Sharing Experience part 4

Last week was “Homecoming -week” a university tradition of welcoming back former students. Many former students came back to see me, so I arranged a special meeting for them to talk with current students. Following are the conversation between graduates and students in my class.

Brian Hollander graduated last years and currently working at Google. He told other students: “Google always looks for students who are self-motivated and team players because everybody works on a team. Last year, I got an offer from Google, and like many newly graduates who came from different places and schools, we did not know others well, so the first month was challenging. There were few people who wanted to work alone, and my manager had to spend a lot of time trained them to work in a team. Some of them were good in technical, and they thought they could do what they wanted, but they were wrong. The works here were too challenging for any one person. So my advice is to develop teamwork skill as soon as possible because it is the first thing you need when working in the industry.”

A student asked: “How do you get the job? Can you tell us about the interview?”

Brian answered: “Like many students, I applied online and got the phone interview. When the manager called, she asked if it is a good time to talk or whether I wanted to schedule at another date. I told her that I preferred at a later date because I needed time to prepare. A few days later, I had the phone interview with three people. The first interview started very casually as the person only asked me about my courses and my grades, but other two people were focusing on my skills and asked me to solve several problems online.”

He reminded the students: “It is very important to listen carefully for each question and answer slowly because you communicate over the phone and could not see the other people. I did well, so they asked me to come to Google for another interview. That was five interview sessions that span over six hours, and I was exhausted. Each interview session involved two to four persons who asked me to solve problems on the whiteboard. I followed their instructions, explained my logic and wrote code on the board, they listened carefully and took note on what I did. The first two sessions were mostly about my coding skills, but the third and fourth were about algorithms, problem-solving and specific knowledge such as search engines, cloud computing, and Internet of Things. I did well, and they seemed to be pleased. There was a short break when they told me to wait as they discussed with others. The last interview was with a manager, and she asked me a lot of questions, from the hobbies that I like, my career plan, the books that I read in the past five months, etc. Even these question did not have anything to do with the technical, but I believe it was the key factor to determine whether I could “Fit” into their team.”

“The last question was about what I would like to do, and I told her that I wanted to learn more because of technology advances so rapidly, and the continuous study was necessary to keep my skills up to date. The school can only teach me so much, but I wanted to learn more. I said: “I would like to learn things that I do not already know because I will need it a few years from now. And that includes better writing and people skills.” She seemed pleased, and after a few casual questions, she offered me a job. I went back to the hotel and could not sleep all night because I was so excited about the job.”

Brian advised: “There is more to life than work. We all have our lives before we go to school and become software engineers and we all have hobbies such as sport, music, games, etc. I work hard at work but when I go home and like to play soccer with my friends. On the weekend, we go out camping; I like nature, so I always enjoy camping to keep my mind relax and calm. You need to figure out what you like to do and find a way to enjoy it. Working is a part of lives but never your whole lives. Working at Google is an interesting experience for me because it is a multicultural experience. I worked with people from many countries; my best friend came from France and Germany. And we worked in conjuncture with each other with the language barriers and many cultural things such as different styles of doing work. And it was very interesting from that respect. Most of us, Americans are very direct and straightforward to get things done. But the French spend a lot of time up front, discussing, talking, and planning before doing anything. The German engineer like to do more analysis and design until it is perfect. But I think the mix actually work very well because we got a good momentum to get the project done.”

Sources

  • Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University