Questions from someone looking for an engineering job @ Google
How soon I can apply for other positions at Google if am rejected for a particular position?
There's no limitation. However, Google has a long institutional memory. If you did badly for reasons of cultural fit, it is unlikely that any subsequent application will be successful. If your first set of interviewers are credible, it will take an extremely strong referral notice from an employee who was a previous colleague to give you another chance.
What's the total interview duration in general?
45 minutes each, 5-8 interviewers (including phone interviews)
I am not a spontanious person in nature and hence chances are likely that I don't do good in interviews. But am really excellent on the job. What's your advice in my situation during interview?
Practice, practice, practice. Get a few friends to do mock interviews. Or try an alternate way of getting into google, through one of the many programming contests we sponsor, for instance.
What's the good reference you recommend to get the basics of computer science(I may not know all the fundamentals that I learn thro' my job).
Two classic textbooks: If you can read both books and do the exercises easily, then you are probably qualified. (If you click through and read the reviews, you'll notice that the first SICP reviewer is Peter Norvig, a Google director)
MIT professors don't need help from me to make money --- they assign the textbooks they write for their classes! :-)
ReplyDeleteIt's not a coincidence that two of the top Computer Science schools in the U.S. use SICP for their introductory class.
Note that you can find the entire text of SICP online, so you don't really have to buy the book.
There are plenty of substitutes for Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest, but that's the one I'm familiar with. (Note that it does you no good to memorize the book --- you actually have to understand it!)
Another very good and relevant book, also recommended by Peter Norvig, is Managing Gigabytes.
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