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Comment by qmarchi | Hacker News Reader

Disclaimer: Was laid off in Jan. from Google. Previously worked at Walmart.

What I'm seeing is those that were impacted by the layoffs are still looking for tech industry jobs as a primary, but not completely shutting down non-tech positions.

There's definitely a heightened focus on the work and impact that a role can achieve though, working on big things where a lot of their large systems experience can be useful. Places that, despite "current macroeconomic conditions" , are still growing and need that experience.

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We’re you at Walmart labs? Pretty impressive jump from Walmart to google. Any tips as to how you did it? Did you leetcode grind?

> We’re you at Walmart labs? Pretty impressive jump from Walmart to google. Any tips as to how you did it? Did you leetcode grind?

The engineering practices at Walmart are quite similar to those at Google.

As someone who also made the transition from a smaller company to Big Tech, I can say that while the user base is much larger, the engineering practices and quality remain relatively consistent.

If you’re looking to land a job at a Big Tech company and want to practice by solving LeetCode problems, go for it. However, keep in mind that solving these problems alone won't guarantee you a job.

I haven't worked at either... but I did work at a regional retail company.

Walmart is a massive logistics company that dwarfs any other - save maybe Amazon (and it would be interesting to see the break down side by side).

I believe it is dangerous to put the FAANG companies on such a pedestal.

Consider even McDonalds Tech Labs - which sold to IBM which was doing some rather interesting things with machine learning, and bilingual natural language processing (drive throughs).

My point is one of "Walmart to Google is likely much less of a jump than people imagine... other than the name attached."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart_Labs

Might be a non-SWE role at Google. Account managers, solutions engineers and roles like that often have interviews that focus less on the perfect engineering skill and more on good engineering skills + human skills which Walmart might actually teach better than tech.

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