4 ms·

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 Ap

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)
  - surrey-fringe 10y ago
    Weird for anyone else, yes. For him it's just a networking front.
devopsproject 10y ago
He is setting himself up for a business\consultancy\bootcamp where other people will pay him to help get hired at one the big four. He is already making his pitch: I read x books but you only need x-6 books to succeed. Sign up today, space is limited.
- cpeterso 10y ago
  That his post is on a website called freecodecamp.com and he is promoting his googleyasheck.com website, yet hasn't actually interviewed at Google yet, does strongly suggest he is looking to build a training service. If he doesn't get hired at Google, he can pivot and say he can "make a bigger impact helping other people learn" with his training service. Here is another promotional post from two months ago: https://startupnextdoor.com/introducing-googley-as-heck/ https://startupnextdoor.com/introducing-googley-as-heck/
  - yongjik 10y ago
    I'm not sure I understand the plan: 1) If he's not hired, how is he going to sell his service? People will say "He couldn't even get himself hired!" 2) If he is hired and does a side job of teaching others for Google Interview, that's a gigantic conflict of interest (and probably a breach of NDA). He will be fired. Is he planning to get hired, quit on the spot, and then start his tutoring service? (Well, stranger things have happened...)
    - antoniuschan99 10y ago
      If he is hired, doesn't Google make you sign a contract that says all your work is now owned by Google?
      - jiaweihli 10y ago
        IANAL, but I've heard in California at least, companies can't claim ownership over work you do on your own time on your own resources, that don't directly compete with the company. Of course, things get muddier since Google does almost everything. But I doubt they'd want to engender ill will by suing an ex-employee for ownership.
kaspm 10y ago
There are those of us, of a certain age, for whom the "web" was at best a novelty while we were in school. Even through the original .com bubble, becoming a web programmer wasn't the same as "CS". EE and CS were disciplines for which you got hired at Microsoft (gold standard at the time), Oracle, Western Digital, HP (on the decline), etc. It wasn't that cool. Then Google happened. Google elevated the Web into a real software engineering platform, and suddenly this novelty thing we were doing was taken over by the hardcore CS graduates. Our friends and family were like "why don't you go work for Google" and we had to explain how what Google does and what we do are different. I think that for some people, especially those who have worked in Web their whole careers, the desire to work in that kind of product environment is very appealing. So I would say this person is probably legit in their desire to work at Google. I have no opinion on whether working at Google is worth it or not. But even if you end up not liking it, I suspect just being there opens a ton of future doors. It's a win-win if this guy is successful.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  Yea, I got similar advice during undergrad (back in the nineties, when dinosaurs roamed the earth): The web is a toy. It's not for Serious Developers™. Serious Developers™ do real time embedded systems, device drivers, systems programming, control systems, etc. Don't worry about HTML (which isn't a "real" language for Serious Developers™). Learn C and assembly, and microprocessors. Then Netscape happened and I found myself wondering if I bet on the wrong horse.... 2 decades later I'm still not sure!
  - kaspm 10y ago
    An interesting grass is always greener perspective. I have an impression that if you studied C and embedded programming, switching into a Google environment and working on the web is much easier than if you started with Web/HTML and tried to switch into embedded systems. I took the web route and always dreamed about tackling C and embedded systems. I did some hobby work to learn it but without doing it every day at work, tough to keep it going.
stonemetal 10y ago
It is on free code camp's blog. So I guess they are advertising to try and pick up the star struck high school kids who want to work at google? I just ran across free code camp a few days ago on reddit. They have an interesting pitch, learn to code then build a portfolio by building stuff for nonprofits.
FT_intern 10y ago
this would be a very legitimate "not a cultural fit" rejection
goodJobWalrus 10y ago
> I can't quite get the angle He hopes it'll help him land that job at google?
limeyx 10y ago
He's definitely not fictitious as I've met him and have seen a presentation from him and his co-founder about one of their startups... The motivations I couldn't speculate on though

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)
- surrey-fringe 10y ago
  Weird for anyone else, yes. For him it's just a networking front.

devopsproject 10y ago

He is setting himself up for a business\consultancy\bootcamp where other people will pay him to help get hired at one the big four. He is already making his pitch: I read x books but you only need x-6 books to succeed. Sign up today, space is limited.

cpeterso 10y ago
That his post is on a website called freecodecamp.com and he is promoting his googleyasheck.com website, yet hasn't actually interviewed at Google yet, does strongly suggest he is looking to build a training service. If he doesn't get hired at Google, he can pivot and say he can "make a bigger impact helping other people learn" with his training service. Here is another promotional post from two months ago: https://startupnextdoor.com/introducing-googley-as-heck/ https://startupnextdoor.com/introducing-googley-as-heck/
- yongjik 10y ago
  I'm not sure I understand the plan: 1) If he's not hired, how is he going to sell his service? People will say "He couldn't even get himself hired!" 2) If he is hired and does a side job of teaching others for Google Interview, that's a gigantic conflict of interest (and probably a breach of NDA). He will be fired. Is he planning to get hired, quit on the spot, and then start his tutoring service? (Well, stranger things have happened...)
  - antoniuschan99 10y ago
    If he is hired, doesn't Google make you sign a contract that says all your work is now owned by Google?
    - jiaweihli 10y ago
      IANAL, but I've heard in California at least, companies can't claim ownership over work you do on your own time on your own resources, that don't directly compete with the company. Of course, things get muddier since Google does almost everything. But I doubt they'd want to engender ill will by suing an ex-employee for ownership.

kaspm 10y ago

There are those of us, of a certain age, for whom the "web" was at best a novelty while we were in school. Even through the original .com bubble, becoming a web programmer wasn't the same as "CS". EE and CS were disciplines for which you got hired at Microsoft (gold standard at the time), Oracle, Western Digital, HP (on the decline), etc. It wasn't that cool. Then Google happened. Google elevated the Web into a real software engineering platform, and suddenly this novelty thing we were doing was taken over by the hardcore CS graduates. Our friends and family were like "why don't you go work for Google" and we had to explain how what Google does and what we do are different. I think that for some people, especially those who have worked in Web their whole careers, the desire to work in that kind of product environment is very appealing. So I would say this person is probably legit in their desire to work at Google. I have no opinion on whether working at Google is worth it or not. But even if you end up not liking it, I suspect just being there opens a ton of future doors. It's a win-win if this guy is successful.

ryandrake 10y ago
Yea, I got similar advice during undergrad (back in the nineties, when dinosaurs roamed the earth): The web is a toy. It's not for Serious Developers™. Serious Developers™ do real time embedded systems, device drivers, systems programming, control systems, etc. Don't worry about HTML (which isn't a "real" language for Serious Developers™). Learn C and assembly, and microprocessors. Then Netscape happened and I found myself wondering if I bet on the wrong horse.... 2 decades later I'm still not sure!
- kaspm 10y ago
  An interesting grass is always greener perspective. I have an impression that if you studied C and embedded programming, switching into a Google environment and working on the web is much easier than if you started with Web/HTML and tried to switch into embedded systems. I took the web route and always dreamed about tackling C and embedded systems. I did some hobby work to learn it but without doing it every day at work, tough to keep it going.

stonemetal 10y ago

It is on free code camp's blog. So I guess they are advertising to try and pick up the star struck high school kids who want to work at google? I just ran across free code camp a few days ago on reddit. They have an interesting pitch, learn to code then build a portfolio by building stuff for nonprofits.

FT_intern 10y ago

this would be a very legitimate "not a cultural fit" rejection

goodJobWalrus 10y ago

> I can't quite get the angle He hopes it'll help him land that job at google?

limeyx 10y ago

He's definitely not fictitious as I've met him and have seen a presentation from him and his co-founder about one of their startups... The motivations I couldn't speculate on though