>In college, I never took a course on Compilers or Programming Languages...
>I got the job through a summer internship, which allowed me to bypass the rigorous 8-interviews-in-a-day hiring process. And I lucked out... completely escaped having to code over the phone.
I'm not trying to troll. However, I honestly do consider you landing a Google engineering internship/job with those school background (and zero coding experience outside of school up to that point) being pretty lucky. Consider this guy[1]. I believe he would've most likely gotten the internship had he gone through the same interview process as you. I know that's just my subjective opinion. However, the bottom line is he went through a very different (arguably harder) interview process than you did. It's harder in the sense you could have very well failed had you been asked to code over google doc + phone. The key factor here is this process that Google uses everyday to turn down countless competent but not extraordinary people - you did not have to go through it. That is the basis I deem you lucky.
There is a certain level of respect (among other befits) given to former or current Google engineers among hackers. And I would argue that is the case largely because of the very difficult process that they had to through to become one. I can totally understand why you had the sense of inferiority and insecurity of your coding abilities, having not gone through that process.
Of course none of this makes your point of everyone is good at different things and you should not beat yourself up any less significant. I agree with you on most other points. I'm also happy for you that you've overcome these self defeating thoughts and have proven to yourself. As some one else mentioned in the comments, the problem was you being you own toughest critic.
hiring processes depend a lot on luck, way more than maybe we'd like to think, mostly based on who you know and whether the person across the table 'likes' you or not, and what positions are available. but she succeeded in the real world internship position she held and did good enough work that other people vouched for her to become an employee. that probably wasn't a 'lucky break' at all.
Argh, and I was contemplating applying for a product manager role at google. After reading this i wont be applying anytime soon -it's been over 10 years since I studied data structures and algorithms.
There are a lot of good programmers that don't code for fun outside of class. I didn't code in my internship interviews, but I certainly did during my 12 week internship, and the two conversion interviews I had at the end of the internship. Whether or not that was harder than that guy's interview process is debatable, but that's the way I looked at for awhile.
People dread the Google interviews because they are painful and exhausting. Not because they are a good test of ability.
In my experience, Google's interview process is very random. You never know when you're going to get some jackass who wants to ask you some aha-problem question. When I was at Google we had some interns who were forced to reinterview, and some of the best were knocked out by a question about betting on the color of shells chosen in complete darkness or some such nonsense.
Side note -- I had impostor syndrome at Google because I had only gotten through the interviews, and never done any CS coursework.
>I got the job through a summer internship, which allowed me to bypass the rigorous 8-interviews-in-a-day hiring process. And I lucked out... completely escaped having to code over the phone.
I'm not trying to troll. However, I honestly do consider you landing a Google engineering internship/job with those school background (and zero coding experience outside of school up to that point) being pretty lucky. Consider this guy[1]. I believe he would've most likely gotten the internship had he gone through the same interview process as you. I know that's just my subjective opinion. However, the bottom line is he went through a very different (arguably harder) interview process than you did. It's harder in the sense you could have very well failed had you been asked to code over google doc + phone. The key factor here is this process that Google uses everyday to turn down countless competent but not extraordinary people - you did not have to go through it. That is the basis I deem you lucky.
There is a certain level of respect (among other befits) given to former or current Google engineers among hackers. And I would argue that is the case largely because of the very difficult process that they had to through to become one. I can totally understand why you had the sense of inferiority and insecurity of your coding abilities, having not gone through that process.
Of course none of this makes your point of everyone is good at different things and you should not beat yourself up any less significant. I agree with you on most other points. I'm also happy for you that you've overcome these self defeating thoughts and have proven to yourself. As some one else mentioned in the comments, the problem was you being you own toughest critic.
[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2384018