Monday, October 6, 2014

Advanced FOSS Guest Speaker - Google

During class on Thursday, we were greeted by a very special guest that DeCause had asked to come down to talk with our class. As it turned out, Google had been at the Career Fair and doing interviews and such. While they were there, DeCause asked one of them to swing by our class and talk to us if they were able. To our good fortune, they were able to do just that. I am deeply regretful that I don't remember the man's name. It was a truly enlightening talk that helped to really put perspective on what I was doing and working towards for the past few days.

The man started off by introducing himself, telling us what he did at Google and some things that he worked on. Right away I could tell that the man far outdid anything that I even thought about doing for a job. After introducing himself he asked us if there were any questions that we specifically had for him. We chose to ask him about what it was like working at Google and what this 20% work was. As it turns out, while working at Google, you have projects that you choose to work on for a main project and a secondary project that you do sort of on your own time.

Afterwards, DeCause asked a few simple questions as it related to the Advance FOSS class. The main important questions were the use of file revision systems and the use of IRC channels for communication. While I never doubted that it was used, it was interesting to see the reasoning behind their use.

The last thing we asked about was how it was that he managed to find himself working at Google and if he would ever think about leaving. He told us about how he wasn't exactly the best student, though far above my level, and he more or less lucked into getting internships at Microsoft and Apple, which gave him the chops to be put up for consideration by Google in the first place.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed the talk. It was slightly disheartening to see just how far I am from being a competent hacker by any stretch of the imagination, but it has also given me some inspiration to try that much harder in the upcoming future.

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