Well I just got off the phone. I have tons of nervous energy I need to work off. The interview went well on the whole, but I am a little dissapointed. They are looking for a software engineer but my passion is security.
I have another interview on Jan 11th at 9:30pm (10:30am PST), which is a bit late, but it's Google! I am going to be asked about algorithms and code. I feel I am a fairly competent coder but I shudder to think of the kind of questions I will be asked. "Given a tree structure of zoo animals what algorithm would sort them into their kingdom's the fastest?" I am a bit worried about this. I am going to rework my CV to make it more security oriented and send it off . Hopefully this will be a foot-in-the-door, and I will see where it leads. I have done a lot fo reading about working at Google and it looks amazing. From the way they treat their employees, their development philosophies, their ethics and social commitment, and their really cool stuff.
The first question I was asked was how many lines of code my largest project was. I guessed 8-10 thousand. I was also asked which of Google's products interested me most. What do you choose, there are hundreds, check out the labs page. I went for the searching (boring eh?), but I imagine they have some hardcore code for PageRank. I was also asked where I would like to work: Mountainview (HQ) or New York. I went for the HQ as being in the centre of things is always better. I was also asked what my favourite programming language is, I proudly mentioned REBOL, then perl and other scripting languages. I am better at Java but I prefer C++, I just don't know all the tricks (that shotgun is dangerous).
It turns out that my CV (or resume as I discovered Amricans call it) was submitted and a team of engineers decided I would be best at software engineering. I really have absolutely no reccolection of submitting a CV. Someone out there must have done it for me, whoever you are: thanks.
I have another interview on Jan 11th at 9:30pm (10:30am PST), which is a bit late, but it's Google! I am going to be asked about algorithms and code. I feel I am a fairly competent coder but I shudder to think of the kind of questions I will be asked. "Given a tree structure of zoo animals what algorithm would sort them into their kingdom's the fastest?" I am a bit worried about this. I am going to rework my CV to make it more security oriented and send it off . Hopefully this will be a foot-in-the-door, and I will see where it leads. I have done a lot fo reading about working at Google and it looks amazing. From the way they treat their employees, their development philosophies, their ethics and social commitment, and their really cool stuff.
The first question I was asked was how many lines of code my largest project was. I guessed 8-10 thousand. I was also asked which of Google's products interested me most. What do you choose, there are hundreds, check out the labs page. I went for the searching (boring eh?), but I imagine they have some hardcore code for PageRank. I was also asked where I would like to work: Mountainview (HQ) or New York. I went for the HQ as being in the centre of things is always better. I was also asked what my favourite programming language is, I proudly mentioned REBOL, then perl and other scripting languages. I am better at Java but I prefer C++, I just don't know all the tricks (that shotgun is dangerous).
It turns out that my CV (or resume as I discovered Amricans call it) was submitted and a team of engineers decided I would be best at software engineering. I really have absolutely no reccolection of submitting a CV. Someone out there must have done it for me, whoever you are: thanks.
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