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Comment by dan-robertson | Hacker News Reader

Would the person who wrote the best dry-cleaner management software do well at a company like Google? That is, I think a lot of the required skills there are ‘getting things done in a company the size of Google’ and having worked at Meta for a few years is perhaps a better signal for that than having made some great software. Likewise someone from Google may have a harder time in some startup where the structure is different and they don’t have all the fancy google tools or services. To be clear, I don’t want to imply that someone who makes great dry cleaner management software is a bad programmer or that they couldn’t be successful at Google or that Google look at the right signals and have good processes or that the startups who should have a different hiring strategy don’t copy google too much.

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> Would the person who wrote the best dry-cleaner management software do well at a company like Google?

Offer them a job and find out.

> the required skills there are ‘getting things done in a company the size of Google’

this sounds like a fake excuse to exclude someone who has demonstrated a high degree of ability and skill, but doesn't fit your mental image of what a Google employee should be -- otherwise known as gatekeeping

I went from demonstrating a “high degree of ability and skill” that brought in an extra 1 million in revenue at a 60 person company over a year. It was lauded by CxOs.

Doing the same type of work at AWS gets a congratulatory email and is just a drop in the bucket.

I’ve also gone through interview training. We are specifically told not to consider where you got your experience or education from as long as you meet the standards. While they don’t bring me in for coding interviews, I’ve been on interview panels as part of the system design section. I know this to be true.

That is something Amazon does got right, they look for the experience during interviews, for the skillset. And yes, they tend not to care that much about where that experience comes from.

> but doesn't fit your mental image of what a Google employee should be -- otherwise known as gatekeeping

Otherwise known as “culture fit”?

I say that sarcastically. Anywhere I see “culture interviews”, “our culture”, or “culture fit” I think it’s one of those bull shit jobs type things, and used as a get out clause in the hr tool box.

For the big companies, culture fit often feels a bit cult like. It’s no longer a job to pay the bills even if you enjoy the work, instead you have to believe the company is changing the world, eat, sleep and live the company values etc etc.

Dry cleaner app guy maybe but insurance guy for sure.

It personally took me over a year to learn how to navigate BigTech after spending an entire 25 year career at small unknown companies.

I came straight from a 60 person company to AWS. It wasn’t pretty and I was hired for a remote position during Covid

>> don’t have all the fancy google tools or services

Hard to believe that all of the fancy google tools haven't been replicated in open source yet. Software people love writing tools to make writing software easier - what's up?

I haven't worked at Google. But I think that the level of infrastructure at a larger Tech company really shouldn't be disregarded. I've worked in a small <10 person shop, a large non-tech finance co, and a tech co. One really big difference is that the internal tooling, infrastructure, etc. are really well polished at a larger tech focused company compared to non-tech and small places. Even if there are a lot of open source tools, which may even be used at tech companies, when you do not have a team(s) who work full time integrating all of these tools, the developer infrastructure, CICD, etc. it is a big pain. And at smaller non-tech companies, debugging all of this stuff that Just Works^tm is a really big part of the job.

Not to mention when there's a problem, especially a SEV, you have oncalls and entire teams of people rushing to fix it, giving trackable status updates, responding directly to you, etc.

Compare that to posting on Stack Overflow and praying for a high quality response.

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