3 years.
swingbridge 10y ago
The very fact that "preparing for 8 months for a Google interview" is a thing highlights all the things that have gone wrong at Google and their widely panned bad recruitment practices. The process has become about recruiting people that are good at the silly process and not about recruiting the best people. Probably OK if Google is in 'megacorp looking to feed more skillled cogs into the machine' mode (which it mostly is), but unlikely the process finds the person that builds the next Google.
- digler999 10y ago
  I still remember reading the article about one of google's (?) early recruitment campaigns, circa 2001: an ad in the train station that said www.e^(5,000,000 digits ).com, so you would only know the URL if you were nerdy enough to know how to calculate the non-repeating non-terminating decimal. The webpage then solicited them for hiring. I still think that was a cool idea. Edit: it wasn't e^ of anything, it was like the [5million, 5millionth + 10]-digit-of-e.com
  - blatant 10y ago
    Do you mean this one: https://blog.beamery.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Googles-cryptic-billboard.jpg https://blog.beamery.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Googles-... ?
    - digler999 10y ago
      that's funny because I dont remember it that way, but it definitely could have been that one. Or maybe it was part of a campaign of many.
- sowbug 10y ago
  He studied C++, Unix, algorithms, data structures, and system design. Is learning that stuff a "silly process"?
  - Volt 10y ago
yawz 10y ago
When I saw that title, I was torn between "because you're an idiot" and "because you know what you really want". I'm old enough to know that everybody has an opinion, but I can't help but thinking that studying full-time for 8 months for a job interview is wrong. 8 months is a very long time, and I can easily think a dozen professional contexts where such a time could be put to much better use. It is sad.
- yeukhon 10y ago
  Put the possible self-promotion, what not aside, I'd be happy to study for a few months without worrying about working full time if I have revenue generating on the side. This is like attednding hacker school for 3 months and my sole goal would be to learn to make something I never had a chance to do it. This is like preparing for marathon for 12 months every weekend. I am happy to do this just to make myself more knowledgeable with computer science. I graduated with a degree and I am sorry to say I haven't really make use of my knowledge greatly because there isn't much to use algorithms or data structure in my position (I work as a DevOps) to the extend of building something truly amazing.
whatever_dude 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law I'm sure he has learned a lot, but when you study with an interview in mind, you're not necessarily studying to be a good developer; you're studying to look like one. There's some correlation, but it's not the same thing.
- prashnts 10y ago
  This is so true. There are coaching centres here in India, pulling in millions each year to prepare kids for the premier engineering institutes here. Hundreds of thousands of kids join these, but I am still to see even 10% of them working on interesting problems. Like another comment here notes, most of them are becoming a commodity.
divbit 10y ago
Hmmm... I can't quite fault the guy if that's what he really wants in life - I put about 3 months (an entire summer) into unpaid studying for grad school prelims (i.e. I didn't request a teaching assignment for the summer) and ended up being the only person to pass all three exams at once that fall (Note: I think there were a couple people that passed the exams by spreading them out over the space of a year or two). On the other hand, this seems like something you can only easily do if you are young / no kids / or have tons of savings (rich)... (I strongly doubt my wife would put up with me doing this now) so hopefully for the crop of people that want to work there it is not the norm / maybe their age diversity would benefit from making applicants work record count for a bit more or something, idk.
geebee 10y ago
Great write-up, thank you to the OP for putting this on the web! I have a few thoughts on it. First, I'm not all that surprised someone would study for 8 months for an interview at Google. I interviewed there (no hire) and gave myself 3 weeks. It wasn't close to enough time, and I've taken a lot of formal math and basic CS plus data structures. Just too rusty, especially at a whiteboard. I could easily have spent 3 months. Various people here have cautioned against working at Google, and I know people who worked at Google (as SSE's) who cautioned me about it when they heard I was interviewing. No, not in a "run away" sense, more of a "don't get too starry eyed here, it's not that great" sense. But salary-wise, a SSE role at Google would have paid a hell of a lot more than I make right now. I'm just saying, I can see why people put in the time. And plenty of people do love it there. My advice to people who have more of the fundamentals is to get a copy of "Cracking the Coding Interview" and just making damn sure you can do the hard problems in 45 minutes at a whiteboard. Memorizing won't help you, you need to understand what you're doing on a deep enough level that you can solve similar problems you haven't seen before. I also recommend knowing basic data structures like the back of your hand. Really, you can't be trying to remember how to program a queue or stack, or traverse a tree, not if you need to use these concepts to solve a more complicated problem in 45 minutes at a whiteboard [1]. Now, on to the other side here... I love a few things about software. I love it that an econ major who self studies intensely can get "high level" jobs. I love it that no cartel controls entrance, and can force everyone to do a 3 year grad degree with tuitions at 50K+ a year. I love it that really smart people can move at a faster pace because they learn quickly. However, I don't love it that corporations are essentially our gatekeepers. The "google interview" shouldn't e called an interview, it should be called the "google exam". Calling it an interview creates an ambiguity that confuses people outside our industry. I know people who work in other fields, and while knowledge is probed during interviews, what they go through is vastly different from what we go through in software. My "interview" at Google was a series of whiteboard exams. Here's what I don't like about this - someone like the OP here studies, intensely, and takes his exams. Suppose he didn't get the job. Well, how did he do? If you take the actuarial exams, or the nursing boards, or the bar, you get a sense of how you did. There is more transparency around the test. There has to be. As far as I know (based on what I've read about this interview process at Google from people who know, including the author of Cracking the Coding Interview), my name, along with very formal numerical scores, along with photos of the whiteboard after each interview/exam, are in a database at Google. However (yes, for legal reasons), I am not allowed to know more that the vaguest details about this. A formal exam, in almost every field, has a published study path. It is graded in a way that is audited to ensure fairness and consistency. It must not be capricious. A student has an opportunity, often, to try again. Your hard study, should you pass, leads to a lasting credential respected by industry. We get none of this in software. I honestly do believe that the tech exam is a big part of why a lot of people quit software development or never enter it in the first place - this in a field where CEOs regularly lobby congress and the president to lament a shortage of tech talent. We do need to fix the technical interview. I think the first step is to realize that it is a formal exam, and that as such, it needs to come with the usual benefits and considerations afforded to people who take formal professional exams in other fields.
jondubois 10y ago
The thing about constantly learning new things is that after about 10 years you start to forget the old things. The new stuff kind of overwrites the old stuff after a while. What I find annoying about technical interviews is that they force me to review useless, basic stuff that I learned 10 years ago instead of asking me about all the cutting edge (and much more interesting/difficult) stuff that I have learned more recently.
- goda90 10y ago
  If you're forgetting it after 10 years, then maybe it's not important. And the alternative shouldn't be the new stuff, because we don't know if that's important yet. It should be the old stuff that people don't forget.
  - jondubois 10y ago
    Exactly. It's not important... Except for the interview - Which is my point.
projektir 10y ago
This makes me wonder... The idea of studying for the sake of making it a certain company, for some reason, turns me off. Never had the personality to do things only because a parent/teacher/company wanted me to do it. But, if there was something more fundamental to study for, like a certificate, or a project, or a competition (something more advanced than a hackaton), that'd actually be really interesting. The relative success or failure with it could, then, provide feedback. I guess Project Euler is kind of close, but it's a bit too much of a one-person affair, and only the right answer matters. In other areas, there are often communities where more experienced people help out the less experienced while collectively getting better, and there are tangible goals at every step. Video games come to mind. Unfortunately, all I've seen is always around data structures, small scripts and hacks, time-gated, overly simple, and promote what I would call bad code or shallow understanding. It makes you good at the events in question, and you can get some certificate, but whether or not it's actually making you a better developer is suspect and the correlation is often backwards, if anything. So the only solid goal a lot of people see is getting hired by X company, and, by extension, getting better at interviews. Because that's something you can measure and get good feedback from and it's a lot simpler than trying to figure out what being a good software developer means.
- jiaweihli 10y ago
  I would bet that a lot of companies consider certifications to be a negative signal when evaluating candidates. Likely because the certifications aren't meaningfully standardized, so there's not much point in seeking external validation unless you're not confident in your skills.
londons_explore 10y ago
Most Google engineers, if asked nicely, will give a mock interview and give feedback on if you're (in their personal opinion) above the hiring standard. There are thousands scattered all over the internet - just scout one out and ask.
msoad 10y ago
I worked at Google. This makes me sad. Sad to see people are treating a for profit company like a religion. Google is a good workplace compared to other companies but it's not a religion and it's not perfect. As other commenters said it's not the thing it was before either. I left Google to work on something more interesting and I can't be happier. If we're going to hire people, I'm not putting any weight on their work background.
- solipsism 10y ago
  What are you talking about? Where in this article does the author treat Google like a religion? He specifically said it wouldn't be the end of the world if he didn't make it. He specifically said others shouldn't study that much. Another comment based on the headline and not reading the article? Bet you'll get those anti-google upvotes anyway.
  - bambax 10y ago
    What about: "The more I learn about Google, the more I want to work there. In brief, Google is a company that [...] gives employees the freedom to make good decisions for the user. [...] Nowadays candidates are chosen based on coding ability, technical knowledge, and Googleyness." As a user, it hasn't been my experience in a long while that Google gives employees the freedom to make good decisions for the user. Google Plus wasn't about users. The shutdown of Google Reader, or of countless other products that had a strong following, weren't to please or help users. And what's "Googleyness" if not a religious feature?
    - solipsism 10y ago
      None of that approaches religiosity. Your ridiculous interpretation is colored by your preexisting opinions about Google. Your logic also fails you. Developers having the freedom to do what's right for the user doesn't imply they succeed.
      - judahmeek 10y ago
ilaksh 10y ago
I used to think the CS-y whiteboard interview stuff was a complete waste of time. But now I look at it as a way to prove objectively you have a computer science skill/knowledge-set. Which is nice because it evens out the playing field because many who have the degree don't have the skills and many who don't could acquire them. So its like a bar exam. There is still an issue though because computer science base knowledge generally lags behind industry-relevant practical knowledge. For example, algorithms and data structures generally accepted as core knowledge do not take enough advantage of today's relatively high RAM availability. And there is not enough emphasis on higher-level components. You could argue that everyone has to know that old-fashioned basic stuff well and then layer on newer knowlege or perspectives, but I think some of what is considered computer-science core knowledge should be replaced with newer practical things like understanding components and modules and being able to use contemporary tools. So maybe less emphasis on optimizing algorithms at the procedure level for starters. It might be more important for most engineers to be good with profiling tools and understand the order-of-magnitude differences between memory/CPU/network latency etc. than do be able to do a third-degree low-memory optimization of a function.
- plussed_reader 10y ago
  "For example, algorithms and data structures generally accepted as core knowledge do not take enough advantage of today's relatively high RAM availability." Wouldn't it be prudent to keep your algorithms as lithe as possible? I would think an algorithm/scheme that chews up large amounts of ramm would be perceived as inefficient? Kinda like the dumpster fire that is Chrome, currently.
  - ilaksh 10y ago
    Case in point. Read the Google engineering articles describing the work optimizing V8's memory usage. That primarily involved using profiling tools on lots of web pages and then changing the initial size of buffers. But they still have to use relatively large buffers from an old-fashioned CS algorithm perspective and they couldn't make them smaller without impacting performance the other way. And they can't know that without doing the profiling on the whole system. So yes you want functions to be lithe but you have to also focus some time, skills and knowledge on optimizing the entire system using tools and real-world data.
tristor 10y ago
I appreciate all the effort this guy has gone to in order to document his process and progress. I don't know if I agree that the end goal is worth the effort, but along the way he's collected a nice corpus of knowledge that any strong computer engineering person should know and made it accessible to others. For myself personally, I don't have a strong formal education in CS, I'm just a smart cookie who picks things up as a I go along. I've also never worked as a purely software developer type role, since I'm Ops/Hardware/Sec focused. But all of the information in here is stuff that is gold to know. I'm definitely going to be using this as a resource to understand the pure CS stuff better, even though I have no intention of ever pursuing a job at Google.
ender7 10y ago
(disclaimer: I work at Google) Google is a great company to work for, but there are many great companies out there. Don't close off other possibly-great opportunities because you're focused on working for a single place. Some random thoughts: - Hiring at Google, despite our best efforts, is a mostly-random affair. The process is optimized to avoid hiring bad engineers, at the expense of frequently rejecting good engineers. If you get rejected, it doesn't mean anything. - The average kind of eng work at Google is much like that at any other extremely well-run coding shop. You may spend a lot of time working on backend code that unglamorously glues two communications protocols together. It won't require a deep knowledge of fancy algorithms, but it will require a dedication to code quality, sustainability, testing, and personal productivity. - Or you may get to work on the Next Big Thing, but keep in mind that most NBTs never see the light of day. It's an exciting work environment, but you have to deal with a lot of chaos and a lot more politics and uncertainty. - The benefits are great, the work environment is great, and the average quality of your coworkers is great. This is the best thing about Google. If I were going to work somewhere else, I would prioritize these aspects. - Google, like all large companies, is an uneven experience. Some excellent engineers get hired here who never really "click" -- they get put on projects they don't find interesting, they don't get on with their coworkers, etc. The vast majority of your coworkers will be really outstanding, but there will always be at least one person who you think is kind of an idiot. Most managers are great, but there are still a few assholes. If yours is, then you won't have a good time. Google does its best to minimize all of these problems via things like how it handles promotion, but there's only so much it can do. Long story short: self-improvement is its own reward. Doing things is how you prove the truth of that improvement. If you can combine that with a great work environment, you're pretty set.
KON_Air 10y ago
This is just "preposterous". Either the author has an overblown image of Google or has no selfesteem.
cagataygurturk 10y ago
So desperate. It is like going to gym to date with Adriana Lima.
eva1984 10y ago
I think we need to make a clear distinction between 'Working for Google is cool' and 'There are many cool people working at Google', otherwise this cult worshiping is never going to stop.
isaac_is_goat 10y ago
For crying out loud, what is wrong with people today.
fapjacks 10y ago
This makes me feel weird. I interviewed at the Googleplex one time for an SDE position and got an offer that I turned down. I didn't prepare at all. I didn't even get very much sleep the night before.

190 points by avinassh 10y ago

This has been posted quite a few times in the last few days: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=why%20i%20studied%208%20months%20for%20a%20google%20interview&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=why%20i%20studied%208%20months... Most of the relevant comments are at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12649740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12649740

ctvo 10y ago

Did he actually get hired?

qntty 10y ago
According to his linkedin, he's still studying.
- trendia 10y ago
  To be honest, studying for 8 months isn't so bad. A lot of us studied for 4 years (to get a degree).
  - user5994461 10y ago
    If not 5 or 6. #Countries with little tech jobs where one MUST have a master's.
Fluid_Mechanics 10y ago
Rejected for being over 30.
- sizzzzlerz 10y ago
  I've been expecting somebody to point that out. Google is notorious for finding excuses to reject otherwise competent interviewees who happen to be above a certain age. They always hide behind "You're a great candidate, but..." and then list a weak excuse to not give them an offer. It's illegal and immoral but almost impossible to prove.

bshimmin 10y ago

I feel like this is some sort of promotional piece, but I can't quite get the angle - is he a fictitious individual made up by Google? Is this an attempt by Apple to make Google employees look weird? Is he a real person who's looking to publish a book? Perhaps it's entirely legit, but it just seems so, so strange to me.

minimaxir 10y ago
There are very many engineers (e.g userbase of /r/cscareerquestions) whose sole purpose in life is to get a job at one of the Big 4.
- bshimmin 10y ago
  I can perhaps understand that sort of attitude from people fresh out of their computer science degree, or even after half a dozen years of miserable grind in the workforce - but this guy looks to be in his forties, has (apparently) already had a successful career... and yet he has a blog called "Googley as Heck" and his LinkedIn headline is "Future Googler". Is this not all a bit weird?
  - mason55 10y ago
    Getting older doesn't guarantee that you will grow out of your social awkwardness
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - __derek__ 10y ago
    We're well into the Age of the Personal Brand Gospel. Accepting that fact makes things like this easier to understand.[1] You may want to pick up a copy of Infinite Jest to help guide your transition. [1]: Yes, still weird.
    - pokler 10y ago
      'Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.' - DFW (from IJ)

sixtypoundhound 10y ago

Sorry, the concept here is mildly depressing. Go study for 8 months to be awesome, focusing your time on subjects directly related to improving your awesomeness. If your awesomeness happens to match a need at Google, great. Otherwise, you're still awesome and will wind up somewhere worthwhile....

marsrover 10y ago

> Wherever I end up, I’m going in as an entry-level software engineer. I’m not going in with 15 years of software engineering experience because I simply don’t have it. When it comes to this stuff, I’m the equivalent of a fresh CS grad. Talk about selling yourself short. You've been a web developer for 15 years. I would think you've progressed a little further than entry-level.

hahamrfunnyguy 10y ago
You'd be surprised! I've interviewed many "veterans" (and worked with a few!) who just don't have the chops. In the world of web development, the developer who knows just enough to skate by without a proper understanding of algorithms and design patterns seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Kudos to him for acknowledging it and trying to do something about it.
- user5994461 10y ago
  > Kudos to him for acknowledging it and trying to do something about it. That's a bad strategy for himself. He shouldn't acknowledge it and he should go to work for one company that do not care about that.
- arenaninja 10y ago
  I predict downvotes for my reply here, but I'm genuinely asking a question. You're not wrong that some developers will simply skate by, but is the developer wrong to simply skate by? Specially as a web developer, I think too many people think that the barrier of entry is high, and it really isn't. The majority of technology I know how to work with I have picked up out of necessity to make something work (or work better). Even database internals I know little about how they work, because I don't think there's an inherent need. I've worked with many database engines (usually whatever the business wants to use), and I just know enough about DDL/DML and indexing to make things work (note that I'm talking about SQL/noSQL DBs here). I re-invent the wheel constantly in different languages for pet projects that will never even see GitHub. I act out some of the more modern tutorials to get me more familiar with how other people code. But at no point have I yet had to stop and say "this damn bubble sort isn't fast enough!" I don't even use an ORM, but I think the majority of web developers don't know SQL and just use an ORM, and I think that's still OK, because they haven't hit the point where they need to use raw SQL to address a performance issue. But when they do, wouldn't they be as likely as I have been to look up documentation, StackOverflow and the rest of the web to get what they need done? And isn't that enough? If the guy sitting next to me knows how to implement a performant/redundant/concurrent database solution from scratch, he shouldn't be sitting next to me in the first place, he should be working on improving database software! And I'll use his tool when he ships it, but that still doesn't make me a caveman.

simmons 10y ago

I started reading this thinking it was nuts to put so much effort into targeting one specific company. But by the end, I couldn't help but admire his willingness to set a goal and put in some serious work to accomplish it!

fdsfsaa 10y ago

This guy is sad. All those people on Quora who ask unending questions about Google are sad. They're suckers. They've eaten up Google's marketing. You want to know the reality? Whatever's special about Google is long gone. Management let the smoke out a long time ago. Nowadays, Google is just another big software company, with all the opaque politics, purposelessness, and random nonsense that comes with being a big company. It's sad to see people strive to be a faceless drone.

scarmig 10y ago
How can you say that? Google gives an expensive Christmas gift every year!
- user5994461 10y ago
  And free food all year along!
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
JonDav 10y ago
I try to let new grads know this and they still fall for it. Just like when Goldman Saks comes calling. They just do not see these companies and the experience for what it is.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- ceras 10y ago
  I don't think it's fair to say people are "falling for it." Their motivations may just differ from yours. For example, say you're interested in earning a lot of money as a software developer - where else are you going to work that's clearly better?

preordained 10y ago

Something wrong with this guy...all this future Googler talk with disclaimer asides about "what if I don't get hired"...and yet he's talking about how you can do it and your success plan. Anyhow, in general it's getting really weird hearing more stuff like "Google is the best" and "I just have to work there". I question your judgement if you are making these sort of statements as an outsider. At least join the party before you drink the koolaid.

ubercore 10y ago
Honestly, if I'm a hiring manager at Google, this would turn me off. I wouldn't reject him outright, but it's a yellow flag in terms how effective he'd actually be performing his job.

mathattack 10y ago

Isn't it really, "Why I studied full-time 8 months for a Google job." This is actually shorter than the 4 years of a BS in Computer Science for the Google job.

untog 10y ago

It fascinates me the extent to which he regrets not getting a Computer Science degree, and says it impacts how hireable he is. Obviously, data point of one here, but I don't have one and it hasn't come up once in my career. You may not see web development and software engineering as different positions. Both involve programming and craftsmanship, but software engineering adds to it knowledge of data structures and algorithms, compiled languages, memory considerations, and understanding the impact of coding and architecture decisions on the machines where they reside. I think that's a simplistic view of what "web developer" is these days. I work in the web for most of the time and I absolutely have to do deal with memory considerations as well as code and architecture choices. And if you're a full-stack developer you're likely dealing with some kind of compiled language on the backend. In brief, Google is a company that hires smart, creative people, and treats them well. Google rewards merit, encourages big ideas, and gives employees the freedom to make good decisions for the user. I very much question that, in 2016.

Tannic 10y ago
Google is a multinational corporation just as interested in exploiting everything as any other conglomerate. Form determines function at that scale.
duderific 10y ago
> It fascinates me the extent to which he regrets not getting a Computer Science degree, and says it impacts how hireable he is. Obviously, data point of one here, but I don't have one and it hasn't come up once in my career. Same here, except for when I interviewed at Google. :) I was interviewing for a frontend position, and I got through the interviews ok and was passed along to a few departments. Payments was interested in hiring me, so I got passed back to the "hiring committee" who has the final say. I started receiving emails from the Google recruiter (who was the go-between between me and the hiring committee) with specific questions about my degree (Anthropology from Berkeley), the timeframe I attended and what my GPA was. In the end, they decided not to hire me, even though the Payments team had expressed interest in hiring me, even saying "we'd love to have you on board." I can only conclude that it was specifically because of my education (or lack thereof).

jefferson123 10y ago

This should not be promoted as a case study, or a success story for people to aspire to emulate. I hope this guy the best, but he obviously has some mental issue and he's trying to find solace in talking about it publicly.

rhizome 10y ago
What's the obvious part?
- jefferson123 10y ago
  I think it's the goal he chose that is making it obvious: devoting his time on earth to landing an entry level job at some company -- a hyper materialistic and anecdotal "goal" at best. Calling it a goal is funny because it has no value for life, to go all Nietzsche about it. This is just drinking the capitalistic kool-aid and confusing it with something loftier. I call this a mental issue.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    Nietzsche had his own mental problems, not the least syphilis, but in the spirit of life's values let's go to the text: "Much that passed for good with one people was regarded with scorn and contempt by another"[1] 1. http://4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/15 http://4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/15

gravypod 10y ago

> I’ve spent thousands of hours reading books, writing code, and watching computer science lectures, all to prepare for the Google software engineer interview. Shouldn't you just be doing this anyway if you want to be a good computer scientist? That's how you learn. You constantly take in new information and attempt to apply it and Computer Science is one of the most enabling fields of this form of learning since 1) we all love to churn out an "Experiment" every once and a while and have it fall into being a small side project that makes us a few k and 2) almost EVERYTHING is free! All the info is made by basement-dwelling nerds who sit at home and build cool ass shit and as such they put it all on the internet! Being one of these basement dwelling nerds, it's frigin amazing to have a wealth of all of the fields best research at my fingertips just a google away and I love learning this stuff not for an inevitable goal of "Being a Googler (tm)" but instead of furthering what I know about the world. If the author is reading this, good on you for learning but don't worry about being a googler if you can do this then you're better then the average googler because you're in the top 1 maybe 2% of all computer scientists if you continually want to learn more. Google even thinks that way, look at their higher level employees like Rob Pike, people who think programmers must be limited because they aren't able to think as well as him about abstractions. Don't waste your time at google. Start a company, build something amazing for yourself or do contract work for others, write these blog posts to get more clients, and make the world a better place. If you're this smart you don't need to run a hamsterwheel for a huge Google-sized corporation.

stonemetal 10y ago
>Shouldn't you just be doing this anyway if you want to be a good computer scientist? Rather depends on the material. Writing code to learn something new, yes. Writing the same linked list inversion routine over and over, so that you can do it flawlessly on a white board during an interview not so much.
linkregister 10y ago
I agree he's way ahead of the game; being an engineer at Google would be a step back unless: 1. He gets placed as a staff engineer or director. 2. He gets a new shiny project that for some reason he has reasonable autonomy over. Otherwise he'll get tired of the big-company politics. I can't imagine why a self-starter like this would want a set of bosses. He's already at the next level, building his own companies (likely an app here and there). He may not be making millions but he's got the fundamentals down. I would think that most folks on HN would much rather be able to own their own businesses rather than being an employee at a large company. Edit: further down some commenters investigated and figured it out: this blog post is marketing for a Google interview-prep training he intends to run. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13195257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13195257

tayo42 10y ago

How are these people that study for what ever company so certain they'll even get an interview? I'm still waiting for Google to acknowledge my application from last year lol.

tempw 10y ago
he has a referral, it's said on the post.
- Retra 10y ago
  And now he has the post, so even Google can google the magnitude of his devotion to them.
  - JupiterMoon 10y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13195131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13195131
- tayo42 10y ago
  Oh skimmed it. I guess I missed that. Although I still feel like Ive seen that attitude of studying for these interviews like they're guaranteed to come. Maybe more people have referrals then I think

dudul 10y ago

It reads like a PR piece. If it had stopped at "Now I want to be called a software engineer and I'll study for that", it would have been a nice story about setting goals, and working to get there or whatever. But the whole "Google is so freakishly awesome dude! I need to work there!! it's the most better company in the world!" is kind of a turn off. I can't believe that Google Careers site actually recommend that candidates should study "Cracking the Coding Interview, 6th Edition". This is completely nuts to me.

deeteecee 10y ago
honestly, that book has become like the standard now. i agree that it's completely nuts but here i am, reviewing it even after being in the industry for at least 3 years.

swingbridge 10y ago

The very fact that "preparing for 8 months for a Google interview" is a thing highlights all the things that have gone wrong at Google and their widely panned bad recruitment practices. The process has become about recruiting people that are good at the silly process and not about recruiting the best people. Probably OK if Google is in 'megacorp looking to feed more skillled cogs into the machine' mode (which it mostly is), but unlikely the process finds the person that builds the next Google.

digler999 10y ago
I still remember reading the article about one of google's (?) early recruitment campaigns, circa 2001: an ad in the train station that said www.e^(5,000,000 digits ).com, so you would only know the URL if you were nerdy enough to know how to calculate the non-repeating non-terminating decimal. The webpage then solicited them for hiring. I still think that was a cool idea. Edit: it wasn't e^ of anything, it was like the [5million, 5millionth + 10]-digit-of-e.com
- blatant 10y ago
  Do you mean this one: https://blog.beamery.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Googles-cryptic-billboard.jpg https://blog.beamery.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Googles-... ?
  - digler999 10y ago
    that's funny because I dont remember it that way, but it definitely could have been that one. Or maybe it was part of a campaign of many.
sowbug 10y ago
He studied C++, Unix, algorithms, data structures, and system design. Is learning that stuff a "silly process"?
- Volt 10y ago

yawz 10y ago

When I saw that title, I was torn between "because you're an idiot" and "because you know what you really want". I'm old enough to know that everybody has an opinion, but I can't help but thinking that studying full-time for 8 months for a job interview is wrong. 8 months is a very long time, and I can easily think a dozen professional contexts where such a time could be put to much better use. It is sad.

yeukhon 10y ago
Put the possible self-promotion, what not aside, I'd be happy to study for a few months without worrying about working full time if I have revenue generating on the side. This is like attednding hacker school for 3 months and my sole goal would be to learn to make something I never had a chance to do it. This is like preparing for marathon for 12 months every weekend. I am happy to do this just to make myself more knowledgeable with computer science. I graduated with a degree and I am sorry to say I haven't really make use of my knowledge greatly because there isn't much to use algorithms or data structure in my position (I work as a DevOps) to the extend of building something truly amazing.

whatever_dude 10y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law I'm sure he has learned a lot, but when you study with an interview in mind, you're not necessarily studying to be a good developer; you're studying to look like one. There's some correlation, but it's not the same thing.

prashnts 10y ago
This is so true. There are coaching centres here in India, pulling in millions each year to prepare kids for the premier engineering institutes here. Hundreds of thousands of kids join these, but I am still to see even 10% of them working on interesting problems. Like another comment here notes, most of them are becoming a commodity.

divbit 10y ago

Hmmm... I can't quite fault the guy if that's what he really wants in life - I put about 3 months (an entire summer) into unpaid studying for grad school prelims (i.e. I didn't request a teaching assignment for the summer) and ended up being the only person to pass all three exams at once that fall (Note: I think there were a couple people that passed the exams by spreading them out over the space of a year or two). On the other hand, this seems like something you can only easily do if you are young / no kids / or have tons of savings (rich)... (I strongly doubt my wife would put up with me doing this now) so hopefully for the crop of people that want to work there it is not the norm / maybe their age diversity would benefit from making applicants work record count for a bit more or something, idk.

geebee 10y ago

Great write-up, thank you to the OP for putting this on the web! I have a few thoughts on it. First, I'm not all that surprised someone would study for 8 months for an interview at Google. I interviewed there (no hire) and gave myself 3 weeks. It wasn't close to enough time, and I've taken a lot of formal math and basic CS plus data structures. Just too rusty, especially at a whiteboard. I could easily have spent 3 months. Various people here have cautioned against working at Google, and I know people who worked at Google (as SSE's) who cautioned me about it when they heard I was interviewing. No, not in a "run away" sense, more of a "don't get too starry eyed here, it's not that great" sense. But salary-wise, a SSE role at Google would have paid a hell of a lot more than I make right now. I'm just saying, I can see why people put in the time. And plenty of people do love it there. My advice to people who have more of the fundamentals is to get a copy of "Cracking the Coding Interview" and just making damn sure you can do the hard problems in 45 minutes at a whiteboard. Memorizing won't help you, you need to understand what you're doing on a deep enough level that you can solve similar problems you haven't seen before. I also recommend knowing basic data structures like the back of your hand. Really, you can't be trying to remember how to program a queue or stack, or traverse a tree, not if you need to use these concepts to solve a more complicated problem in 45 minutes at a whiteboard [1]. Now, on to the other side here... I love a few things about software. I love it that an econ major who self studies intensely can get "high level" jobs. I love it that no cartel controls entrance, and can force everyone to do a 3 year grad degree with tuitions at 50K+ a year. I love it that really smart people can move at a faster pace because they learn quickly. However, I don't love it that corporations are essentially our gatekeepers. The "google interview" shouldn't e called an interview, it should be called the "google exam". Calling it an interview creates an ambiguity that confuses people outside our industry. I know people who work in other fields, and while knowledge is probed during interviews, what they go through is vastly different from what we go through in software. My "interview" at Google was a series of whiteboard exams. Here's what I don't like about this - someone like the OP here studies, intensely, and takes his exams. Suppose he didn't get the job. Well, how did he do? If you take the actuarial exams, or the nursing boards, or the bar, you get a sense of how you did. There is more transparency around the test. There has to be. As far as I know (based on what I've read about this interview process at Google from people who know, including the author of Cracking the Coding Interview), my name, along with very formal numerical scores, along with photos of the whiteboard after each interview/exam, are in a database at Google. However (yes, for legal reasons), I am not allowed to know more that the vaguest details about this. A formal exam, in almost every field, has a published study path. It is graded in a way that is audited to ensure fairness and consistency. It must not be capricious. A student has an opportunity, often, to try again. Your hard study, should you pass, leads to a lasting credential respected by industry. We get none of this in software. I honestly do believe that the tech exam is a big part of why a lot of people quit software development or never enter it in the first place - this in a field where CEOs regularly lobby congress and the president to lament a shortage of tech talent. We do need to fix the technical interview. I think the first step is to realize that it is a formal exam, and that as such, it needs to come with the usual benefits and considerations afforded to people who take formal professional exams in other fields.

jondubois 10y ago

The thing about constantly learning new things is that after about 10 years you start to forget the old things. The new stuff kind of overwrites the old stuff after a while. What I find annoying about technical interviews is that they force me to review useless, basic stuff that I learned 10 years ago instead of asking me about all the cutting edge (and much more interesting/difficult) stuff that I have learned more recently.

goda90 10y ago
If you're forgetting it after 10 years, then maybe it's not important. And the alternative shouldn't be the new stuff, because we don't know if that's important yet. It should be the old stuff that people don't forget.
- jondubois 10y ago
  Exactly. It's not important... Except for the interview - Which is my point.

projektir 10y ago

This makes me wonder... The idea of studying for the sake of making it a certain company, for some reason, turns me off. Never had the personality to do things only because a parent/teacher/company wanted me to do it. But, if there was something more fundamental to study for, like a certificate, or a project, or a competition (something more advanced than a hackaton), that'd actually be really interesting. The relative success or failure with it could, then, provide feedback. I guess Project Euler is kind of close, but it's a bit too much of a one-person affair, and only the right answer matters. In other areas, there are often communities where more experienced people help out the less experienced while collectively getting better, and there are tangible goals at every step. Video games come to mind. Unfortunately, all I've seen is always around data structures, small scripts and hacks, time-gated, overly simple, and promote what I would call bad code or shallow understanding. It makes you good at the events in question, and you can get some certificate, but whether or not it's actually making you a better developer is suspect and the correlation is often backwards, if anything. So the only solid goal a lot of people see is getting hired by X company, and, by extension, getting better at interviews. Because that's something you can measure and get good feedback from and it's a lot simpler than trying to figure out what being a good software developer means.

jiaweihli 10y ago
I would bet that a lot of companies consider certifications to be a negative signal when evaluating candidates. Likely because the certifications aren't meaningfully standardized, so there's not much point in seeking external validation unless you're not confident in your skills.

londons_explore 10y ago

Most Google engineers, if asked nicely, will give a mock interview and give feedback on if you're (in their personal opinion) above the hiring standard. There are thousands scattered all over the internet - just scout one out and ask.

msoad 10y ago

I worked at Google. This makes me sad. Sad to see people are treating a for profit company like a religion. Google is a good workplace compared to other companies but it's not a religion and it's not perfect. As other commenters said it's not the thing it was before either. I left Google to work on something more interesting and I can't be happier. If we're going to hire people, I'm not putting any weight on their work background.

solipsism 10y ago
What are you talking about? Where in this article does the author treat Google like a religion? He specifically said it wouldn't be the end of the world if he didn't make it. He specifically said others shouldn't study that much. Another comment based on the headline and not reading the article? Bet you'll get those anti-google upvotes anyway.
- bambax 10y ago
  What about: "The more I learn about Google, the more I want to work there. In brief, Google is a company that [...] gives employees the freedom to make good decisions for the user. [...] Nowadays candidates are chosen based on coding ability, technical knowledge, and Googleyness." As a user, it hasn't been my experience in a long while that Google gives employees the freedom to make good decisions for the user. Google Plus wasn't about users. The shutdown of Google Reader, or of countless other products that had a strong following, weren't to please or help users. And what's "Googleyness" if not a religious feature?
  - solipsism 10y ago
    None of that approaches religiosity. Your ridiculous interpretation is colored by your preexisting opinions about Google. Your logic also fails you. Developers having the freedom to do what's right for the user doesn't imply they succeed.
    - judahmeek 10y ago

ilaksh 10y ago

I used to think the CS-y whiteboard interview stuff was a complete waste of time. But now I look at it as a way to prove objectively you have a computer science skill/knowledge-set. Which is nice because it evens out the playing field because many who have the degree don't have the skills and many who don't could acquire them. So its like a bar exam. There is still an issue though because computer science base knowledge generally lags behind industry-relevant practical knowledge. For example, algorithms and data structures generally accepted as core knowledge do not take enough advantage of today's relatively high RAM availability. And there is not enough emphasis on higher-level components. You could argue that everyone has to know that old-fashioned basic stuff well and then layer on newer knowlege or perspectives, but I think some of what is considered computer-science core knowledge should be replaced with newer practical things like understanding components and modules and being able to use contemporary tools. So maybe less emphasis on optimizing algorithms at the procedure level for starters. It might be more important for most engineers to be good with profiling tools and understand the order-of-magnitude differences between memory/CPU/network latency etc. than do be able to do a third-degree low-memory optimization of a function.

plussed_reader 10y ago
"For example, algorithms and data structures generally accepted as core knowledge do not take enough advantage of today's relatively high RAM availability." Wouldn't it be prudent to keep your algorithms as lithe as possible? I would think an algorithm/scheme that chews up large amounts of ramm would be perceived as inefficient? Kinda like the dumpster fire that is Chrome, currently.
- ilaksh 10y ago
  Case in point. Read the Google engineering articles describing the work optimizing V8's memory usage. That primarily involved using profiling tools on lots of web pages and then changing the initial size of buffers. But they still have to use relatively large buffers from an old-fashioned CS algorithm perspective and they couldn't make them smaller without impacting performance the other way. And they can't know that without doing the profiling on the whole system. So yes you want functions to be lithe but you have to also focus some time, skills and knowledge on optimizing the entire system using tools and real-world data.

tristor 10y ago

I appreciate all the effort this guy has gone to in order to document his process and progress. I don't know if I agree that the end goal is worth the effort, but along the way he's collected a nice corpus of knowledge that any strong computer engineering person should know and made it accessible to others. For myself personally, I don't have a strong formal education in CS, I'm just a smart cookie who picks things up as a I go along. I've also never worked as a purely software developer type role, since I'm Ops/Hardware/Sec focused. But all of the information in here is stuff that is gold to know. I'm definitely going to be using this as a resource to understand the pure CS stuff better, even though I have no intention of ever pursuing a job at Google.

ender7 10y ago

(disclaimer: I work at Google) Google is a great company to work for, but there are many great companies out there. Don't close off other possibly-great opportunities because you're focused on working for a single place. Some random thoughts: - Hiring at Google, despite our best efforts, is a mostly-random affair. The process is optimized to avoid hiring bad engineers, at the expense of frequently rejecting good engineers. If you get rejected, it doesn't mean anything. - The average kind of eng work at Google is much like that at any other extremely well-run coding shop. You may spend a lot of time working on backend code that unglamorously glues two communications protocols together. It won't require a deep knowledge of fancy algorithms, but it will require a dedication to code quality, sustainability, testing, and personal productivity. - Or you may get to work on the Next Big Thing, but keep in mind that most NBTs never see the light of day. It's an exciting work environment, but you have to deal with a lot of chaos and a lot more politics and uncertainty. - The benefits are great, the work environment is great, and the average quality of your coworkers is great. This is the best thing about Google. If I were going to work somewhere else, I would prioritize these aspects. - Google, like all large companies, is an uneven experience. Some excellent engineers get hired here who never really "click" -- they get put on projects they don't find interesting, they don't get on with their coworkers, etc. The vast majority of your coworkers will be really outstanding, but there will always be at least one person who you think is kind of an idiot. Most managers are great, but there are still a few assholes. If yours is, then you won't have a good time. Google does its best to minimize all of these problems via things like how it handles promotion, but there's only so much it can do. Long story short: self-improvement is its own reward. Doing things is how you prove the truth of that improvement. If you can combine that with a great work environment, you're pretty set.

KON_Air 10y ago

This is just "preposterous". Either the author has an overblown image of Google or has no selfesteem.

cagataygurturk 10y ago

So desperate. It is like going to gym to date with Adriana Lima.

eva1984 10y ago

I think we need to make a clear distinction between 'Working for Google is cool' and 'There are many cool people working at Google', otherwise this cult worshiping is never going to stop.

isaac_is_goat 10y ago

For crying out loud, what is wrong with people today.

fapjacks 10y ago

This makes me feel weird. I interviewed at the Googleplex one time for an SDE position and got an offer that I turned down. I didn't prepare at all. I didn't even get very much sleep the night before.