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In this vein, I wish people would ruminate on a topic like, "Senior Engineering: So now what?". When I first wanted to get into engineering, nothing helped or inspired quite like these posts. But, since I have "made it" so to speak. I feel like I've done the majority of growing and introspection required and now I can basically handle anything a Senior engineer should be able to handle. But... now what? I am kind of at a cross-roads where people tend to either stagnate (I've met a lot of 50+ peers with senior titles they earned 20 years ago), run off to manage people (do I want to do that? I dunno...) or end up as Principal Architects, co-founders, or some similar upper-echelon engineering role.

Not to knock this content, anyway. I found this repo to be well organized and genuinely interesting -- just not super relevant for me...

I think the only way to really prepare for working in industry is to actually work in industry.

Being able to parrot the crap you where taught in college is only useful for interviews, which is a sad reflection of what interviews actually test for.

You are completely right about what you said but I'd like to add one thing is the most important for any software engineering roll at any company: your ability to learn as you continue practicing in our field. That should be the highest priority. How do I familiarize myself with all my tools and resources not so I can do my job really well but so I can move to any task and execute it well?

That should be the focus of any practicing software engineer. To be able to learn and adapt as requirements and goals change.

I have done maybe 20 or so interviews in the last 2 years and this is the #1 thing I look for. However, I have still hired people who do not display a talent for continuous rapid learning, that is to say, they will only learn on company time and they take a long time (reasonably) to learn anything new. The flip side is that these people "work with what they know" and you can rely on them for a steady work pace and consistent quality. Much like so many development tools, people come in lots of shapes and sizes that benefit your organization differently.

You're probably right, but there are probably millions of software engineers who can have a successful career at Google. But they won't get in unless they can pass the algorithmic interviews.

I agree that the emphasis Google puts on algorithmic interviews is a bit dumb, but that how their hiring system works. So anyone who really wants to get a job at Google needs to work on that, regardless on whether it will be useful inside the company or not.

Are there really millions of engineers who will have a successful career at Google, or are there only a hundred or so every year?

There are millions of programmers, most of which will never get a job at Google. Is their time perhaps better spent optimizing their existing careers instead of doing "dumb" things for a chance at the gold-plated goose?

Most things I do in my day to day work are dumb. I code around browser incompatibility, write scripts to automate parts to byzantine and stupid buisines workflows away that survive for political reasons. Etc etc. The point is that if a few months of studying is underneath you, modern software development is going to have far more stupid schlep anyways; I imagine especially at a company of google's size.

I wouldn't recommend training specifically for Google in the hope of sometimes joining them, but if you get an interview at Google and are serious about joining them you should really train for it.

Agree that it's not a bad strategy for Google to hire the way they do. It is a bad strategy for most other companies though, as by running the same interview process, they'll get people who couldn't get a job at Google.

There are plenty of good engineers who can/do pass the Google interview but don't want to work there. I turned down a couple Google offers before ending up at my current job, and now work alongside many ex-Google employees. Part of the problem with discussions like this is that too many people assume that Google is the ultimate goal.

Agree that not everybody wants to work at Google. But it seems to me that today, it would be a first choice for many people.

Yeah, it was certainly my first choice before I started my career. After learning more, my opinion changed. People want to work in an imaginary ideal of Google.

Yes, the myth is one thing, but reality is another!

You seem to forget:

1. they have a lot of applicants to pick from.

2. they do it for cultural reasons rather than purely for on-the-job performance reasons.

Culture is a long term investment.

"What interpersonal skills are most important? What are good resources for continued learning? What do C level people actually do? How can I help the company succeed? What career opportunities are possible for me without having to skip jobs? What can I learn from this company before I go to create my own?"

Pretty sure tons of content have been written about all of these topics, and not particularly hard to find.

>What interpersonal skills are most important?

Read Shapiro's "Corporate Confidential". Despite the rather click-baity (read-baity?) title of the book, it's an fairly good explanation of career management and politics of mid-size to large companies. I'd recommend it to all new graduates entering the workforce.

The problem is that the algorithmic interview is the gatekeeper.

As you say, almost none of your actual job depends on knowing any of that material in any way. However, you aren't even getting in the door unless you know it all, which is indeed arbitrary and a waste of everyone's time and energy.

Thus, good engineers who didn't happen to study academic CS at Stanford or MIT must regrettably waste months of their lives self-studying CS trivia which they will never use again except at other interviews. Being good engineers, they have studied how the system works and taken the rational and necessary step to participate in it. That's why so much ink is spilled on it.

> aren't even getting in the door unless you know it all

This is the key to only one (admittedly pretty) door, though. Are the benefits of getting through that particular door truly worth the cost?

I think this question is even more important when so many other companies are now moving away from algorithmic interviewing techniques since they aren't Google.

I've seen the reverse: many companies are adopting CS trivia style interviews just because Google does it. They figure Google is the best of the best in software, so you can't go wrong by adopting as many of their practices as possible for your own software firm.

Whenever there's a test that gates perceived advancement, people will teach to the test as a way of circumventing the gate.