Back in 2007, when I was about to complete my undergraduate degree in software engineering, I applied for a position at Google. They had just opened an office in Montreal and since I had excellent grades I thought I had a chance.

My friend Simon also applied at the same time and we both received emails informing us that we would be going through a few interviews, starting with the phone interview.

The phone interview

The interviewer kept asking me about network related stuff and heavy performance oriented problems. After the interview (which didn’t go well since I couldn’t answer most of the questions because they were all about things I don’t like doing), they informed me that I would not be doing more interviews because I was not a good fit for the position they were considering me for. I’m glad I didn’t go for that job, I would’ve hated it though I would have liked to be considered for a position where my skills were useful. I prefer working on the front-end part of applications, creating features and working on improving the usability. I asked them about other positions, but they wouldn’t reply to my emails (not because I was harassing them, just because my emails seemed to get lost in my contact’s inbox).

Letting go

In the end, I found a great opportunity at Oracle (what seemed like a great opportunity) and decided to focus on that instead. Since that didn’t work out I finally landed a great job at Hint Innovation.

I’m glad I failed that interview: at the time, Google seemed like the ultimate workplace, but I would have missed on something even better.