Hacker News Reader

Comment by lossolo | Hacker News Reader

Getting usual software job is not so hard. I think he was not after "usual software job", but after one that is hard to get (job at Google, Facebook etc). I find what he wrote very valuable, being a person that has similar aspirations (Google is my holy grail) that was very helpful.

View on HN

Why is working at Google your holy grail? I'm genuinely curious, I don't have a problem with your goals.

I am interested in ML lately so i like and understand their current approach to solving problems with it. I think that they are leader in "AI race" at the moment seeing how DeepMind is evolving and how they use ML in their products and optimizing their own infrastructure with it. I think I could learn a lot there. I always liked challenges and solving interesting problems and in my opinion Google is a good place to do that. I am not mentioning things like scale etc because that is common in other companies also.

I would disagree. Google has beyond genius PHD's working one those problems. A SE with a bachelor's would most likely be delegated menial tasks, definitely not be working on cutting edge research. I have many friends at Google and, unfortunately, it's scale would not allow one to work on the problems you stated with out significant leverage and movement internally.

I disagree. I also know someone that works in one of the ML teams and he has just a bachelor's and is not relegated to menial tasks and seems to be pretty happy with his level of responsibility.

Because google on your resume opens many doors. eg: vc funding.

Why is Google ( or any other employer ) your holy grail? Is getting hired at a big five employer seen like the Olympics of software development or something?

I'm genuinely curious.

Google is one the few employers that where if you perform well you can get to a 250k+ comp within 5 years. The pay difference between Google and most other companies is quite big after a couple years.

There are obviously other options but Google is one of the few employers where you can say "well if i hit expectations I will be making 250k".

I know of many jobs where you can get that high. Most of them are soul sucking jobs calculating mind numbing numbers for insurance companies.

Google is likely to have interesting jobs where you can get that high which would be big.

please, i'd love to know specific companies (seriously).

Hey, if you are still interested, I replied to RexM below, he asked similar question first.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com