Tech Dogg's Dox Tox
Posted in Work at 12:46:14 PM on 04 April 2007 | Comments: 5
Don't let this happen to you!
I'd like to thank Zack at Google for giving me a boot in the pants last September. That's when I interviewed with him by telephone.
I thought I'd relate what preceded the interview and what Zack and I discussed, not only because you might find it enlightening, but because it might also help you avoid making the same mistakes I did.
I applied for Google's Technical Writer, Operations - Santa Monica position, which I found on their web site. I forwarded my resume to a friend of a friend who works at Google, who subsequently became my de facto sponsor.
Four days later,
Google contacted me by email and requested three soft copy writing samples,
"preferably work that was [my] sole responsibility".
For each sample I submitted,
they asked that I briefly answer the following questions:
A couple days later,
I sent them three
writing samples,
as requested,
plus a couple of freebies.
Yeah,
I know, I didn't exactly follow their directions,
but the freebies were my personal favorites.
And,
hey,
just because I write directions,
doesn't mean I always follow them,
right?
I've always been curious about how Google produces its documentation, internally and externally. Not surprisingly, Google's documentation is largely HTML-based. Some writers use CSS-based templates. Other writers, those who produce external documentation, use FrameMaker. Many writers use Adobe Acrobat to produce PDF, Visio for graphics, and Dreamweaver to edit HTML, although some writers choose to get their hands dirty and produce raw HTML by hand. Platforms include Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. The documentation process at Google, in terms of tools and structure, is very informal.
Anyway, just over two weeks after I submitted my writing samples, Google contacted me by email requesting a 45-minute telephone interview. Two weeks after that I was on the phone talking to Zack.
I think that the interview started off nicely, but then just as quickly descended to hell in a handbasket.
We started off by discussing my "certification" from Loyola Marymount University here in Los Angeles, from which I had received a certificate in management.
"Certification", I asked?
"Yeah, at Loyola", he replied. "What did you learn there?"
"Oh, right". Now I understood what he was talking about.
Why he had latched onto this particular bit from my resume, I don't know. I mean, in my opinion, it has to be the most uninteresting part of my academic career. But okay. I described what I learned there, both academically and personally.
I believe we next talked about the UNIX shell scripts I've written. Now, the thing to know here is that when it comes to UNIX shell scripts, I'm completely self taught. I learned everything I know from a handful of sources:
- Stephen Bourne's The UNIX System V Environment
- Brian Kernighan's and Rob Pike's The UNIX Programming Environment
- Alfred Aho's, Brian Kernighan's, and Peter Weinberger's The AWK Programming Language
The rest includes brute force trial and error, hundreds of man pages, and Lee McMahon's white paper SED - A Non-interactive Text Editor (written during the golden days of UNIX, by the way, in 1978, which contains the classic Kublai Khan example--awesome!).
This discussion lead, in turn--or downturn, depending on how you look at it--to a discussion of "file globbing".
When Zack mentioned the term, I hadn't a clue what he was talking about. I suspected that I knew, having heard the term used in relation to Perl, but I wasn't sure, and that was my undoing. I began to panic. Twitchy, convulsive images of me at my keyboard, nervously typing "file globbing" into Google's search window crashed and burned in my mind. No time for that now.
"Um, what do you mean by file globbing?", I asked timorously.
"Don't worry about that now", he replied, "I'll explain later". Damn!
Oh, I'm sorry! Thanks for playing!
Stop now, I thought. Just shoot me. But, no, I kept going.
Fool.
Zack: 1, Brian: 0.
Next, he asked me what the option was to list a directory recursively.
"Dash r", I replied, half confidently.
"Upper or lowercase?", he asked.
He knows the answer, I realized. I didn't, unfortunately.
"Um, lower?", I replied.
Oh, I'm sorry! Thanks for playing!
Fifty-fifty chance I'd get it right. And, of course, I got it wrong:
User Commands ls(1)
NAME
ls - list contents of directory
SYNOPSIS
/usr/bin/ls [-aAbcCdeEfFghHilLmnopqrRstux1@] [file...]
/usr/xpg4/bin/ls [-aAbcCdeEfFghHilLmnopqrRstux1@] [file...]
/usr/xpg6/bin/ls [-aAbcCdeEfFghHilLmnopqrRstux1@] [file...]
DESCRIPTION
For each file that is a directory, ls lists the contents of
the directory. For each file that is an ordinary file, ls
repeats its name and any other information requested. The
output is sorted alphabetically by default. When no argument
is given, the current directory is listed. When several
arguments are given, the arguments are first sorted
appropriately, but file arguments appear before directories
and their contents.
/-R
...skipping
-R Recursively lists subdirectories encountered.
Zack: 2, Brian: 0.
But wait, there's more!
Zack then asked me the years in which I received my educational degrees.
Oh, I'm sorry! Thanks for playing!
Class, does anyone know why Brian doesn't list his years of graduation on his resume? Anyone? Brian? Zack? Either of you? Well, Zack, let me explain, because I know that someone most likely other than yourself asked you to get the answer to that question: it's because prospective employers can immediately estimate my age (and instantly disqualify me from contention).
So, of course I answered the question, knowing full well its implications. And I'm sure that Zack wrote it down for the person who asked him to ask, too.
Zack: 2, Brian: 1.
By now, I knew I didn't have a chance in hell of getting a job at Google. Why bother? I thought.
Next up, Zach asked me how I'd go about documenting a WiFi system. Probably because he had some involvment or experience documenting one elsewhere. Why I answered the way I did, I don't know. But I talked about interviewing the engineers, looking at specifications, and reviewing design documents. Egads! What was I thinking? That's so old school.
About an hour or so after I hung up the phone, I realized that the answer I should have given, and the answer I sincerely would have given had I thought about it more carefully, is this: I'd join in and help the engineers install, configure, and test the network myself. How else to better document something? Gah!
Zack: 3, Brian: 1.
Finally, it was my turn to ask some questions. At this point, I was hoping that I could somehow salvage the interview. But, hope springs eternal, eh? First, I asked Zack if he had any opinion about the question I'd posed on my writing samples page:
Do you agree that I needed to document Web Start's graphical user interface in Using Solaris Web Start, or is it self-documenting?I was sincerely interested in Zack's answer because I had seriously wrestled with this question when I was writing the documentation for Solaris 8. The thing was, Zack said simply that he hadn't an opinion.
So much for that tack.
Next, I asked him about the ratio of writers to engineers at Google. He told me that Google employs about 40 writers total, all of whom are spread around the globe. He added that writers on the teams keep in touch with each other in weekly video conferences. Cool.
Finally, I asked him whether Google's "Twenty percent time" policy for engineers also applied to writers, and if it did, did he have a twenty percent time project? You'd think I'd just impugned his professional reputation by his answer. He gently chastised me, stating that these kinds of projects weren't personal projects. I knew that. I'd seen Google's twenty percent time policy on their web site and was curious (and excited) about it, actually:
Google engineers all have "20 percent time" in which they're free to pursue projects they're passionate about. This freedom has already produced Google News, Google Suggest, AdSense for Content, and Orkut products which might otherwise have taken an entire start-up to launch.Once I explained that I understood that these kinds of projects weren't personal projects, he replied that, "No, I'm happy with what I'm doing."
Oh well. I guess I had assumed--incorrectly apparently--that this policy was Google's way of promoting new ideas and products. Silly me.
Anyway, just shy of a week later, I heard from Google's recruiter:We would like to thank you for your interest in Google and taking the time to send in writing samples and talk to us. After carefully reviewing your experience and qualifications, we have determined that there is not a fit for a 'Technical Writer, Operations - Santa Monica' position. Thanks again for considering Google. We wish you well in your endeavors.I really wanted to work for Google. I was crushed, but, honestly, not surprised.
Oh well.
But in the end, it all worked out. Sun asked me to come back. I did and I'm happy to be back. And considering it now, I believe I'm happier here now than I would have been at Google. I just got a negative vibe from my interview, to be honest.
The most important lesson I learned from my interview (and others) is: I need desperately to improve my technical skills, which I've let lay fallow for much too long.
Thank you, Zack, for helping me to realize that. I'm in the process of improving them. Formally.
There's something to be said for formal training versus self-teaching. I didn't know what file globbing was because, even though I was intimately familiar with the concept and the operation, I hadn't a clue about what everyone else called it. I call it wildcarding, er, I used to call it wildcarding. Now I call it file globbing. Heh heh.
Why didn't I get a call back from Google? I think it was a combination of factors really, including my not knowing the aforementioned terminology and command syntax, but most of all, my lame response to Zack's question about how I'd document a WiFi system. Knowing Google, though, it's probably because my birthdate doesn't appear soon enough after the decimal point in pi.
