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The problem with established companies like Google is that all of the cool projects are already taken.

That, and that they claim ownership over whatever you create, including stuff you do in your off hours, and any ideas you may have had.

But the lack of opportunity is the big one. There's just too many people who've been there too long, with their own projects to work on that overlap with the work you'd want to do, to have any shot at actually doing groundbreaking work.

Interesting work? Maybe. Groundbreaking? Not gonna happen.

As an example, I work on pretty much the same problems as Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat, albeit with a radically different approach. Would I be able to continue that work at Google? Extremely doubtful, again, because all of the groundbreaking work is taken.

(Note: Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat are awesome, I'm not trying to imply that they aren't up to the task or whatever. Far from it. Just that there's already really good chefs in the kitchen at Google, so there's no point in joining in the fun.)

I have to disagree. Just in the last few years, tons of new, groundbreaking projects have sprung up. e.g. most of the publicly announced Google X projects didn't even exist a few years ago. And there's so many areas where there's interesting stuff to work on.

Now obviously, unless you're really special (e.g a known expert in your field) you're not going to be able to waltz in and be given a huge area of responsibility and a team, but that's just common sense. You do have to prove yourself, and there is some discounting down of your work pre-Google (your impact since Google is valued far more highly).

At the end of the day, Google is a heavily engineering-driven company, so if you have good ideas, nothing is stopping you from going ahead and starting your own cool project. If you're driven and talented and demonstrate success, the 'cool project' could transform into something much bigger, and you could end up leading an important company initiative.

they claim ownership over whatever you create, including stuff you do in your off hours, and any ideas you may have had.

Does this mean that if you are working on side projects during your free time (ie. at home on weekends), you do not own them?

Many employment contracts try to claim that, or something that practically amounts to the same. Some states do limit the enforceability of such contracts. For example California prohibits the company from trying to grab ownership of inventions produced entirely in one's spare time: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&gr...

However, even in CA's case there is a big exception: work that is closely related to the employer's business might still be owned by the employer, on the theory that if you developed something closely related to your day job (you work at an industrial-sensors company and are developing your own industrial sensors on weekends), you probably inevitably used some of the employer's trade secrets / business information / etc. in developing it. Whereas if you develop a side project in a different area (you work at an industrial-sensors company and are developing C++ dev tools on weekends), you're more in the clear.

The problem with how that interacts with Google is that nearly every field of technology is related to Google's business! They do search, datacenter infrastructure, IaaS, PaaS, operating systems, programming languages, compilers, robotics, computer vision, AI, storage systems, email, mobile apps, mobile phones, office/productivity software, news aggregation, data visualization, etc. So it's difficult to come up with a safe side project that isn't closely related to your employer's business.

I'm been a full-stack web/mobile developer for various startups over the past couple years.. I've always thought it would be cool to work at a larger company like google for awhile, seems like I'd learn a ton.. but I didn't really go through school and don't have your standard strong CS fundamentals as a result, so haven't been quite sure about what to do :P. Any tips on the best way to acquire these skills through self-study?

Read "The Algorithm Design Manual", and do exercises from every chapter.

Whether or not you decide to interview at Google, building up strong CS fundamentals will make you a better programmer. And we're not the only ones who ask those types of questions. :)

Unless you know your CS fundamentals you are unlikely to get hired in any top software development company (regardless of whether you would be actually using these skill in your job). They're basically used as a hiring differentiator, because competition can be fierce. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try learning, although my approach is to work a side project that would develop these skills by necessity.

Back when I graduated a part of me really wanted to apply to Google. I think it's a great company, I love the idea of working with so many great employees of many disciplines, and I was even excited about the interview process.

However, I didn't bother, because my primary language was C#. I knew Java to a reasonable level, but after an internship at a non-tech service company and a startup I was sold on the .NET framework. I went to the Stack Overflow DevDay in Cambridge and ended up having a drink with two Google employees, and neither had anything good to say about .NET or on working with anyone that used Windows as their primary dev OS, so I decided not to bother, and on graduation I stayed with the startup I interned at.

One day, I might dust off my copy of CLRS and apply for Google, but probably when I feel a bit more comfortable with a more Linux friendly language like Python.

You can't work from home at Google.

This policy varies on a team-by-team basis, but generally Google is pretty good about giving people some flexibility in this regard. It's pretty common to see people work from home because they e.g. have a dentist appointment in the middle of the afternoon or something. We generally treat people as responsible adults unless they give us a reason to otherwise.

That said, we really value the team-building and communication that happens when everyone is in one place, and that typically means WFW (work from work) the majority of the time, so we try not to make a habit of WFH.

This is kinda the same issue with remote work. We have great videoconferencing tech, but we generally find that you miss out a lot when you're apart from the rest of the team. This makes even being on a geographically distributed team kinda difficult. Some teams do a better job than others on this (e.g. Chrome is very far-flung), but it requires a lot of coordination and discipline to make it all work.

I'm curious. I have applied a few times (from India) but can never seem to get in. Do you have some sort of a reject list? Where once denied twice shy (of an interview) or something? How is the hiring process for international regions (like south east asia)?

I've been approached by different people at Google several times over the years, and I've always passed for two reasons:

* You require relocation, with no remote options for working that I was ever able to learn about.

* The interview process seems unduly complex and needlessly difficult.

When I applied to Google, it consisted of a phone call with a recruiter, a 45-minute technical phone interview, and a one-day visit to the office consisting of four 45-minute technical interviews and casual lunch.

I believe my experience is fairly typical; have you heard otherwise?

They may have streamlined, or it may be dependent on the type of position you're applying for, but in the case of a few of my friends it involved multiple days in mountain view from NYC, many in-person interviews in NYC, and so on.

I think in two of the cases I can think of it was a ~3 week interview process.

What year was that? I applied in 2011, and I've been conducting interviews for Google ever since, and I think the most in-person interviews I've ever seen on anyone's slate was 5.

Occasionally, a second phone interview is necessary, but usually only if something went wrong in the first one.

Someone I know went to 5 different in-person interviews with Google over a period of something like 3 months. Each time there would be a 2-week or so limbo before talking to someone at Google again. Then after 5 interviews, nothing. Total silence.

This was 2009 or so and was for some sort of infrastructure management position.

This was back in the mid-2000s. I think both of them did way more than 5 in-person interviews - it was probably 2 phone, 3 in-person NYC, 4-5 in-person in MTV.

Both were relatively senior positions, so perhaps they're the exception, or perhaps it's been streamlined since then. I'd buy either.

I started down the route of phone-interviews (two) before being told that I'd need to relocate to either Ireland or Switzerland, and that I'd need several in-person interviews to proceed further.

(I'm a system administrator, rather than a developer, although I'm a competent programmer in my own right.)

does ur NYC office need C++ infrastructure guys?