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Even though it seems like it would be pretty cool, I said no for a couple of reasons: 1) I'm not sure I could hack it there. While I consider myself to be a go

by jarin 15y ago

Even though it seems like it would be pretty cool, I said no for a couple of reasons: 1) I'm not sure I could hack it there. While I consider myself to be a good coder (and people tell me so), I don't consider myself to be a top-notch guru ninja coder. I also don't have a CS degree, and I tend to get a little lost when people start getting into CS theory. 2) I have a (probably irrational) aversion to working at really big companies, I think probably due to my time dealing with insane bureaucracy in the Navy. If there was something at a relatively autonomous smaller group though, I would probably be down with that.

nostrademons 15y ago
1.) Basically everyone who gets hired at Google feels that way at the beginning, right on up to Larry Page. He tells this story occasionally about how when he got into Stanford, he kept walking around for a month or so terrified that he was about to be "found out" and that Stanford would ship him home and rescind his acceptance. And then when Google started becoming popular, he was afraid that it was taking too much time away from his studies, so he tried to sell the whole thing for < $1M. The two things the interview process is really looking for is a.) How do you react when faced with a challenge? Do you dig in and attack it, or do you flinch and go away? and b.) Do you really want to work at Google? Things like big-O notation and coding skills are important, but if you really want to, you can pick them up on your own. Incidentally, this is the same criteria YCombinator uses, except that instead of "do you really want to work at Google?" they ask "do you really want to found a startup?" It's a pretty handy mindset to develop in general. 2.) I felt the same way, and then discovered it was nowhere near as bad as I expected. There're a bunch of pretty autonomous small groups working at Google, often on pretty cool things. One trade-off is that the more important your work is to the company, the less autonomy you have, yet the more important your work is to the company, the greater the resources you have at your disposal and the greater the financial and career rewards.
- cosminro 15y ago
  Picking up algorithm skills on the job is not that easy. You really have to spend some time, think problems though, play with them and internalize the learnings. Your job in any company doesn't deal with algorithms that much but it's very useful to know them for the rare opportunities that do occur so that you make better choices. As for YCombinator, in startups when you hit scaling issues if means your product is good and you're already on the path to success and you can hire someone with better fundamentals to help you deal with the load. mzuckerberg (facebook ceo) Algorithm Rating: 1044 Total Earnings: $124.00 School: Harvard University http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=276132 http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=27613... dangelo (former facebook cto) Algorithm Rating: 2351 Total Earnings: $3,082.50 School: California Institute of Technology http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=260987 http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=26098...
  - stretchwithme 15y ago
    Start picking up algorithm knowledge now online. This guy is excellent and entertaining: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpRRUQFbePU&feature=relmfu I too have had interviews with Google and had questions about big O notation. And questions about sorting during interviews with several other companies. Not knowing fundamentals like this never helps. Many interviewers will spoon feed it to you, but you're not going to respond to questions with all your mental resources if you're spending all your energy trying to understand the context. But its not necessary. And it costs nothing other than time to fix it. And it may even be fun.
    - davidykay 15y ago
      Great link! Buckland is a stellar lecturer. Stumbled across him some time ago.
- jarin 15y ago
  Putting it that way, it actually does sound like a good fit. Guess I'll have to reconsider my vote :)
jedc 15y ago
re your 2), I was in the Navy for six years, and now work at Google. There's virtually no comparison at all. Sure there's a bit of what you might call "bureaucracy" at Google, but only enough to keep things from going off the rails, and people actively work to keep that to a minimum. It's nothing, nothing, nothing like the Navy. (I worked at COMUSNAVEUR for ~18 months, so am even familiar with 4-star Admiral staff level bureaucracy.) I enjoyed my time in the Navy because of my shipmates. I've really enjoyed my time at Google because of the interesting work and absolutely fantastic people I work with. Just my two cents...
- jarin 15y ago
  Oh totally, I had some really fun times and met some great friends in the Navy, and I'm glad I did it. I also gained a ton of technical knowledge in a very short amount of time, which was fantastic. It wasn't the rank structure or chain of command that left a bad taste in my mouth, it was the layers and layers of approvals and paperwork needed to do something as simple as run a security audit on my servers, or set up an intrusion detection system on a spare PC, or even keep an extra set of backup tapes in a separate location on the ship. I wouldn't expect it to be crazy like that at Google or any other progressive tech company, of course.

by jarin 15y ago

nostrademons 15y ago

1.) Basically everyone who gets hired at Google feels that way at the beginning, right on up to Larry Page. He tells this story occasionally about how when he got into Stanford, he kept walking around for a month or so terrified that he was about to be "found out" and that Stanford would ship him home and rescind his acceptance. And then when Google started becoming popular, he was afraid that it was taking too much time away from his studies, so he tried to sell the whole thing for < $1M. The two things the interview process is really looking for is a.) How do you react when faced with a challenge? Do you dig in and attack it, or do you flinch and go away? and b.) Do you really want to work at Google? Things like big-O notation and coding skills are important, but if you really want to, you can pick them up on your own. Incidentally, this is the same criteria YCombinator uses, except that instead of "do you really want to work at Google?" they ask "do you really want to found a startup?" It's a pretty handy mindset to develop in general. 2.) I felt the same way, and then discovered it was nowhere near as bad as I expected. There're a bunch of pretty autonomous small groups working at Google, often on pretty cool things. One trade-off is that the more important your work is to the company, the less autonomy you have, yet the more important your work is to the company, the greater the resources you have at your disposal and the greater the financial and career rewards.

cosminro 15y ago
Picking up algorithm skills on the job is not that easy. You really have to spend some time, think problems though, play with them and internalize the learnings. Your job in any company doesn't deal with algorithms that much but it's very useful to know them for the rare opportunities that do occur so that you make better choices. As for YCombinator, in startups when you hit scaling issues if means your product is good and you're already on the path to success and you can hire someone with better fundamentals to help you deal with the load. mzuckerberg (facebook ceo) Algorithm Rating: 1044 Total Earnings: $124.00 School: Harvard University http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=276132 http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=27613... dangelo (former facebook cto) Algorithm Rating: 2351 Total Earnings: $3,082.50 School: California Institute of Technology http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=260987 http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=26098...
- stretchwithme 15y ago
  Start picking up algorithm knowledge now online. This guy is excellent and entertaining: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpRRUQFbePU&feature=relmfu I too have had interviews with Google and had questions about big O notation. And questions about sorting during interviews with several other companies. Not knowing fundamentals like this never helps. Many interviewers will spoon feed it to you, but you're not going to respond to questions with all your mental resources if you're spending all your energy trying to understand the context. But its not necessary. And it costs nothing other than time to fix it. And it may even be fun.
  - davidykay 15y ago
    Great link! Buckland is a stellar lecturer. Stumbled across him some time ago.
jarin 15y ago
Putting it that way, it actually does sound like a good fit. Guess I'll have to reconsider my vote :)

jedc 15y ago

re your 2), I was in the Navy for six years, and now work at Google. There's virtually no comparison at all. Sure there's a bit of what you might call "bureaucracy" at Google, but only enough to keep things from going off the rails, and people actively work to keep that to a minimum. It's nothing, nothing, nothing like the Navy. (I worked at COMUSNAVEUR for ~18 months, so am even familiar with 4-star Admiral staff level bureaucracy.) I enjoyed my time in the Navy because of my shipmates. I've really enjoyed my time at Google because of the interesting work and absolutely fantastic people I work with. Just my two cents...

jarin 15y ago
Oh totally, I had some really fun times and met some great friends in the Navy, and I'm glad I did it. I also gained a ton of technical knowledge in a very short amount of time, which was fantastic. It wasn't the rank structure or chain of command that left a bad taste in my mouth, it was the layers and layers of approvals and paperwork needed to do something as simple as run a security audit on my servers, or set up an intrusion detection system on a spare PC, or even keep an extra set of backup tapes in a separate location on the ship. I wouldn't expect it to be crazy like that at Google or any other progressive tech company, of course.