Hey—we've moved. Visit
The Keyword
for all the latest news and stories from Google
Official Blog
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
Baby steps to a new job
4 janvier 2008
Posted by Gretta Cook, Software Engineer, Google Seattle
In late 2004, Google opened an engineering office
near Seattle
, and my son Elliott was born. I had heard great things from my friends who worked for the company down in California, and I was eager to join their ranks in this new local office. But the timing was all wrong: I wanted to spend a few years at home with my new baby.
Elliott and I had lots of fun. We went to the park and the library together. We read nursery rhymes and played peek-a-boo. We baked muffins and did finger painting. We did not, however, debate the relative merits of our favorite cache replacement policies, or write and debug multithreaded C++ code. So by the time Elliott was ready to start preschool and I was ready to go back to work, I had to ask: Would I still be able to pass a Google interview, or had I forgotten all of my technical skills?
If I wanted to land the job, I had to get serious: I needed to brush up on my data structures and algorithms, my coding, not to mention general interview skills. For the next few months, I hired a babysitter to come and watch Elliott one afternoon a week. I split that time between studying my college computer science textbooks and participating in online coding contests. The coding contests were particularly valuable because they forced me to work through the design and coding stages quickly, just like in an interview. The details of the standard Java and C++ libraries came back to me as I scrambled to get my contest code to run before time was up. I even asked friends to do mock interviews with me so I could get used to writing code on a whiteboard again.
In the end, all of this paid off. My day of interviews went really well, and I got the job!
The Seattle-area office and Elliott turned three recently; they're both thriving. I feel very fortunate to have the two of them in my life. And I'd encourage anyone -- including new moms -- who is interested in
a job at Google
to go for it.
Libellés
Africa
19
Android
58
April 1
4
Asia
39
Europe
46
Latin America
18
accessibility
41
acquisition
26
ads
131
apps
418
books + book search
48
commerce
12
computing history
7
crisis response
33
culture
12
developers
120
diversity
35
doodles
68
education and research
144
entrepreneurs at Google
14
faster web
16
free expression
61
google.org
73
googleplus
50
googlers and culture
202
green
102
maps and earth
194
mobile
124
online safety
19
open source
19
photos
39
policy and issues
139
politics
71
privacy
66
recruiting and hiring
32
scholarships
31
search
505
search quality
24
search trends
118
security
36
small business
31
user experience and usability
41
youtube and video
140
Archive
2016
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2015
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2014
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2013
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2012
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2011
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2010
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2009
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2008
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2007
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2006
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2005
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2004
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
Feed
Google
on
Follow @google
Follow
Give us feedback in our
Product Forums
.
Follow
