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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
by 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 agoYea, 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 agoAn 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.