I Want To Work At Google
Posted by Skrud at Wednesday, September 27th 2006 at 10:52am
I’ve wanted to work at Google for a long time, but after reading Stevey’s latest post about working at Google, I’m that much more determined.
I’ve basically narrowed down my future options to the following, in order of preference:
My list goes like this: 6, a bunch of random companies, 1, 7, 3, 4, more random stuff. Microsoft is there, but I have to really investigate it further, because I’m afraid of another Matrox experience.
I don’t have much desire to work in a huge company. In fact, I think it’s mostly due to my very strong desire to start my own company. Just just join a startup, when you can BE a startup. However, I’m very comfprtably posotioned where I am now for a few years, so I will let my ideas incubate.
I don’t want to start my own company because I have no business sense whatsoever. I don’t want to have to meet investors and venture capitalists and throw buzzwords at them until I make myself sick.
And most of all, I don’t want to have to wear a suit.
skrud, haven’t you read Paul Graham?
you don’t need VC, or business people or suits.
When you start a startup, at the beginning all you need is hackers.
When you finally need business people you can find some to do the stuff you don’t want to do.
A managers primary job in a software company is to get all the non programming things out of the programmers way, so that they can focus on programming.
I have been meaning to post with all your posts about work.
i agree that you have had a bad experience, but you were working for a company whose main mental model was a mechanical one first, and possibly software second.
working at a nice small software company is very rewarding. i love where i work now. although i agree with FIG and that after this i hope my next stint is in my own startup. keep incubating those ideas.
i agree that google seems like an ideal, but it is very hard to get in. have you seen the entrance exam for google?
MS doesn’t seem nearly as nice as it used to, and the more ms blogs you read the less they seem to be on top of things. they lost robert scoble, i think that is probably the early signs that they are out of touch with the software world.
I’ve read most of Paul Graham’s essays, but I haven’t read the one about starting a start-up. I’ll get around to that eventually.
MS may not seem as nice as it did back in the 90s, but lately it seems they’ve been tending towards making it better – they don’t want to keep losing people to Google. ;)
And I really like The Old New Thing and Mac Mojo as far as MS blogs go. Mind you, those are nothing compared to Stevey.
I wouldn’t mind working for a company like Fog Creek either, unfortunately you need to have permanent right to work in the U.S. before even applying to an internship there. I think I’d be happy at any company like it with similar philosophies.
And the GLAT looks like fun. :D
As others have said you shouldn’t look at your experience in one job and think it applies to the whole job market. Coding software for a company who is not in the software business is completely different from designing software for an actual software company.
^^ And that’s why every single company on my list is a software company. (Well, Apple swings both ways).
Hey Skrud, Stevies blog hit slashdot today. I’m dissapointed, because I read it when he had 0 comments, and I was planning on leaving a comment about something. no wit’s innundated with slashdotters! You’re ahead of the curve! (I give really good odds that YOUR blog will be slashdotted on day. 1-2 years. MAX.)
Well you already know mine but I might as well repeat it.
I like how our top 4 is the same but swapped by 2s.
Startup would be higher if I had an idea I wanted to work on or, more importantly, friends I wanted to work with.
COMM299M.
It seems that some of you would like to sell your sould to M$.
Whatever pays your bills I guess.
soul*