In google with no work experience. Programmer from Silicon Valley about Russian diplomas, interviews and work in the US
I have one hobby - to interview IT-specialists from Silicon Valley. Not for the purpose of recruitment, but simply about living in the USA and working in large companies.
My today's hero is Eugene Krasko, a programmer from YouTube.
Google programmer on Russian diplomas, interviews and work in Silicon Valley
- I come from Yekaterinburg, after graduating from school I entered ITMO at the computer technology department and moved to St. Petersburg. After 2 years, I transferred to the department of higher mathematics, and at the 4th year I decided that I still had to do programming. I started practical programming from Java courses at Exigen Services, and went to the Computer Science club for theoretical courses. In parallel, I began to enter the magistracy at the Academic University in the direction of Software Engineering.
')
I liked the magistracy - I had internships at Yandex and JetBrains; I started working as a teacher in the department - and after graduation, I stayed at SPbAU postgraduate. Together with this, after six months of work, I decided to try Google (approx. YouTube is owned by Google) and received an offer. Thus, Google is my second employer, and as a programmer, it is my first. The process of moving was quite long: almost a year and a half passed from the moment of the first interview to the first working day. Even after you get an offer, there are still a lot of things to do: getting a visa, selecting a team and moving directly. However, such long periods played into my hands - thanks to them I managed to do a lot in graduate school. It only remained to defend my dissertation, which I did, returning to Russia for a short time from the United States two years later.
Initially, I filed with Google in the USA, and the most direct route is the H1-B work visa. It is intended for highly qualified specialists, but it has an annual quota, and I did not get into it. Then I was offered a district route - a visa L1, the so-called transfer within the company. In order for an employee to be transferred to an American office, he must work for at least a year in the office of the same company in another country. Google recruiters offered me a choice of Canada, Australia and Switzerland, and I settled on the latter. Mostly because my friends lived there - my classmates. A year later I was in Silicon Valley.
- What is the difference between the workflow in the US and Swiss offices of Google?
- I am often asked about the differences between work and life in Zurich and Silicon Valley. I didn’t notice serious differences in the workflow device. Perhaps this is because the work of my current team is closely related to the one in which I worked in Switzerland. In fact, we are working on one project and often fly to each other on business trips. Offices are arranged a little differently, and the rhythm of life is also different - everything is for larks, and in the Swiss office is for owls. Although the latter is more of a necessity, because many local YouTube and Google teams work with teams from Europe. And for the interaction of teams there is a very short time interval of convenient intersection between time zones: in Europe it is evening, and in the USA it is morning.
- How is your typical working day?
- If there are no morning rallies with Zurich, then I come to work most often by 10 o'clock. I think I am one of the most recent, because office parking is already full. Well, after that everything is standard: I respond to emails, program and go to meetings.
- What are you working on?
- I am working on an internal project. This is an infrastructure for testing: we make the services that our developers use to test their code.
- Do Russian diplomas value in the US?
- For American companies, there is no special significance of which country has issued a diploma to a programmer. Here, perhaps, a little more attention, if there is a master's degree. And, by the way, quite often when evaluating a diploma in the USA, this degree is also appropriated to developers who graduated from Russian universities with a specialist diploma (5-year education). In general, a diploma plays a serious role only in the absence of work experience or to obtain a working American visa, although this is also not a panacea. Knowledge and experience are important for getting a job.
–How are technical interviews at Google?
- My interview took place in St. Petersburg (Google still had an office there). At that time I worked as a teacher of discrete mathematics at the Academic University and, accordingly, this was indicated in my resume. During the interview, I got the impression that many interviewers asked questions related to my current job and wanted to check if I really understood what I was teaching. I really liked the tasks that I was offered; They were diverse and interesting.
Now I also conduct technical interviews with candidates and, conversely, I try to ask the same questions so that everyone is on an equal footing. Yes, and then I find it easier to compare the candidates among themselves. Previously, it was fashionable at Google to ask various puzzles at interviews (for sure, many people met puzzles about the coin and blender), but eventually the company realized that such tasks were not revealing, and even banned them.
- How is the final decision on the candidate?
- For each candidate, interviewers must fill out a special form in which you need to describe how the interview process went and evaluate the candidate according to several objective criteria. Further, these assessment forms from each interviewer are processed by HR managers and transferred to the so-called Hiring Committee. Committee members make the final decision. The committee also includes Google engineers, but it cannot be the same engineers who directly interviewed the candidates.
- How much do programmers pay to google?
- It is difficult to say: it is not customary to discuss salaries with colleagues here, in Russia there is a simpler attitude to this. But in general, this is a very broad question: it all depends on the level at which the programmer is hired, and the skills to bargain when getting an offer. For the same level, the monthly salary will be about the same, but the size of other types of remuneration can vary greatly. The presence of the counter-partner and the ability to “sell” yourself decide a lot.
As with many American IT companies, Google’s salary consists of three parts. The first is the monthly salary that comes to the card in a fixed amount, which is fixed in the contract when signing the offer, and then, possibly, changes at the beginning of each year. At the end of the year they give the second part - a bonus, which depends on how much a person has surpassed himself. Finally, the third part is the action. Shares are given when signing an offer, but you can only sell them according to a certain scheme: for example, in the first year of operation you cannot sell at all, in the second you can sell 25%, in the third another 25%, and so on. For each of the following years, you are given a new package of shares with a similar cashing scheme. Of course, this is done in order to keep the employee, and often people cannot get off this hook, because in large companies, stocks are growing every year.
- What are the bonuses at Google besides salary?
- I don’t cost almost anything medical services, because Google pays for its employees and all members of their families general medical insurance, as well as separate dental and ophthalmological insurance. On average, in California, where Silicon Valley is located, I think these health insurance services could cost several thousand dollars per person. Also, I almost don’t spend money on food, because there are many cafes in the office, where there is a free breakfast, lunch and dinner. For Google employees, there are many other nice "buns" - decent discounts on various goods and services, a cool office with a free gym and pool, massage in the office.
- The question that HR-s on interviews like to ask very much: how do you see yourself in 5 years?
- I have no very specific goals. But I, for one, do not want to go into management; most likely I want to remain an engineer and receive a growing area of ​​responsibility in this area.
In Google, historically, the levels of developers begin on the 3rd. When they took me to work, they gave me the 3rd level (relatively speaking, Junior), because I had neither experience as a programmer nor a Ph.D. degree. Then I moved up to the 4th level, and recently up to the 5th. This level is already called "Senior". From my Russian friends, I know that promotion in Russia sometimes happens faster. Many who in the Russian companies had the level of Senior receive Middle.
Google has quite a few levels - there is room to grow, but with each new level it is becoming more and more difficult. For the whole company there is only one or two developers of the 11th level.
My today's hero is Eugene Krasko, a programmer from YouTube.
Google programmer on Russian diplomas, interviews and work in Silicon Valley
- I come from Yekaterinburg, after graduating from school I entered ITMO at the computer technology department and moved to St. Petersburg. After 2 years, I transferred to the department of higher mathematics, and at the 4th year I decided that I still had to do programming. I started practical programming from Java courses at Exigen Services, and went to the Computer Science club for theoretical courses. In parallel, I began to enter the magistracy at the Academic University in the direction of Software Engineering.
')
I liked the magistracy - I had internships at Yandex and JetBrains; I started working as a teacher in the department - and after graduation, I stayed at SPbAU postgraduate. Together with this, after six months of work, I decided to try Google (approx. YouTube is owned by Google) and received an offer. Thus, Google is my second employer, and as a programmer, it is my first. The process of moving was quite long: almost a year and a half passed from the moment of the first interview to the first working day. Even after you get an offer, there are still a lot of things to do: getting a visa, selecting a team and moving directly. However, such long periods played into my hands - thanks to them I managed to do a lot in graduate school. It only remained to defend my dissertation, which I did, returning to Russia for a short time from the United States two years later.
Initially, I filed with Google in the USA, and the most direct route is the H1-B work visa. It is intended for highly qualified specialists, but it has an annual quota, and I did not get into it. Then I was offered a district route - a visa L1, the so-called transfer within the company. In order for an employee to be transferred to an American office, he must work for at least a year in the office of the same company in another country. Google recruiters offered me a choice of Canada, Australia and Switzerland, and I settled on the latter. Mostly because my friends lived there - my classmates. A year later I was in Silicon Valley.
- What is the difference between the workflow in the US and Swiss offices of Google?
- I am often asked about the differences between work and life in Zurich and Silicon Valley. I didn’t notice serious differences in the workflow device. Perhaps this is because the work of my current team is closely related to the one in which I worked in Switzerland. In fact, we are working on one project and often fly to each other on business trips. Offices are arranged a little differently, and the rhythm of life is also different - everything is for larks, and in the Swiss office is for owls. Although the latter is more of a necessity, because many local YouTube and Google teams work with teams from Europe. And for the interaction of teams there is a very short time interval of convenient intersection between time zones: in Europe it is evening, and in the USA it is morning.
- How is your typical working day?
- If there are no morning rallies with Zurich, then I come to work most often by 10 o'clock. I think I am one of the most recent, because office parking is already full. Well, after that everything is standard: I respond to emails, program and go to meetings.
- What are you working on?
- I am working on an internal project. This is an infrastructure for testing: we make the services that our developers use to test their code.
- Do Russian diplomas value in the US?
- For American companies, there is no special significance of which country has issued a diploma to a programmer. Here, perhaps, a little more attention, if there is a master's degree. And, by the way, quite often when evaluating a diploma in the USA, this degree is also appropriated to developers who graduated from Russian universities with a specialist diploma (5-year education). In general, a diploma plays a serious role only in the absence of work experience or to obtain a working American visa, although this is also not a panacea. Knowledge and experience are important for getting a job.
–How are technical interviews at Google?
- My interview took place in St. Petersburg (Google still had an office there). At that time I worked as a teacher of discrete mathematics at the Academic University and, accordingly, this was indicated in my resume. During the interview, I got the impression that many interviewers asked questions related to my current job and wanted to check if I really understood what I was teaching. I really liked the tasks that I was offered; They were diverse and interesting.
Now I also conduct technical interviews with candidates and, conversely, I try to ask the same questions so that everyone is on an equal footing. Yes, and then I find it easier to compare the candidates among themselves. Previously, it was fashionable at Google to ask various puzzles at interviews (for sure, many people met puzzles about the coin and blender), but eventually the company realized that such tasks were not revealing, and even banned them.
- How is the final decision on the candidate?
- For each candidate, interviewers must fill out a special form in which you need to describe how the interview process went and evaluate the candidate according to several objective criteria. Further, these assessment forms from each interviewer are processed by HR managers and transferred to the so-called Hiring Committee. Committee members make the final decision. The committee also includes Google engineers, but it cannot be the same engineers who directly interviewed the candidates.
- How much do programmers pay to google?
- It is difficult to say: it is not customary to discuss salaries with colleagues here, in Russia there is a simpler attitude to this. But in general, this is a very broad question: it all depends on the level at which the programmer is hired, and the skills to bargain when getting an offer. For the same level, the monthly salary will be about the same, but the size of other types of remuneration can vary greatly. The presence of the counter-partner and the ability to “sell” yourself decide a lot.
As with many American IT companies, Google’s salary consists of three parts. The first is the monthly salary that comes to the card in a fixed amount, which is fixed in the contract when signing the offer, and then, possibly, changes at the beginning of each year. At the end of the year they give the second part - a bonus, which depends on how much a person has surpassed himself. Finally, the third part is the action. Shares are given when signing an offer, but you can only sell them according to a certain scheme: for example, in the first year of operation you cannot sell at all, in the second you can sell 25%, in the third another 25%, and so on. For each of the following years, you are given a new package of shares with a similar cashing scheme. Of course, this is done in order to keep the employee, and often people cannot get off this hook, because in large companies, stocks are growing every year.
- What are the bonuses at Google besides salary?
- I don’t cost almost anything medical services, because Google pays for its employees and all members of their families general medical insurance, as well as separate dental and ophthalmological insurance. On average, in California, where Silicon Valley is located, I think these health insurance services could cost several thousand dollars per person. Also, I almost don’t spend money on food, because there are many cafes in the office, where there is a free breakfast, lunch and dinner. For Google employees, there are many other nice "buns" - decent discounts on various goods and services, a cool office with a free gym and pool, massage in the office.
- The question that HR-s on interviews like to ask very much: how do you see yourself in 5 years?
- I have no very specific goals. But I, for one, do not want to go into management; most likely I want to remain an engineer and receive a growing area of ​​responsibility in this area.
In Google, historically, the levels of developers begin on the 3rd. When they took me to work, they gave me the 3rd level (relatively speaking, Junior), because I had neither experience as a programmer nor a Ph.D. degree. Then I moved up to the 4th level, and recently up to the 5th. This level is already called "Senior". From my Russian friends, I know that promotion in Russia sometimes happens faster. Many who in the Russian companies had the level of Senior receive Middle.
Google has quite a few levels - there is room to grow, but with each new level it is becoming more and more difficult. For the whole company there is only one or two developers of the 11th level.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/351684/
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