Google story

I’ve spent ten years of my life working for Google. To this day this is the longest time I’ve ever spent in a single company. Google today is very different from the Google I’ve started working for. We are just shortly after the company, for the first time in its entire history, conducted layoffs. Almost twelve thousand people lost their jobs - sometimes finding out about it only because they couldn’t log in into their account.

The company I’ve joined was very different from the one we are seeing today. Or maybe it’s just that my perception has changed while the company stayed exactly the same. After all, when I joined it was already a multinational corporation with more than 30 thousand employees. While it thought about itself as a startup it was very far away from being one.

Don’t get me wrong - I never had any illusions what the goal of the company was. Plain and simple - to earn money. But you can earn money and you can earn money. Google I’ve joined felt like the former and somewhere it changed. Or we have.

Still, I want to tell a story about how I’ve even ended up there, what I have been doing through those years and what I think about the whole experience. 

This is a personal story told from the point of view of a single, unimportant engineer. If you are expecting some shocking revelations most likely you won’t find it here. I’ve also decided not to mention anyone by name. It is not because I’m going to say something bad about them -  quite the contrary. I just don’t know if they want to be part of the story or to be mentioned. Instead of reaching out to each individual I’ve just decided to make them anonymous. And the last caveat - human memory is imperfect and every event can be seen and remembered differently. Please forgive me if some of the accounts are inaccurate or you see them differently.

Getting into Google

In 2012 I moved to London to start a new job. While long term planning was never my strong suite my intention was to stay there for at least a couple of years. This was the first time I’ve worked abroad and while the initial time was very difficult everything eventually smoothed out and I’ve started enjoying my new environment. In October, when I felt I had a certain rhythm and stability I got a call from a recruiter that started a new adventure.

At that time google security team had a reputation of being the place where everybody wanted to work but very few people has managed to get into. I have never considered myself good enough to be noticed, not to mention invited to interview there. I felt both flattered and scared for failing miserably. Still, one does not refuse such an opportunity. After a brief chat I’ve promised to send my revised CV and wait for a phone screen to be scheduled.

Interesting fact was that the initial role I was offered only mentioned a US location. Fortunately I already knew some security people working in the Zurich office so I’ve managed to convince the recruiter to place me there. Moving to another continent felt a little bit too much at that point in life. Why am I even mentioning this? This will be important later on.

Speaking truthfully the closer to the phone screen I was the more uneasy I felt. I have heard many stories from the people who have tried and failed to clear it. To keep me on my toes google recruiters have postponed it twice. This delay and postponing will become a hallmark of the entire process. At that time it was mildly annoying but after seeing the process from the inside it became clear what was the reason behind it.

Overall, I don’t think the first phone screen went very well. I mean, it went well enough to be followed by a second round but I wasn’t very happy with myself. I specifically remember that I was struggling with some of the questions and basically had to ask the person interviewing me if I can talk about a similar topic instead. In this case instead of talking about establishing the SSL connection and key exchange I ask if I can maybe talk about SSH key exchange because the flow of the process is similar. This was a teachable moment and I’ve tried to follow this principle in my future career - allow the candidate to demonstrate technical acumen through the things he or she knows instead of the ones you have planned for them.

First phone screen led to the second one and I think that I did a bit better during that one. Still remember butchering some of the answers, especially struggling with some code samples with an obvious integer overflow. That was another teachable moment and now searching for arithmetic operations performed on variables being passed to malloc calls became my go-to strategy in bug hunting process. Years later when I actually asked about my performance on those phone screens and all I got was a very simple quip - “you must have done good otherwise you would not be sitting with us”. 

By the end of November I finally cleared phone screens and was invited for a round of on-site interviews. There was one small complication. The interview was about to happen in Mountain View, California but at that time I had no US visa. In a speedy fashion I’ve filed the paperwork and managed to get an embassy appointment. Within 2 weeks my visa was approved. Because of the upcoming Christmas holidays I’ve arranged the travel early January. Google was kind enough to arrange plane tickets, hotel for 3 days and even offered to get me a car. Not having an experience of living in California I’ve refused the last part of the offer. I think this was the first and the last time I’ve ever used a Taxi in the Bay Area and it made me realize why Uber became so popular there.

My plane landed on Monday and I had a whole Tuesday to rest and prepare for Wednesday. I spent that day in the hotel room reading some books and various other materials to prepare. I don’t recall exactly what I was reading but I’m pretty sure there was “The Tangled Web” and I’ve brushed up on all the topics I didn’t answer very well during my previous stages. Oh, algorithms and data structures as well. The reason for that was a dinner I had in December. For Christmas break I traveled to my hometown and met one of my friends who already worked for Google. Upon his advice I’ve spent a considerable amount of time learning about various algorithms. Given my lack of formal CS education it was a bit harder than it sounds. All that work was for nothing as I haven’t got a single coding question.

On the big day I got a total of four different interviews and lunch in between. The interviewers were covering a wide range of topics - starting from network security, through designing a single sign-on system finishing with a sizable portion about web security and some low level exploitation to spice things up.

Funniest part happened during the first interview. I need to mention that when I was invited to an on-site interview I kindly asked if it would be possible to have it done in Zurich. After all Switzerland was just a 2 hour flight away and did not require a visa. I was however told that there are not enough security engineers there to interview me. Imagine my surprise when, in California, I was led to a conference room and informed that the first interview was going to happen over the teleconference system with an engineer from Zurich. Turned out to be an exception as the three remaining interviews were conducted in person.

When the taxi took me back to the San Francisco airport I was in a fairly good mood. I felt that this round went pretty well and I was eagerly awaiting the decision. Of course there is a possibility that I’ve barely slipped through thanks to dumb luck and my optimism was unfounded. We will never know.

Waiting for the final result was exhausting. Apparently the hiring committees were so swamped that they haven’t managed to process my case during two separate sessions. It took them roughly a month to get to it. Due to the fact that my recruiter was on holiday that week, news was delivered to me by another one. She was very nice, walked me through the offer and explained the whole process that was about to take place. All in all it was a good offer but initially I wasn’t swept off my feet. I think it speaks more to the difficulty comparing offers between companies and countries than to google generosity. Factors like the tax system, costs of living and differences between benefits can sway your calculations wildly in all directions. Also, at that time knowledge about levels, bonuses and RSUs wasn’t so widespread among the general population so I wasn’t really understanding all the components. In the end, still not believing my luck I’ve accepted the offer without any negotiations.

Next three months were fairly busy - I had to bid farewell to my current employer and my colleagues, close all the matters in the UK and prepare to move to yet another country. Good part about that was the relocation package that Google has provided. On my last day in London a team of three people showed up, packed all my belongings to a container ready to be shipped to Zurich. My wife and I, with two suitcases, went to the airport to follow the same route. Our temporary apartment was already waiting for us.

My starting day was set for Monday but I’ve managed to get in touch with some of my friends earlier and set up lunch for Friday. Somewhere over coffee I asked about one thing that wasn’t very clear for me - when do I sign the employment contract? That prompted a series of questions and events that made the entire HR department scurry.

What most likely has happened was miscommunication between two recruiters. My lead recruiter must have assumed that all the paperwork was sent by the recruiter who called with the offer. Sadly, the other recruiter must have assumed otherwise and in the end I got no paperwork to sign. Good thing that the rest of the machinery concerning relocation was operating well.

I remember thinking that this is a great start - I was jobless and homeless (minus the temp apartment) in the most expensive city in Europe. Mind you, in the city the language I did not speak. In the end everything ended well - the HR department managed to prepare the contract and all the paperwork in record time and everything was signed before Monday.

Early next week I’ve showed up on the reception, had a picture taken, was given a temporary access badge and began my adventure as a freshly minted Noogler.

Continuation - including the teams and projects I’ve worked on during my time will be covered in the second part. It’s not very clear when I will have time to write it but I hope it takes me less than it took me to write this part.