The Google Resume (18 page)

Events

Attending events in person can be one of the most effective ways to network. Recruiters will be able to see how you communicate and act, and to put a face to a name. This is (hopefully) a good thing.

The Game Developers Conference is a great chance for you to learn about the industry, and perhaps an even better opportunity for you to network. Recruiters flood the conference, as it acts as a huge recruiting event. Come with your “pitch” and business card ready. The registration fee is hefty, but college students can get access at a significantly reduced rate.

Additionally, if you follow companies on Facebook and Twitter, you may discover that they are hosting upcoming open houses, mixers, and happy hours. These events can be a great way to learn more about the company, meet current employees, or even network with attendees who work for other gaming companies.

Personality Fit

Geeks everywhere will be thrilled to hear that their personality doesn’t matter—
too
much. Recruiters and hiring managers have resigned themselves to socially awkward developers. That’s just what the field is like. As long as you’re not arrogant and teammates wouldn’t despise you, you’re probably “good enough” on the personality front. However, while socialness is not required, “any engineer that that can carry on a conversation will be in high demand,” said Katy Haddix, a recruiter at VonChurch.

For other positions, a strong personality fit is much more critical. These positions require more interfacing with coworkers, partners, and users. And, unlike for development positions, companies can afford to focus on the personality fit. The following five personality traits are some of the most universal requirements that interviewers will attempt to evaluate.

Some other traits, such as honesty and adaptability, are equally important but more challenging for an interviewer to assess. Demonstrating that you lack either of these, however, can certainly bar you from an offer.

Young at Heart

“You’re working with teenagers,” VonChurch recruiter Jeff says. “Sure, they may be technically 40 years old, but they’re still teenagers.”

Indeed, the casual gaming industry is young, in terms of the trade itself as well as the employees. This youthfulness gives it a high-energy, let’s-go-grab-a-drink environment.

Additionally, Audra Aulabaugh from Big Fish adds, “The output is casual games. We want people who like to have fun because they’re the ones who’ll be able to build something really fun.” Your suit-and-tie employee won’t cut it there.

Console gaming companies are a bit more aged, but still cling to the young-at-heart culture.

Likable

Employees at casual game companies work unusually close with each other to push out their nearly monthly releases, and a so-called “bad apple” can be poisonous to a team environment. On top of this, you’re working long hours many days, and when you’re not, you’re going to the bar, to happy hours, and the like. It’s critical that you get along with your colleagues.

Confidence is good, but you need to check your ego at the door. There is nothing worse than a teammate who can’t wait to tell you how superior he is. We’ve all met the type.

Creative/Imaginative

Even in roles that don’t require an artistic flair, employees tend to be more creative and imaginative. This is reflected in everything from how they solve problems to their not-so-secret love for fantasy and sci-fi. Gaming companies will want to know that you are imaginative, as it’s creativity that fuels their games.

Work Ethic

It’s nice to be able to regurgitate the old line “it doesn’t matter how many hours you work, as long as you get your work done,” but the problem is that the work is never really done. Gaming companies require that you have the work ethic to put in these extra hours.

For this reason, a passion and drive for gaming and for the specific company is critical. You need to be willing to commit that time.

Strong Communication Skills

Cross-functional collaboration in order to rapidly push out a game is critical, forcing companies to stress strong communication skills. Interviewers want to see that you can explain and defend a position clearly, while also listening to and understanding another person’s perspective. They may not ask as pointed questions to assess your communication skills as they might your technical skills, but you can bet they’ll be evaluating it in every response. This is especially true if you want to move into a lead or management role.

The Gaming Interview—Three Tips to Doing Well

While all the standard interview advice (be concise, create questions to ask, etc.) applies equally to gaming advice, some advice is more specific to this field. The following three tips are especially important in gaming interviews, though they may be more broadly applicable as well.

1. Play the Game

Perhaps the best part of interviewing with a game company—other than getting a crack at giant version of the flagship games—is that your interview preparation
is
playing games. After all, you have to research any company before your interview. What better way to do that than to play its games?

While playing these games, be sure to think about the following questions:

• What are you impressed by?
  
• What makes it fun?
  
• What would you change in the next version?
  

In your answers to these questions, pay particular attention to anything that’s relevant to your job title.

2. Show Confidence (but Not Too Much)

Because game companies move so fast, it’s important that a candidate understand her skill set, and understand how it can be applied. “A candidate should be able to say ‘I’ve done A, B, and C, and I know that I can do D,’” says Katy Haddix, a VonChurch recruiter. You need enough self-confidence to know that you can do something new, but not so much that you turn off your teammates.

3. Be Likable

Long hours make likability an essential trait, and even the least chatty person can apply a few tricks to make herself more sociable:

• Smile.
  Even if it’s a phone interview, smiling will come through in your voice. In fact, not only does smiling make you appear happier, it actually makes you happier.
  
• Laugh.
  Laughing suggests to your interviewer that you like to have a good time and are fun to be around. Pay attention to how your interviewer acts, and mimic him. If he’s more serious, then perhaps you should follow his lead.
  
• Be agreeable.
  Being a complete pushover won’t help you in your interview, but you don’t want to be argumentative either. You should assert your opinions while going out of your way to listen to your interviewer. Remember:
  the interviewer is always right.
  Stubborn candidates should make a special effort to keep this element under wraps.
  

However, while likability and sociability is important, that’s no excuse for being unprofessional. Off-color comments have no place in an interview.

Your Questions Answered

Making the Jump

Value Added

It’s the Little Things that Count

David and I met over drinks to discuss my job offer. This was negotiation number 3. I’d thought a more social atmosphere might relax the situation, but things didn’t quite go as planned. David ordered just a glass of water—at a
wine
bar—and I couldn’t help but note that his frugality with drinks seemed to fit so well with his lowball offer. Of course, if you talked to him, he’d tell you that the offer was more than generous.

We’d each appealed to higher authorities: David to the company’s investors and to the Internet, and I to my super-CEO mother. The venture capitalists just shrugged and told him that it was his decision. The Internet gave him a conveniently decisive range for how much equity engineers get. My mother explained that “normal” ranges are meaningless; that it’s a complex trade-off between salary, equity, vesting schedule, benefits, and job expectations. “Obviously, if your salary were a million dollars per year, you wouldn’t need any equity.” I couldn’t disagree with her logic. Wine-is-too-expensive-for-me David could.

Ultimately, I had one thing on my side that he didn’t: the word
no.
I could walk away, and my branding of an ex-Googler/Microsoftie/Applite would land me a new and equally exciting opportunity. David, however, had just cashed his check from the venture capitalists and desperately needed help getting his company off the ground.

Two more meetings and two more glasses of wine later (both mine, of course), we eventually struck a deal that was just good enough to satisfy our respective interests.

How to Evaluate an Offer

As my mother said, offers are complex. They include a salary, bonus, raises, vacation days, health care, and so on—and that’s just the financial side. You also must consider your career direction, the company culture, your future teammates, and potentially even the feelings of a spouse or significant other. Then, to really muddy the waters, you rarely have all the information (How many hours will you be working? What are annual raises like?).

The complexities of an offer usually can be broken down into the following categories:

• Career development.
  Is this the right decision for your career? Will the job look good on your résumé? Will it help you progress in your career?
  
• Financial package.
  How much are they paying you? What are the perks (health care, stock, etc.) worth?
  
• Happiness.
  Will you enjoy the job? Will you get along with your teammates? Is the location where you want to live?
  

I can’t tell you what the right decision is, but I can help you dissect an offer so that you can make the right decision
for you
.

Your Career Development

New candidate, same story: I accepted a job with and I thought it was a great opportunity. And it was! At first, anyway. But then, five years later, I was still at the same job, and I couldn’t help but think—where had the prior year gotten me? I could have done something new or different, but instead I stayed at my job doing the same old stuff.

Technology companies especially are filled with people like this. Companies like Microsoft and Google are such great places to work that it’s easy to lose sight of where you’re going—and it’s even easier to not want to jump ship.

I strongly recommend that, prior to accepting a job, a candidate map out her career path. You should know where you want your career to go, and what the path is to getting there. This will help you understand how to be successful in your career, as well as understand if a job is even right for you.

Learning and Development

Some companies have more rigorous training processes than others. Google, for example, sends every new employee through two weeks of “Noogler Training.” These classes teach employees about Google as a company and take a deep dive into job-specific learning. Engineers, for example, will learn about BigTable, MapReduce, and other tools. This enables employees to understand what their colleagues outside of their team are doing.

In addition to new employee training, some companies may offer courses for continuing development, either within the company or at a local university. These courses can be incredibly valuable—or just a way of placating employees. Or, worse yet, they may say that they support their employees going back to school, but they may actually discourage it once you join. Don’t take a company’s word for it—ask to speak to an employee who has utilized these opportunities.

Responsibilities and Decision Making

As valuable as formal education is, you usually learn the most by doing. A position where you are given substantial responsibilities and are given the freedom to make mistakes will enable you to learn more powerful and relevant lessons.

In Peter’s first two years as a software engineer at Google, he was given the opportunity to manage an intern, prepare design documents for key features, participate in planning and strategy discussions, and help shape the direction of the team. And all this was in addition to his regular responsibilities as a coder. When he left Google to join a start-up, he had no problems getting interviews for software engineering or program management positions. He had developed not only the technical skills necessary, but also the communication and planning skills.

To position yourself in the best possible way, look for teams that will give you responsibilities beyond your actual job description, and even beyond your level of responsibility. If you want to be a manager one day, look for teams that will let you mentor or manage someone—if it’s “just” an intern. If you want to move from testing to development, find a position that will let you write code automation, and do periodic bug fixes.

Additionally, you should make sure you understand how decisions get made. Many companies love to say, “Oh, we make them as a team,” but that’s rarely the case. Who drives the decision? What happens when there’s conflict? What decisions will you be responsible for, and what decisions do you merely offer feedback on?

Promotions

I have a rule: always go to a company (or team) that’s growing. Growing companies means new employees and, hey, someone has to tell them what to do, right? And that person might just be me.

Even within more stagnant companies, though, there can be a wide range in one’s ability to move up the corporate ladder. Ask about the following:

• Tenure.
  When is an employee considered a “new” employee? At a younger company, employees who have been there for just a year or two might be considered old-timers—though at Microsoft they would still be considered recent hires. Generally speaking, the shorter the tenure, the more opportunities there are.
  
• Growth rate.
  Don’t be fooled by looking at the number of people that a company has hired each year. Huge companies like Microsoft hire thousands of people each year, but that doesn’t mean the company is growing. The number you need to know is the
  percent
  growth. In the case of larger companies, the more relevant stat might be the growth of your team. After all, who cares if Bing is growing if you work on Windows?
  
• Promoting from within.
  Some companies promote from within, and some tend to hire senior positions from the outside. Intel, for instance, has a tradition of promoting internally. Google, however, hired many of their earlier managers externally. In this case, they had no other choice: the company was growing too rapidly, and the junior employees couldn’t get ready fast enough to fill the management’s shoes.
  

Résumé and Prestige

For better or for worse, having a big name on your résumé opens doors. It may not be the place where you would learn the most, or have the most responsibilities (though it might be), but it offers credibility that you won’t get at a lesser-known firm. It’s a stamp on your résumé that says, “I am at least
this
good.”

Therefore, in considering an offer, be sure to analyze:

• Company brand name.
  How well known is the company? Remember that brand names are not universal. A company can have a strong brand within your field but not outside of your field, and vice versa. For example, working at the best advertising firm in the world may not help your résumé stand out when it’s being reviewed by recruiters unfamiliar with advertising.
  
• Position and title.
  Some companies inflate titles, some companies deflate them, and others give titles that just aren’t quite descriptive or appropriate. I’ve talked to a number of candidates from smaller companies who were officially “testers,” but they actually spent their day writing production-level code. They can partially recover from this issue by listing both an official and unofficial title on their résumé, but they certainly would have been better off had they been listed as developers from the start.
  

Company’s Future and Stability

Candidates frequently ask me questions like, “Is Microsoft stable? Will they do layoffs again?” I always respond with this question: “Well, what if they do?” I find that most candidates overemphasize the stability of a company.

If you find yourself trying to analyze the stability of a company, ask yourself what the (realistic) worst case is. You probably won’t find yourself unable to find a job, kicked out of your apartment, and sitting on the streets of San Francisco with a sign saying, “Will Code for Food.” More likely, you’ll walk out with a few months of severance pay and you’ll find a new job before you’ve even used that up.

That said, job stability may be quite important in certain cases. If you require a visa or hope to apply for a green card, layoffs could pose a serious threat to your life. Alternatively, if you have very specific skills or requirements in a job, finding a new job that is a good match could prove challenging. Only you can decide how much of a disruption layoffs could pose to your lifestyle.

Location

Amit, a soon-to-be PhD graduate, came to me with a dilemma. He was deciding between two offers: one from Intel in Santa Clara, and the other from AOL in Dulles, Virginia. He had been analyzing the financial package, the team, and the growth opportunities, but had skipped right over the location aspect.

“Amit,” I asked him. “How long do you expect to stay at the company?” He told me that he would probably leave within several years. “OK, and then where will you go? What are your options?”

He had a three-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter. If he left AOL, he’d have a hard time finding a new job in the area. Dulles, Virginia, is not exactly a hotbed of a technology innovation. Leaving AOL would likely mean having to relocate and pluck his two young children out of their schools midyear and away from all their friends. Amit decided that dealing with two screaming young children would not make his job search much easier, and he decided to go to Intel.

Learn from Amit’s lesson, and make sure to evaluate your future career opportunities in a location. Being trapped in a company is never a fun experience.

The Financial Package

We all know the old cliché “there’s more to life than money,” but my telling you this won’t change your mind one bit. After all, you’re the best person to decide how much money matters.

However, what I can tell you is that money is complicated. First, any differences in salary in the short term are likely to be dwarfed differences in your career opportunities. That is, if you learn a bunch at a company, you’ll be able to get a higher-paying job down the road. Second, it can be tricky to understand which offer is the best paying.

In 2005, I faced this delightfully difficult decision: should I go to Google, Microsoft, or Amazon? Though I was dazzled by the money they were throwing at me, I had no idea who was paying the most.

Amazon had the lowest pay, but also offered a signing bonus and stock grants. Microsoft offered the highest salary, but offered only two weeks of vacation and virtually no stock. Google was somewhere in the middle on salary and offered options, and who knew what those would be worth? (This was, unfortunately, after they went public.)

And then, on top of it all, you had all the other perks and benefits: health care, free drinks, free lunch, and so on. Did those matter? And how much?

There’s no precise formula to answer these questions, but there are some general guidelines to consider.

Components of an Offer

In additional to salary, offers from technology firms often consist of stock, bonuses, and other financial compensation. How do you compare offers that vary across multiple metrics? By putting a price tag on everything and dividing it by the number of years you expect to stay at the company.

For example, suppose Amazon offers you a $70k salary and a $20k signing bonus, and Google offers you a $4k signing bonus and $75k salary. Which company pays better? It depends on how long you expect to stay. If you expect to leave in two years, then Amazon pays better ($80k vs. $77k).

This means that the longer you stay at a company, the less these one-time perks matter.

To understand your financial compensation, you need to look at everything that’s included in the offer, as well as things that aren’t. Ensure that you have as many of the following as possible:

Some of these factors, such as annual bonuses and annual raises, might be difficult to ascertain, as companies are reluctant to give out this information. If you can track down an employee, however, she might offer you an idea of what’s normal versus what’s good.