1415T1g1 Silicon Valley/Participant Information/Reflection/11 Dec
- TBC
- TBC
The news that we’re going to Google was received with much excitement. Google is one of the companies that almost every engineer or developer wants to work at. Of course, it’s natural to dream of working at a company that ranks top for best workplaces, great salary, great employee benefits and free food. Google’s work place is structured much like a university with buildings (a.k.a complexes) with facilities such as meeting rooms, work stations, quite rooms, etc. for the staff to book and utilize. Such a workplace is immortalized in the tech world and is adopted by many tech companies and startups.
My thought that Google have managed to allow its employees to generate ideas and thus, retain the startup culture was wrong. Because according to the discussion at Google, the company has grown too large and is facing difficulties in churning out new projects. The current CEO, Larry Page has taken initiatives to shut down unsuccessful projects. This may mean that Googlers will become less willing to propose new projects. Since new projects give the company an opportunity to avoid being stagnant and keep up with the upcoming trends, Google’s strategy is to invest in successful startups that deal with the fields Google is interested in. This strategy can be seen in the company’s acquisition of robotic firms recently. Therefore, this may be a sign that the company might cut down on internal project proposition and adopt the aforementioned investment strategy.
It is interesting and humbling to hear how people get hired into Google. How Google stays fair in it’s hiring efforts is something I respect about the company. As a young secondary school student who had joined the school’s IT Club, I was excited to learn programming and go for competitions. It is unfortunate that at that young age, I didn't had much guidance and had to be independent both in learning and participating in IT competitions. I used to join National Olympiad of Informatics (NOI) organized by NUS during my secondary school times and always wondered how people could program an algorithm so fast and efficient. I had to learn coding, data structures, problem solving myself. I had no idea that a field called computational thinking existed back then. Perhaps, I would have had a chance to win one of the many NOI competitions I joined if I had formal training. Nevertheless, I am glad to have shared this connection of participating in NOI with Yan Hao, our host at Google.
A programmer's dream, Google is one the biggest tech firms in the world. The sheer size of the company is just overwhelming. One has to take transport to get from one point to another. Initially, the storm made it impossible to visit Google but thanks to Yihao's brother, Yanhao, we were lucky to visit this fine institute eventually. Like the general consensus, it is very hard to get into Google and Yanhao actually went through with us the selection and hiring process. The most important thing is not about the entire hiring process itself because everyone knows that it is tough, but instead it is the amount of effort that one is willing to put in in order to get the job. A lot of times people just give up halfway when it gets too tough, and therefore did not make it to companies to Google eventually. One of the attributing reason may be due to the fact that Google is in the States, and it is so far away from Singapore. That causes a lot of people to lose sight of it during their study days. It is good to go on trips like this TSM, to visit institutes such as Google to get back the dream that one had.
The most daunting factor of working in Silicon Valley may be the corporate tax rates here. With a whopping 40% of corporate tax rate, the bring-home pay is much less. However, Google realises this problem and also knows that money is not the only determining factor of keeping a good employee. As such, they have one the best facilities in the world in order to provide employees entertainment and relaxation at work. At the same time, they also provide meals and transportation for the employees. It all goes to show that in Silicon Valley, pay is not the only detrimental factor of keeping talents, work benefits are very important too.
