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Bless, we have ~same story except I dropped out of the state school with a 2.8, and got into Google in 2016 due to what amounted to luck, I didn't even have oth

Bless, we have ~same story except I dropped out of the state school with a 2.8, and got into Google in 2016 due to what amounted to luck, I didn't even have other offers for the W2 McDonald's jobs. Life is a crapshoot and there wasn't a significant difference between my coworkers there and coworkers I've had everywhere else.

theonething 3y ago
> got into Google in 2016 due to what amounted to luck Would love to hear more details on how this happened if you don't mind sharing.
- refulgentis 3y ago
  I'll take any excuse to talk about myself ;) Thank you for being curious - I just absolutely do not buy that I took ~5 CS classes and did a great job on the interview questions. I don't think I did a great job -- but, I was a deeply specialized self-taught iOS engineer who had built a point of sale. When you're at Google, work is more episodic and less in-depth, so I had a seemingly unusually wide and in-depth knowledge base. And iOS devs were considered hard to get. And Google had a special focus internally on getting iOS-specific interviewers who, at least in 2016, usually did a lot of work with non-iOS specialists. So you have these sort of inherent biases towards me seeming relatively impressive to their day-to-day experience with other Googlers. Then, I'm fairly convinced the leetcode problems we do add a significant "luck" portion. I spent about 6 hours a day, 6 weeks before interviews, in Cracking the Coding Interview and was still missing problems in the 1st chapter towards the end. I'm selling myself short, probably. But looking back, I see it as luck, structural factors, and what pushed it over the top was focusing on communication / thinking out loud in the interviews. As long as you're intelligent, familiar with the material, and your interlocutor is having an okay day, you'll come off well.

theonething 3y ago

> got into Google in 2016 due to what amounted to luck Would love to hear more details on how this happened if you don't mind sharing.

refulgentis 3y ago
I'll take any excuse to talk about myself ;) Thank you for being curious - I just absolutely do not buy that I took ~5 CS classes and did a great job on the interview questions. I don't think I did a great job -- but, I was a deeply specialized self-taught iOS engineer who had built a point of sale. When you're at Google, work is more episodic and less in-depth, so I had a seemingly unusually wide and in-depth knowledge base. And iOS devs were considered hard to get. And Google had a special focus internally on getting iOS-specific interviewers who, at least in 2016, usually did a lot of work with non-iOS specialists. So you have these sort of inherent biases towards me seeming relatively impressive to their day-to-day experience with other Googlers. Then, I'm fairly convinced the leetcode problems we do add a significant "luck" portion. I spent about 6 hours a day, 6 weeks before interviews, in Cracking the Coding Interview and was still missing problems in the 1st chapter towards the end. I'm selling myself short, probably. But looking back, I see it as luck, structural factors, and what pushed it over the top was focusing on communication / thinking out loud in the interviews. As long as you're intelligent, familiar with the material, and your interlocutor is having an okay day, you'll come off well.