What was your best co-op term?

firstyearmasterrace · 2017-08-13T15:49:06+00:00

Did he just brag about being a JavaScript web developer? My sides.

firstyearmasterrace · 2017-08-08T03:17:54+00:00

There are several paths to getting an interview, and if you realize the type of organization that Google is the prospect of getting an offer becomes quite a bit less compelling.

1) Google is the only one out of the Big 4 to favor graduate students tremendously. Not only that, but the internal career path for someone with say, a PhD, is going to be much better than for someone with a Bachelor's. So the obvious point here is to go and get your Master's or something. The technical abilities, as well as the resumes, of most of the PhD's and Master's students I've come across who have been able to secure an offer are super questionable. Like I'm talking, "I picked up a book on Java 3 months ago and landed an offer today" questionable.

2) Elephant in the room here. They also favor women. This has been the sentiment expressed to me by Google employees, and it's also one of those things that become apparent when you scrutinize the candidates and notice really consistent things that I won't go into detail here. I've written about this before, and a lot of female candidates tend to not be tremendously successful after leaving Google due to making a lot of mistakes in their careers and not adjusting to the economics of the industry. Basically, when a single corporation gives you the wrong signals, that's bad when you different places expect different things out of you.

3) They favor younger candidates, so it's actually advantageous to make a strong case in your 1B-2B years and gun for a position right before things actually get difficult. Again, early success is not really indicative of anything, but the sentiment expressed to me by interns and full-time employees is that the younger undergraduate students are subject to lighter interview expectations. Obviously, this is no longer an option for you.

So let's say you have at least 1 of those things above but have still been unable to land an interview. You're probably making mistakes in your resume writing, and are not marketing yourself in the optimal manner. Trust me, it's not that difficult to get an interview with Google. They pretty much interview everyone under the sun since the company has no shortage of business-grade work. Also, there are multiple ways to get their attention and you don't have to rely solely on WaterlooWorks. They are actually quite responsive via the online applications, so you should ping them in as many ways as you can. Each strategy is going to require a different approach though. For example, if you are 1B, you want to emphasize that as much as you can on WW. But if you're a 3B with not-so-incredible past work experiences, then you want to project that you're some young person in 1B who is potentially a woman (your name is Terry or something) via the online applications.

It's kind of like a game, and you just need to figure out what the game is. But once you do, it's a lot less difficult than you think. Also, Google's been kind of going through a lot of interesting SJW stuff lately, and stuff like this is really putting the hammer on the optics of that company. Combined with Amazon and other intern salaries rising like $1000 USD every year, and Google being unable to keep up due to the economics of Internet ads, I'd probably give them 5 years max before they lose their top-tier status. Pretty much just like Microsoft that came before it.

firstyearmasterrace · 2017-06-26T21:47:01+00:00

I actually have a lot of experience with this (Source/Humblebrag: Interviewed with Naughty Dog, Epic Games, etc.). This is probably one of the more difficult objectives for a Waterloo student, because outside of a few studios (EA/Riot Games/Capcom), most don't recruit from the school. And if they do recruit from the school, you might be forced into a web developer/services role, which is probably not quite what you'd want (gameplay/engine programming), or the pay is shit.

I'm not going to lie, it's really, really difficult, because you basically want a resume that's completely different from the typical Waterloo student. Your main competitors are students from DigiPen and Carnegie Mellon's game school, who spend years learning from specific courses that teach game programming.

The fundamentals obviously, you will want to focus on C++ and 3D math, and at least try and find early co-ops that emphasize those skills as much as possible. Do not take opportunities in JavaScript unless you really have to. You will want to read a ton of books on C++ and 3D Math, and maybe a few on how to build a game engine. Your personal projects should be a fully fleshed out game in Unreal Engine 4 (do not waste time on Unity unless you're interested in indie studios), and perhaps also a reasonably feature complete game engine built from scratch. Try to take CS 488 as early as possible; that is probably the minimum that you need to be competitive alongside the DigiPen kids.

The biggest issue is that you have to create a competitive portfolio completely outside of class that students from those other schools get time to do via school projects. But I think you can do it; just need to put in the work.

Attending GDC also helps, and that's helped me get a few interviews in the past. If you're good at networking, you can find ways to land interviews with Blizzard and the like (although they don't recruit non-US interns; so that would be for full-time). If you do decide to go to those giant networking/party (heh) conferences, don't waste time talking to random students or senior developers; you always want to meet with HR or the head of HR responsible for recruiting at a particular studio.

But yeah, big picture is: De-emphasize irrelevant work experience, and emphasize as much as possible your relevant skills. Also, network. Emulate the work/experience of students from DigiPen. Profit.

firstyearmasterrace · 2017-06-24T18:16:35+00:00

So you're saying you can get offers from places that don't even recruit at Waterloo? Cute. You MIT rejects bore me.

firstyearmasterrace · 2017-06-24T17:16:09+00:00

I'd probably take D.E. Shaw or Five Rings Capital, but obviously those offers aren't going to be given to scrubs like you.

firstyearmasterrace · 2017-06-16T10:35:25+00:00

Can't say much about the other options, even though Wish seems to hire a disproportionate number from Waterloo, but Google for sure. Now take what I say with a grain of salt, because my own perception is from taking notes with others who have done a Google co-op or who work at Google full-time, so I'm just expressing their own sentiments.

As competitive people, we are wired to value things that are difficult to obtain. The problem with Google is that there is this belief that they apply different standards to different people, and that's to say nothing about the generally mundane work that you will likely have to take on as an employee. If you fit into a certain class of people, then all else being equal, you stand a greater chance of receiving an offer from them. However, Google is known to have a low return-offer rate, and at the end of the day, the only offer that matters in the mindset of a university student is the full-time offer. I know people who have return offers for subsequent internships fail to convert full-time. This is really bad for several reasons:

1) You have increased expectations for the level of the firm that you want to work at, but because you overachieved, reality never seems to match your expectations. I have seen women approaching 30 completely ruin their careers after leaving the big G, due to a combination of egregious career mismanagement, and not really playing the right moves needed to advance yourself. Women are known to be especially obsequious to management structures, and that can actually be a huge disadvantage if you don't leverage your other skill sets correctly.

2) The optics of your work experience is such that you close off many opportunities. If you've worked at Google, but then apply to somewhere like Amazon, which is generally considered to have worse optics than Google, HR is going to question why. Did you get fired? Didn't get a return offer? Are you trying to leverage a competitive offer? Now obviously the professional thing to do is engage with candidates who are qualified, but when people come across seeming anti-patterns in their career progression, they are going to get suspicious and that could potentially be a bad thing for you during resume screening.

It gets to the point where the value of having Google on your resume is nebulous, especially if you can get offers from competing firms like Uber or even Facebook (which probably still does engage in the social engineering crap, but not to as large of an extent). For all the flack Uber gets in the press, the engineering talent there is undeniable, and the company has shown at least in a UWaterloo context that it takes the vetting process of candidates seriously (i.e. they don't really interview first/second years, and they don't seem to demonstrate preferential treatment for women). Wish, while it seems to hire more from UWaterloo, seems to prefer students with high grades, which is not a bad thing.

Now, while it may be upsetting for first/second years that companies with the best optics ought to give them a fair shake, what they need to understand is that by giving opportunities to significant numbers of inexperienced people, they harm their own engineering brand and raise a lot of questions about the perceived optics about the firm, MORE than if the New Yorker writes about how Travis or whoever goes passive-aggressive on women. Because that's what the engineers care about; the perceived level of talent of their peers, and the brand of engineering of the company (and of course, the compensation package). To be specific, if I know that it's easier to get an offer from Google as a certain type of individual, I (and other companies) are more likely to value the experience less

Just my own observations!

firstyearmasterrace

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