Career Advice from Successful Googlers
November 18, 2015
A few words of wisdom from a Google veteran went from Quora query to Huffington Post article in, “What It Takes to Rise the Ranks at Google: Advice from a Senior Staff Engineer.” The original question was, “How hard is it to make Senior Engineer at Google.” HuffPo senior editor Nico Pitney reproduces the most popular response, that of senior engineer Carlos Pizano. Pizano lists some of his education and pre-Google experience, and gives some credit to plain luck, but here’s the part that makes this good guidance for approaching many jobs:
“I happen to be a believer of specialization, so becoming ‘the person’ on a given subject helped me a lot. Huge swaths of core technology key to Google’s success I know nothing about, of some things I know all there is to know … or at least my answers on the particular subject were the best to be found at Google. Finally, I never focused on my career. I tried to help everybody that needed advice, even fixing their code when they let me and was always ready to spread the knowledge. Coming up with projects but giving them to eager, younger people. Shine the light on other’s accomplishments. All that comes back to you when performance review season comes.”
Knowing your stuff and helping others—yes, that will go a long way indeed. For more engineers’ advice, some of which is more Google-specific, navigate to the list of responses here.
Cynthia Murrell, November 18, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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Career Advice from Successful Googlers : Stephen E. Arnold @ Beyond Search