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Comment by gmurphy | Hacker News Reader

I thought the same thing once, but applied anyway on a whim. Have now been at Google for 11 years.

It can't hurt to try.

It can hurt in my experience.

I've been interviewed by Google for position once because they contact me on LinkedIn; I didn't think this site was actually useful before that. I had the classic code writing phone screening with a question I figured the answer but I had to reschedule it because of bad wireless connection (university library, home was not even my wifi). The next time my setting was better but the interview was harder and I failed it. After that I got kinda bad feeling over my skills, lack of luck, being not-smart-enough and the graduate work to do I didn't do in favor of interview preparation.

In the end it was not so bad because getting a job there would have mean not doing my international student exchange year and give up my second master degree, for which I worked even more.

Another time I applied for an internship at Microsoft, I got a programming question that was not in the book (unlike Google) but I managed to got a solution. I was thinking it was fine despite a silly right/left error but still get rejected at the skype screening step. I didn't really get accustomed by my first failed attempt at Google so I lived it like a confirmation of my lack of skills. I felt so bad about it I didn't program for a while after that (three weeks or maybe even one month).

I guess mental preparation is almost as important or even more than algorithmic one. Maybe be I'll try it again one day, not to stay on a fail.

I see what you're saying. If it helps, remember that impostor syndrome is a real thing, and that many that work at Google failed their first interview too. I think the hiring process if biased towards avoiding false positives at all cost, which means it has many false negatives.

How did you apply? What experience, skills, and education did you have when you applied?

A Googler posted on their blog that they were looking, so I emailed him and he referred me. At the time I had dropped out of an EE+CS degree, had four years of suit-wearing professional experience writing enterprise webapps in PHP and ColdFusion, was halfway through a part-time Masters Degree in Design, and had a bunch of small JavaScript/C++/Art side projects. They hired me as a SWE, am now in UX.

I won't pretend that I wasn't very lucky in timing, interviewers, etc, but you won't get anywhere if you don't roll the dice.

What's your salary/compensation?

One of the problems with working for a high profile tech company (that isn't a startup) is that the Salary package is never that great, compared to say, Financial IT in the same geo-location. Most people work at these places for the culture, kudos, and not to get rich per se.

I've had several offers to go work for Microsoft (as that's where my skills lie) but I've turned them down as they all involved a hefty pay cut that I couldn't afford to do.

You expect a director at Google to post their comp? Seriously?

Care to share your business acumen with us instead of mocking someone for asking a question?

Only reason for the question was to see how inflamed HN commenter(s) (you) would get. People at startups are mocked all the time for their low wages, and forced to release them, but those in positions of experienced authority never have to.

Director?

Glen (gmurphy) is Director of UX at Google.

oh shi-

One of the best things you can learn is that nobody knows what they are doing.

The only problem is when the people you're interviewing with don't know that yet.

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