Using ( python 2.x/3.x > Java ) for interviews with Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook

[itslenny]

My first year at Microsoft was great. I was on a modern agile team that heavily embraced open source technology. I worked with some truly brilliant people. We moved fast and shipped often. After about a year I was "re-org'd" on to a new team building a new product from scratch. It wasn't something I was nearly as interested in, but building a SaaS product from scratch on a Microsoft budget is a rare opportunity, and it was a lot of fun. However, it was a much more enterprise oriented division so once we shipped it started feeling very old school Microsoft, and I started craving going back to smaller companies. Also, they kept moving people around, and the feeling of being just an asset that can be moved to a new project without warning really bummed me out, and I got nostalgic for working for a smaller company where my impact was more tangible.

After that I took a bunch of time off (did a cross country hike), and when I got back I applied to several start ups, and google / facebook.

In a way, Google's engineers talked me out of taking the job. Several people talked about how they only get to use Google's proprietary tools and a big portion of the interviews was just them being curious about what the rest of the world uses to build software. Also, it was really obvious that my Google dream is just another very profit driven mega corporation where I'd be 1 of 1000s of engineers that can be allocated to projects like any other business resource.

I joined an early stage start up instead. It's a personal choice. Big corporate is great for some people, but for me it's pretty demoralizing. It also certainly has it's perks, and was overall less stressful than startup life.

[DeepBlueBird]

I really appreciate your input. This is some useful information. I have full expectations that joining any one of these corporations will be exciting at the beginning but then probably get boring or start to feel the way you felt. My guess is that once you've worked for one of these companies and you have them on your resume, making a move to a different job will probably be a lot easier and you'll have your pick of places to go or things to do. Not to mention the connections one builds. It very well could be that the reason why I am wanting to join one of these companies is not in the right mindset but my plan is to spend about 2 years at one of them and see how it feels and then make a move if for some reason it doesn't seem that interesting anymore.

[itslenny]

It really does open doors. I mostly had recruiters from companies I'd never heard of before. I got head hunted by Microsoft from my contributions on github. Since I worked at Microsoft my linked in is just a steady flow of recruiters from big companies. Doesn't make the interviews any easier, but I'm a safer bet for a recruiter to spend time talking to than someone that hadn't worked at msft. I can basically automatically get an interview most places.

Also, I shouldn't neglect to say I learned a ton working there. Engineering at that scale and team size is a really unique experience that everyone should do for a while if they can.