So I got word back from Google today. Unfortunately I'm highly qualified, but I'm not a strong match for the Google Team.
Which is ok. Sure on one hand there's free commuting to Mountain View, free meals when at the office, working for a big popular company, and getting a steady paycheck. On the other hand I'd have to get up at some time in the morning, go to meetings, be on call[1], probably work with people who think they know everything, and have to go to Mountain View everyday. I probably don't make the best case in the world, but I'm pretty certain that working at Google would be pretty close to tense and not real fun.
I think I have much more firm opinions of Google now. Firstly I think that it's an elitist organization pushing an elitist Computer Science agenda. Before this year it was fairly unheard of for Google to interview anyone without a BS. Then there is the Summer of Code where Google pays Open Source organizations and developers for completing projects over the summer. The catch is you have to be a student to be an eligible developer, and the payment is only $4500 for the whole summer (which if you're working full-time works out to be about $10/hr.)[2]
My biggest complaint is that for us regular computer schmoes (like Erik, Erin, Ryan, and other smart people I'm sure I'm forgetting) you really didn't care about school and you just jumped in and started working on this computer crap. We didn't have some guy stand up at a black board and explain what O(n log n) means, we read Knuth, or Wikipedia, or something and figured it out. We learned how TCP/IP works by reading the RFCs. We don't need no steeking piece of paper.
We may store pointless trivia about The Simpson's or William Shatner in our brains, and not what the exact sequence of every minute event in a network transaction, because these things are funny and network stuff can be easily looked up.
Besides this gripe, there is the fact that Google was funded by the US Government ("Because the ideas were developed at Stanford under a government grant, the university owned the technology and had a legal obligation to share revenues it generated with the inventors.", Mining gold in the ivory tower), and is the same problem I have with Universities that patent drugs with government money. They take our money and then use it to build multinational companies that don't help us.
So I'm a little upset about Google shooting me down. Actually most of the problems I have with them I've had with them for a while. I thought they were getting better. I guess they are not.
Footnotes
- Technically I'm always on call right now too.
- Also I wonder about taxes on that. How the heck is that handled? I would totally think that would be a FAQ item.
