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Comment by morgante | Hacker News Reader

> For instance, a Google recruiter once told me to spend a few months becoming a Python expert, and then they'd interview me (in Python);

Most SWE hires are generalists at Google, not tied to a specific language.

Unless you're being hired for a specialist role, you should absolutely be able to interview in the language of your choice. It's sometimes harder to put together an interview slate for a less popular language, but that definitely shouldn't make your recruiter force Python.

> Also, I imagine it's that much worse for people outside the Bay Area.

Actually, FAANG companies are some of the only ones with strong compensation in offices all over the country and globe.

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> you should absolutely be able to interview in the language of your choice.

Except the choice is between Java, C++ and Python. They are very clear about that, asking what your preference is during the scheduling phase.

I went through the interview process this year, and even tried to ask my interviewers if it was ok to do Kotlin instead of Java. It wasn't.

Google SWE interviewer here. You can absolutely interview in Ruby. I have it listed on my language interviewing skills page. It is harder to schedule for more obscure languages because we have to find 4 people with that language who are available.

This is the key insight. The company seems to be language agnostic - the pool of interviewers isn’t.

I was told I could use C# as that is the language I use the most. Thing is, I'm going to use Python anyway. If they're going to whiteboard me, I want a language that is easy to write on a whiteboard and, to me, Python would be that language. Besides, I'm over C#. Would love to program Python for a while.

I have interviewed with Google 7-8 times over the past 3-4 years (Google has mostly rejected me, but last time I cancelled the process with an onsite scheduled due to personal reasons) - every single time, Google has let me interview with JavaScript.

why do you keep re-interviewing? Is it for different roles?

Dude really wants there.

Google offers are some of the best for putting pressure on other companies.

I am currently at another FAANG though, and may not leave my company ever, even if it would likely up my compensation.

I interviewed and passed at google. Through 6 interviews I used JS, C, Go, and Swift. One of the tougher Qs was to make a pretty full-featured promise library from scratch in whatever language I wanted in one of those interviews. Chose Swift because I'm a fan of the syntax for blocks (esp when whiteboarding). Feedback was that was my best interview of the day. My experience - they wanted to know I could program, didn't care about language.

You wrote a promise library in Swift on a whiteboard? What?

How large was this whiteboard?

What is a promise library? Sounds rather complex, how does that even fit on a whiteboard?

It’s a js async idiom.

I interviewed in JavaScript, so that's not strictly true. And if you're interviewing for an iOS role, Objective-C is obviously going to be a hard requirement. But if you say Python then write Ruby in the actual interview, would they really care that much? (any Google interviewers care to answer this?) I gave JS as my primary language but did one of my interviews in Python because I felt like it - the interviewer was fine with it.

I just did an interview in Go. I think people have done javascript too.

Sounds like a miscommunication happened somewhere. You should provide feedback to your recruiter.

Maybe that's your experience, but there are a number of people that didn't have that experience. I mean, you think Google isn't going to let you use a language they invented in an interview? Maybe your interviewer was a jerk, or maybe this was for a very specific role in which only those languages are applicable, but almost all jobs at Google are generalists.

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