It seems to me that if you're a dev that wants to work at Google, sending them a cover letter and resume is a waste of time. Google can afford to pick almost anybody. You've got to stand out. I'd imagine that it's probably best to become an active contributor to an OSS project that has a lot of impact or create a startup that could potentially target Google's market and hope to be acquired. Obviously the startup route is much riskier, but more rewarding. Regardless, it seems that if you want to work at Google, you've got to make a name for yourself.
Google's hiring process is notoriously bureaucratic, and one of the things that they ask you when you make it into compensation committee is "Do you know any Google employees?" It feels great to say "Well, when I worked on chromium, I interacted with [name], [name], and [name]."
You should also know that they're super cool about letting you get into the AUTHORS file, you just have to write good code that they can use, and they'll insist that you add yourself as part of the patch.
Talk about a Hacker News bubble. Are you really suggesting that if you want to work at Google you should start your own start-up? This seems ridiculous to me (I agree with the rest of the post though)
No, I must of misrepresented my thoughts. I stated that that was one way, not the way. It seems that with the size of Google today, and their notoriously strict hiring guidelines; based upon my observations, Google hires high-profile developers or they are acquired through a startup.
> based upon my observations, Google hires high-profile developers or they are acquired through a startup
Sorry but I dont think that's even close to being accurate. Google makes thousands of hires each year, a vast majority of them will be through normal hiring processes (from their competitors or college) and definitely not acquisitions or high profile. You only hear about the acquisitions and high profile hires because normal non-high profile devs hires do not make good news/blog articles. Creating a startup in hope of getting bought out by Google is like wishing to win the lottery.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that you thought that, you did not misrepresent your thoughts: it was my post that was confusing. Nonetheless you do present starting a start-up as a serious option to consider for people who want to work at Google.
This is a classic example of observation bias. We literally only observe the prominent cases, but forget that the vast majority of Google hires (and there are thousands of them) are NOT "high-profile" developers or startup founders.
They've emailed me twice now asking me to interview. A guy named Dan McCarthy. I said no at first (back in 2007) but I said yes this time (just a few weeks ago). I made it by the first phone screening. They asked really simple questions. I'll have a more formal engineering interview next week.
I think they'd get more high-quality folks if they let people work from home. I'd rather not move to Pittsburgh or NYC, but would like to work on Google stuff. It really interests me.
Edit: I never sent them a resume or initiated the conversation (they called me both times). Also, I don't do start-ups and am not a big open source contributor. I do write and publish code that I find interesting, but that's it. I write code because it's fun (it's a hobby), not because I want to be rich or famous.
What does that mean, really? Look at the product and share your insights. Do you have smart suggestions on how to improve the product? If not, you may have picked the wrong dream job.
