Jobs at Google (1999)
web.archive.org
web.archive.org
>> Several years of industry or hobby-based experience
Key takeaway is “hobby-based”
So, sure, they were fine with hobby experience. But only if backed by solid CS chops.
Not just men! Men, Women, and everything in between.
> Not just men! Men, Women, and everything in between.
fella (fel·la)
- nonstandard spelling of fellow, used in representing speech in various dialects.
fellow (fel·low)
- a person in the same position, involved in the same activity, or otherwise associated with another.
How many real world examples of fella being used to refer to women can you find?
Nearly every usage of "fella" I've heard has had a "male" implication. At least in US English.
Neat, and I've heard it implied multiple times to refer to generic groups of people, in US English as well too just like you. The thing though we need to consider is definitions, facts, sentence context, and even the auhtor's intent much more heavily then both of our personal experiences.
It can easily be argued based on context that the author's intent was to refer to a group of people generically, they even used the "nonstandard" and generic version of the word.
Personal anecdotes do not make facts.
That's precisely why I provided links to two dictionaries. Not the definition google spoon feeds you when you type in "define fella"
A person in the same position, involved in the same activity, or otherwise associated with another. [1]
used of people or a person with whom you share something, esp. the same kind of job, interest, or experience [2]
[2] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/fello...
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/fella
That said, clearly our experiences and interpretations differ.
There is no right or wrong here. As such I dont think we can easily reason that they were using it to refer to generic group at all as clearly there is confusion and different interpretations of the word. Using "fellas" to address colleagues in an email (for example) that includes non-males may lead you to inadvertently offending people who share my interpretation of the word.
I think it would be better for everyone to just use non-gendered terms in the first place to avoid this sort of confusion and potential to give offense (e.g. "guys" is another loaded term: some people think it is non-gendered, whilst others think it is strongly-gendered - as such probably best avoided in a lot of situations).
Some alternative options that are non-gendered could have been "people", "applicants", or "potential employees" (and for the "hi guys"/"hi fellas" email opening you can just do "hi all" or "hi everyone")
I had read an article where they elaborated how getting into Google is a lot more difficult than getting into Harvard.
Google gets more applications per open position, so they also have to reject more. Lots of people think "Why not give it a shot and apply at Google." Very few think the same about Harvard. Also, I would say it takes more effort to apply to a university. They will require essays, SAT/GRE and letters of recommendations for a valid application.
[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/job-hunting-dig-up-those-old-sa...
Everything becomes easier with a degree, doubly so with a degree from a top university. But they only use that as a factor in deciding who to interview; all they care about when deciding who to hire is interview performance. Someone without a degree should be optimizing their search by convincing hiring managers or employees to refer them into the process directly, thereby short circuiting the recruiters.
How necessary is a Masters in Computer Science degree?
And from experience I can say there is a shockingly high number of people with Masters in Comp Sci churning through the hiring pool who can't write a single line of code or even valid HTML.
I don't know why this is, but I think a Masters is getting a negative reputation to the point that you might consider not listing it on your resume at all in certain cases.
However, since its one of my life's dream to get a MS in CS from US, I will do it.
Is this notion prevalent everywhere in US?
Shouldn't it be otherwise, like the student is hardworking and is persistent enough to get a Masters?
With more information, like why or how they got an MS, the probability distribution changes. My impression is, there's a set of dimwits from a dimwit part of the industry that decide they should get a Master's in order to better their career. As opposed to, say, getting one right after school because you didn't want to enter the real world, or because a 5-year MS seemed like a good idea, or being brainwashed in general about the value of formal schooling.
>> Getting right after school.
Isn’t getting some real work exp before joining Masters a good thing?
>> 5 year MS
Never heard of such a thing. Is there one?
Isn’t getting some real work exp before joining Masters a good thing?
Would like to hear your opinion on this, please.
During one interview I had at Google, I stumbled when performing addition on base 64 numbers.
Since I don't have a degree, it seems likely that interviewer will write that I have a conceptual deficiency with numeric bases and mathematics.
If I had a degree from CMU and gave an identical performance, they might instead write that I was rusty with numeric bases.
There's also the fact that most of the interviewers have a degree, many from a top 10 university. Hiring people that match their own profile validates their own background which benefits their career, so a self-interested and rational interviewer should rightly tend to give more positive ratings to people with degrees, ideally from institutions similar to theirs.
I think this is relevant at every stage of the interview process. If you sound nervous and don't have a degree, they might think you have a mental disorder, whereas if you have a degree from CMU they might just think that you don't want to disappoint your family.
I feel disadvantaged at every stage of the interview process for not having a degree. I'm sure there's no moment where someone is consciously docking me points or arguing against me with specific reference to the lack of degree. But I do think it's heavily influencing how academic types perceive me, and what they write about me in their report.
That's actually not a bad thing in my book. When I was at the beginning of my career, the fact that most companies completely disregard any non-work-related experience was extremely frustrating to me. I'd been tinkering with computers my whole life, working on stuff far above and beyond your average "just learned it in class" folks, and it was all irrelevant unless qualified by work experience.
Of course today its commonplace to show off your "hobby-based experience" to employers via a Github page and F/OSS contributions, but back then it wasn't.
wow who was that chef?
What an understatement.
I couldn't imagine my code impacting 2 billion users, but the chrome team has to every goddamn day.
Korn shell surprises me! I thought that Google was always a Linux shop, and never used any other Unix. Was Korn shell ever popular on Linux, as opposed to bash?
I didn't use shell back in 1999, but I thought that bash was already popular back then. bash was apparently the first program that Linus Torvalds got running on Linux, back in the early 90's.
I saw a bit of early Perl at Google when I worked there, but it was mostly all Python. I never saw any Korn shell, although I guess bash is compatible with Korn shell, so maybe that's what they meant. Or it was written by a recruiter who copied from other common job postings at the time.
There's a lot of overlap between bash and ksh scripting, but it's not 1:1.
-BA/BS, MS or Ph.D. degree
-Intelligence to interview the brightest in the world
I guess though they had their "A players hire B players hire C players" in mind.
This seems like a good reason not to work somewhere.
I'm curious; why do you feel that way?
I never buy anything at the automated machines at my workplace, but when my colleagues bring some food for others to share, I always take some, for instance.
I love office perks. On-site haircuts are fantastic - much faster than going to a salon on a weekend. Snacks and free good coffee make the day more pleasant. I don't take advantage of all of the possible perks, as some are clearly aimed at people working different schedules than I. But the reverse holds true as well (the single 23 year old likely does not avail themselves of bring your child to work day activities. :)
It's not all a conspiracy to screw workers. Improving quality of time at work and productivity during work hours is a win for everyone. I leverage perks to get more family time, not less, and I observe many of my with-family colleagues doing similarly.
Turns out, I've got willpower when in the supermarket, but not when there's a fridge in the office. I could just about limit myself to 1 of each a day, but even that was too much.
Interned at a place with free food and snacks (better than the ones I’ve seen at Google IMO) to a place without any and I lost weight. Nice side benefit.
Fortunately, I'm not an alcoholic. I quite enjoy a beer or two with colleagues now and then, and that's the end of it. But I'll bet at least some of those same colleagues were going through a silent torture keeping it under control.
But I'm pretty sure I'm a compulsive eater. If there's a box of donuts I'll have one, for sure, like everyone else. Then a couple hours later, after having thought about donuts for the last two hours - (and hating myself for having eaten the donut), I'll have another. If there's free chips I'm sure to grab a pack when I walk by. A failure of willpower? Sure. A sign that I'm a lesser person, maybe lazy (funny since I would cycle 12 miles to work while they all drove...), and definitely gluttonous? You'd think that based on how some people treat you.
I lost 100 pounds by keeping absolutely, positively, nothing in my home that I could eat without cooking - this was an effective deterrent to impulse eating since cooking was a sufficient pain in the ass (these days I actually enjoy cooking! But I also weigh under 200 lbs now so I guess it's ok. Workplaces with free food can destroy that for people who struggle with eating. An aside - anyone who's gone from very obese to merely overweight or normal will tell you it's shocking just how differently people treat you. Not just potential romantic partners - _everyone_.
Anyway, I guess I'm saying that free food in the workplace, for me, is a psychological nightmare. Though if the free food is apples and carrot sticks, that's fine. I'll eat them if I'm hungry, and only then.
I find lunch at work already a pretty big perk, where it's not offered it's an easy E5-7 per day (I can't be arsed to make it at home), that adds up over a year.
The "evil" only really crept in once they started to take over all of the world's advertising.
I like simple business models. I give the company money and they give me stuff.
Not anymore eh?
The original comment was also probably a reference to the "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber" memo:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch...
Edited to add: In 1998 I probably would have read this and cheered it as a place where diversity was recognised and welcomed; in 2018 I read it as "we don't feel we have to do anything about our unconscious biases, which we're satisfied with"
Given how successful how successful they are and how right they were on so many other things it is hard to tell if they were incorrect or not.
But while we are at it let's talk about unconscious bias. This is brought up a lot. If it does exist and is affecting people's decisions why do we always talk about it in thr manner you just have.
Could women not have unconscious bias to men and wanting to work with them? Maybe. I see a lot of hate spouting out of "Diversity Warriors". Just the other day a lady from glitch was so happy about diversity she had to talk disparaging about men -- making a very very welcoming presentation.
Could blacks have unconscious bias to whites? Maybe. I often hear the problem is "I see to many white faces" - while living in a majority white nation. Just watched a video where that was sighed as a major problem at Evergreen. But this dotey has been told many times befor. Nobody does the math to realize that in a majority white nation the only way to fix the "problem" is to active limit reproduction or inclusion of white people. You could also attempt to reproduce no whites at a higher rate or import more non whites. With way the peoblem translate in to "white".
Could gay or trans people have unconscious bias twars cis gender people? Maybe. Given the distain all over social media for srait people, even more so for white men.
Could it be that these groups of people also too have unconscious bais and don't want to work with white men and found employment elsewhere?
I don't bring this up because I don't want diversity. Or that I have a problem with any of these groups. I bring it up because it is awfully shitty thing to constantly blame a single group of people every time somebody feels the outcome is unjust.
Why don't I see marches of women demanding to work in trash pickup? Or people demanding more men veterinarians? Or having better quotas of who gets to die doing their job today (80% men today, women have it safe).
Doninreally want these things? No. I think people while chose to do what they want do in the long run. But you cant make the "why" people don't chose a given job because of a single group for purly being that group.
Also. When working with code nobody gives a fuck who you are. They give 10 fucks about how awesome your code is and 100 fucks if they learn something from your work.
I was curious about this and it turns out that in the United States and Canada women have indeed become the predominant gender by far in this line of work, at least according to what I could find in this study (which is quite old, back from 2003): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC340187/
> Veterinary medicine, previously a male-dominated profession, has experienced a significant increase in the number of women studying at veterinary colleges and practising in all fields of the profession. In Canada, and in the United States, women constitute approximately 80% of the veterinary college student population. Forty-three percent of practising veterinarians in Canada are now female, and women are predicted to represent the majority of the veterinary profession by 2007
It's curious because over here in (Eastern) Europe I'd say that men are at least as equally represented as women when it comes to being a veterinarian, I wasn't aware that in Northern America things had changed.
It's too late to edit and fix the issues :(
Somewhere somehow things took a different turn...
https://www.google.com/search?q=google+salary+discrimination
https://www.google.com/search?q=google+race+discrimination
https://www.google.com/search?q=google+age+discrimination
https://www.google.com/search?q=google+religion+discriminati...