4 ms·

So, at least one person said they were hired by Google. I have a question for those folks... When you applied, did you have any reasonable expectation that you

So, at least one person said they were hired by Google. I have a question for those folks... When you applied, did you have any reasonable expectation that you would actually be hired to work there, or was it just on a whim... like a lottery ticket?

silvajoao 16y ago
I'll mention a related question I've been pondering on lately: how does one assess his own skill level? When one has people around who are clearly more able programmers, one can take the chance to learn from them and try to achieve their skill. But when you believe you might be the top programmer around your office, how do you determine whether you're really good, or you're just in a not-so-great environment? A lot of entrepreneurial advice mentions trying harder: if you aren't failing, you aren't trying hard enough. Applying at a very competitive company like Google, Facebook or Apple is, IMO, a good way to assess how you "rank" next to very talented peers. Failure there is failing at a very competitive level, and the interviews will give you a sense of how far you might be from them, and perhaps energize you to try harder. I guess a method to determine your current "level" could be to keep trying to be hired by harder- and harder- to get-into companies, until you fail; that's the level you should strive to get to in the future. If you were never rejected, how do you know whether your current "level" is your highest? Another common advice for entrepreneurs: "you only fail if you fail to learn the lesson." The reason for failing to be hired is invaluable feedback on your shortcomings, which are much harder to self-assess. In short: don't self-reject yourself. (note: I don't have any startup experience, and just 4 years of professional experience as an employee. I guess the more entrepreneurial people around here would propose shipping something and see what happens to make your self-assessment :-) (2nd note: I was recently hired by Google in Munich, and can't wait to start! :-) EDIT: this was longer than expected. I totally forgot to address your question: I was afraid of rejection, but I also thought I could do it. I never thought of it as trying my luck in a lottery, and wouldn't apply if I didn't believe I could deliver once on the job.
- dadkins 16y ago
  "The reason for failing to be hired is invaluable feedback on your shortcomings, which are much harder to self-assess." Good luck trying to get any useful feedback from a Google or Facebook rejection. Often it's just random.
  - silvajoao 16y ago
    Spot on. I actually know a couple of people who have been rejected and they don't have a very clear reason for the rejection. However, I could tell during the conversation on the interviews whether I was doing well on a particular topic or not so well. I got the impression the questions just keep coming while you keep answering; when you say "I don't know this, I actually never saw similar problems before", I guess this is when the interview begins: how do you solve new problems and try to tackle them? This is also the feedback you can take away: where did you stop, and what would it take to go on?
  - reinhardt 16y ago
    Why just Google or Facebook? I've been rejected more times than I care to remember and usually there was not even a rejection letter, let alone direct feedback of any shape or form.
  - ndl 16y ago
    I applied for internships at both companies. Google actually mentioned in their rejection email that I should feel free to ask questions - so I did. No answer. With Facebook, I at least had a phone interview and could run post-mortem on what I might've messed up there. Google appeared to just toss my resume down a black hole. I later decided that really, I didn't want to be a programmer, I wanted to found a startup. I was still in school and not 100% sure of myself at this point, so I applied to 1 programming job at a small place in Connecticut. I got a phone interview and then a rejection. I blamed my "failure" then on my lack of interest probably showing through. Sadly, I had the same null feedback experience with many seed funders that spring. Most of the time it was a black hole. 2 (Lightspeed and IO Ventures) of them gave a brief explanation, which matches some (but not all) of my own post-mortem analysis. I think that given the high probability of rejection, rejection feedback significantly increases the value of applying. While I don't think rejection from a place like Google is necessarily "random," I would certainly agree that it rarely provides actionable info.
gmurphy 16y ago
For me, it was the news (in 2005) that they were hiring JavaScript-specific engineers - JS was my true love, and though I didn't think I was anywhere near the CS-Genius stereotype I'd read about in the press, I felt I was pretty good at JS, so I applied on a whim, thinking that it was an outside chance, but the best I'd ever have. By the end of the interviews, I felt I did well (considering that I'd read up on complexity theory for the first time the night before and had told an interviewer that I didn't know what a hashtable was), and felt that even if I didn't get the job, I'd had an awesome day, but still didn't really believe that it was really going to happen. Then it did. I think I worked out OK for Google (I'm still here 5 years later, at least). My perspective was that of a foreigner in a land where CS was a path to becoming a suit-wearing enterprise software automaton - at the time, Google seemed like this romantic faraway wonderland, so the whole process was very removed from reality for me; the perspective of someone who went to a school like Stanford or Berkeley is probably very different and more realistic.
brg 16y ago
I had a reasonable expectation; everyone should have a reasonable estimation of their skills from what you do in your side projects and how others regard you. Google hires solid engineers, not just the top 1%.
silvajoao 16y ago
Yet another unrelated-but-related reply: I actually feel a fear of rejection when posting on HN. I know I usually don't have much to add, so I don't post often; but it has happened a lot of times to start writing a reply, and then just discard it for fear of being harshly downvoted/getting snark replies.
spiffage 16y ago
Hired in 2006. I was really serious about it. I was a year out of school (C+ GPA) working at a place I knew I didn't want to be. I had just started to grasp the seriousness of my situation as I stared into the abyss of an Office Space-style cubicle farm future. I knew I wasn't up on my stuff after slacking my way through school so I spent months coming up to speed on algorithms, code architecture, best practices, etc. I wouldn't say I expected to get the job, but I nailed the interview. I've since moved on from Google, but the stuff I learned during those months has been incredibly valuable for my career.

silvajoao 16y ago

I'll mention a related question I've been pondering on lately: how does one assess his own skill level? When one has people around who are clearly more able programmers, one can take the chance to learn from them and try to achieve their skill. But when you believe you might be the top programmer around your office, how do you determine whether you're really good, or you're just in a not-so-great environment? A lot of entrepreneurial advice mentions trying harder: if you aren't failing, you aren't trying hard enough. Applying at a very competitive company like Google, Facebook or Apple is, IMO, a good way to assess how you "rank" next to very talented peers. Failure there is failing at a very competitive level, and the interviews will give you a sense of how far you might be from them, and perhaps energize you to try harder. I guess a method to determine your current "level" could be to keep trying to be hired by harder- and harder- to get-into companies, until you fail; that's the level you should strive to get to in the future. If you were never rejected, how do you know whether your current "level" is your highest? Another common advice for entrepreneurs: "you only fail if you fail to learn the lesson." The reason for failing to be hired is invaluable feedback on your shortcomings, which are much harder to self-assess. In short: don't self-reject yourself. (note: I don't have any startup experience, and just 4 years of professional experience as an employee. I guess the more entrepreneurial people around here would propose shipping something and see what happens to make your self-assessment :-) (2nd note: I was recently hired by Google in Munich, and can't wait to start! :-) EDIT: this was longer than expected. I totally forgot to address your question: I was afraid of rejection, but I also thought I could do it. I never thought of it as trying my luck in a lottery, and wouldn't apply if I didn't believe I could deliver once on the job.

dadkins 16y ago
"The reason for failing to be hired is invaluable feedback on your shortcomings, which are much harder to self-assess." Good luck trying to get any useful feedback from a Google or Facebook rejection. Often it's just random.
- silvajoao 16y ago
  Spot on. I actually know a couple of people who have been rejected and they don't have a very clear reason for the rejection. However, I could tell during the conversation on the interviews whether I was doing well on a particular topic or not so well. I got the impression the questions just keep coming while you keep answering; when you say "I don't know this, I actually never saw similar problems before", I guess this is when the interview begins: how do you solve new problems and try to tackle them? This is also the feedback you can take away: where did you stop, and what would it take to go on?
- reinhardt 16y ago
  Why just Google or Facebook? I've been rejected more times than I care to remember and usually there was not even a rejection letter, let alone direct feedback of any shape or form.
- ndl 16y ago
  I applied for internships at both companies. Google actually mentioned in their rejection email that I should feel free to ask questions - so I did. No answer. With Facebook, I at least had a phone interview and could run post-mortem on what I might've messed up there. Google appeared to just toss my resume down a black hole. I later decided that really, I didn't want to be a programmer, I wanted to found a startup. I was still in school and not 100% sure of myself at this point, so I applied to 1 programming job at a small place in Connecticut. I got a phone interview and then a rejection. I blamed my "failure" then on my lack of interest probably showing through. Sadly, I had the same null feedback experience with many seed funders that spring. Most of the time it was a black hole. 2 (Lightspeed and IO Ventures) of them gave a brief explanation, which matches some (but not all) of my own post-mortem analysis. I think that given the high probability of rejection, rejection feedback significantly increases the value of applying. While I don't think rejection from a place like Google is necessarily "random," I would certainly agree that it rarely provides actionable info.

gmurphy 16y ago

For me, it was the news (in 2005) that they were hiring JavaScript-specific engineers - JS was my true love, and though I didn't think I was anywhere near the CS-Genius stereotype I'd read about in the press, I felt I was pretty good at JS, so I applied on a whim, thinking that it was an outside chance, but the best I'd ever have. By the end of the interviews, I felt I did well (considering that I'd read up on complexity theory for the first time the night before and had told an interviewer that I didn't know what a hashtable was), and felt that even if I didn't get the job, I'd had an awesome day, but still didn't really believe that it was really going to happen. Then it did. I think I worked out OK for Google (I'm still here 5 years later, at least). My perspective was that of a foreigner in a land where CS was a path to becoming a suit-wearing enterprise software automaton - at the time, Google seemed like this romantic faraway wonderland, so the whole process was very removed from reality for me; the perspective of someone who went to a school like Stanford or Berkeley is probably very different and more realistic.

brg 16y ago

I had a reasonable expectation; everyone should have a reasonable estimation of their skills from what you do in your side projects and how others regard you. Google hires solid engineers, not just the top 1%.

silvajoao 16y ago

Yet another unrelated-but-related reply: I actually feel a fear of rejection when posting on HN. I know I usually don't have much to add, so I don't post often; but it has happened a lot of times to start writing a reply, and then just discard it for fear of being harshly downvoted/getting snark replies.

spiffage 16y ago

Hired in 2006. I was really serious about it. I was a year out of school (C+ GPA) working at a place I knew I didn't want to be. I had just started to grasp the seriousness of my situation as I stared into the abyss of an Office Space-style cubicle farm future. I knew I wasn't up on my stuff after slacking my way through school so I spent months coming up to speed on algorithms, code architecture, best practices, etc. I wouldn't say I expected to get the job, but I nailed the interview. I've since moved on from Google, but the stuff I learned during those months has been incredibly valuable for my career.