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It sounds like a self congratulatory post rationalization of the Google hiring process. People good at algorithms are not necessary to build what a huge chunk o

It sounds like a self congratulatory post rationalization of the Google hiring process. People good at algorithms are not necessary to build what a huge chunk of Google engineers work on (basic CRUD apps). Additionally, being good at CS alone without software engineering knowledge results in crappy, untestable software with a poor user experience so CS knowledge isn't enough. The best L6+ SWEs I worked with there were amazing due to their ability to distill requirements for complex products into sustainable software architectures. Other than the few groups working at the cutting edge of a CS field (<10% of SWEs), algorithms knowledge outside of complexity analysis (to avoid bad code) was essentially useless and software engineering was all that mattered. Many employees at Google just defend the hiring process because they don't want to question the system that makes them feel superior to the hundreds of thousands that have applied over the years. "Google doesn't build software, it advances computer science."

cmiles74 9y ago
This hits on something that really bothered me in some of the Quora responses, particularly from those who had worked at Google: they smugness and superiority. In some ways, for some people, it could be well earned: someone took an idea from abstract concept to implemented algorithm and maybe even to a library or product and changed the world, to some degree. Other software engineers, performing more mundane tasks, might also change the world. Howell's product certainly made a very positive difference for me and I leveraged this to get my own work done faster. I think we can all come up with many examples of software that's impacted our lives that doesn't revolve around a unique computer science discovery but instead, like Homebrew, solves a problem in a practical and accessible way. This isn't in the text, but I am left with the feeling that software engineers who ended up (because life, etc.) working in less math-heavy roles are somehow inferior, and I just don't believe that. Working through BS level comp-sci coursework at a decent college is a significant achievement for those students, at that age, and should not be diminished. But to imply that those working in the field who have not had the good luck to have found interesting computer science problems to solve, who have instead worked at simply improving existing products or focusing on products that meet another need (i.e. accounting, communication, etc.) are not "really" software engineers is, in my opinion, going too far.

cmiles74 9y ago

This hits on something that really bothered me in some of the Quora responses, particularly from those who had worked at Google: they smugness and superiority. In some ways, for some people, it could be well earned: someone took an idea from abstract concept to implemented algorithm and maybe even to a library or product and changed the world, to some degree. Other software engineers, performing more mundane tasks, might also change the world. Howell's product certainly made a very positive difference for me and I leveraged this to get my own work done faster. I think we can all come up with many examples of software that's impacted our lives that doesn't revolve around a unique computer science discovery but instead, like Homebrew, solves a problem in a practical and accessible way. This isn't in the text, but I am left with the feeling that software engineers who ended up (because life, etc.) working in less math-heavy roles are somehow inferior, and I just don't believe that. Working through BS level comp-sci coursework at a decent college is a significant achievement for those students, at that age, and should not be diminished. But to imply that those working in the field who have not had the good luck to have found interesting computer science problems to solve, who have instead worked at simply improving existing products or focusing on products that meet another need (i.e. accounting, communication, etc.) are not "really" software engineers is, in my opinion, going too far.