First Contact
It all began when an email popped up in my inbox titled "Google Engineering". As I read on it was from Derrick, a Google Recruiter who happened to run across my profile and was interested if I'd like to try-out for one of the Google engineering teams. First thought... hell yea.
The Screening
After hearing of my technical experience and interest in the position he quickly set a first stage phone interview for a few days later. Perfectly punctual, as if engineered, the phone rang exactly at our scheduled time. We did some minor small chat which then was lead into a multiple choice questionnaire. He asked me a series of topics within computer science and software engineering and had me rate myself from beginner to guru. That then led to multiple choice questions testing if those self-ratings were indeed accurate. One question had be sort timings of various computer I/O devices, whereas another question had me state which data structures guaranteed logarithmic O(log N) performance. Some questions I answered correctly and others not so much.
New Possibilities
One of the great things about Google is that they don't use third party recruiters. Therefore the recruiter has no motive to just stuff you into a position and collect a commission. On the contrary, their job is to find where you can best fit into the company based on their needs. As Derrick and I continued to speak he heard of my interest to help foster developer communities, meet lots of different types of people, and to make software engineer's lives easier. He suggested that I may be a good fit for Google's developer relations group where it bridges the gap between the pure software engineers who are creating new products and services and the other engineers and groups who consume and further develop that software. This is exactly for something that I was looking for! I can code 70% of the day on bunch of different topics and tool sets, and then spend the rest of my time sharing and discussing those technologies. I ended the conversation with Derrick on a positive note and was waiting to hear back from him soon.
Excitement Builds
A few anxious days later I received an email and phone call from another Google Recruiter named Jackie who mentioned based on my teaching experience there were some managers interested in having me try out for the developer advocate role. Side note: I appreciate that Google goes with the label advocate instead of a more religious overtone such as a technology evangelist. First real step in the process is a 45 minute phone interview where they test one's technical chops [remember as in most things in Google it is focused around the Eng.ineering] hopefully if all goes well they either do another phone interview or bring you on-site to do a further hands on interview.
Ready, Set, ...
I have one week (slightly less now!) to prepare for the famous rigors of a Google interview and will document the processes I navigate through, my preparations, and finally the outcomes as I go through this journey.
