Career update
FYI, I ended up taking the position at Google. I started two weeks ago, and it’s been quite exciting, despite (or because of) the “drinking from a fire-hose” aspect of learning my way around the big G.
I’m on the Google Sites team. I’ve been interested in wikis for years, and now I get to actually work on one. (Although Sites, née JotSpot, is not a typical wiki.)
I could write a lot about my experience of Google so far. It’s quite an interesting place. Merely learning about how some of their internal systems operate has been jaw-dropping. (Do you have any idea how much hard disk space Google has? Or how many CPUs? Or how many search queries they handle? Unfortunately I don’t think I’m allowed to tell…)
For now I just wanted to say that I’m not in the job market anymore. Also, that I really like all the free food :-d
August 18th, 2008 at 12:40 AM
wait.. what is the future of “cloudy”?
August 18th, 2008 at 1:35 AM
Nice one
August 18th, 2008 at 7:54 AM
Congratulations Jenz. I hope that all goes well for you!
August 20th, 2008 at 3:27 AM
Wow..!!! Great! Mithology. :-)
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:10 PM
Congrats, Jens. Getting hired at Google is still (I assume!) no small feat. I hope it works out great for both parties.
August 26th, 2008 at 9:32 AM
Congrats.
But wait, didn’t I read recently that Google is going to cut the free food?
August 26th, 2008 at 1:48 PM
Moritz — Nope, they’re not. Food is still great, still free.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:07 PM
I thought the problem with Google was that their claim to your IP was just as onerous as Apple’s. I thought you posted to that effect a few weeks ago (though oddly I can’t find that post?)
What changed?
August 30th, 2008 at 7:30 AM
Lauren — Well, I talked with enough people there to determine that, in practice, that policy doesn’t get used against people. And employees who ask in advance are often given clearance to work on a spare-time idea as their own. (I know of a few Googlers who have outside shareware projects.) At a high level, the company gives employees a great deal of discretion to make their own decisions and do what’s right, rather than trying to micromanage their outside behavior the way Apple does.
You could say that I gave up, weakened by the allure of free food and massages. Or that I’m being realistic in accepting a great offer. It’s way too early to tell which is right; so far I’ve been too swamped with coming up to speed, to do any programming at home anyway!
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:57 AM
Unfortunately I don’t think I’m allowed to tell…
One of the great presentations at the Google I/O conference was called Underneath the Covers at Google: Current Systems and Future Directions. It provides some very interesting stats on what happens when one operates machines on the scale that Google does, including some stats on what that scale is.
September 14th, 2008 at 6:36 PM
Congrats for getting the job. I believe you have a family to take care of and if you don’t cover their expenses first, you won’t have much of a head for developing your personal projects.
Cheers.