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Comment by domlebo70 | Hacker News Reader

What is it like working at Google? I work at a startup, and these numbers are insanity to me. I have 10 years experience in mostly Haskell & FP (and that's what I enjoy doing). What would I do with my skills at one of the bigger tech companies?

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With ten years under your belt, if you've been spending the time learning and growing your skills, you can do almost anything you want at Google. Except if you insist on doing it in Haskell. There are probably a handful of teams across the company that are using that language, but they might not have headcount to hire you at any given point in time.

Google is most definitely not a polyglot programming environment. There are five and a half blessed languages (C++, Java, Python, JS/TypeScript, and Go), and getting a new one added and approved is a major undertaking, and not guaranteed to succeed no matter how much effort you apply. And you'll still need to do your job. Even if your language of choice does get added, that doesn't mean you can use it on your project of choice. You code in what the rest of the code near you is written in. It's a sacrifice, but one I'm personally willing to make.

Thanks, this is some useful insight.

Can you perhaps talk a little about what your team and the teams around you are working on? What are the problems you are trying to solve? Happy to take this to another forum, if you don't want to talk publicly.

I work on the search systems that serve things like calendar, gmail, and other private data stores. In terms of the types of problems, some of the stuff I do is paying off technical debt (fixing mistakes that were made earlier in the system's design), and I'm also working on a big migration from one storage backend to another (sorry, can't go into detail). Earlier this year I spent time using a SAT solver to assist with query planning. There's a variety of different sorts of work, even within a single project, and you can often guide the sorts of problems you want to target by telling your manager what you're interested in.

If you talk to a recruiter at any of the big tech companies they should put you in touch with teams that are looking for someone with skills like yours. I frequently have phone calls, coffee, and lunches with people that are considering interviewing at the company I work for. The whole conversation is just answering questions like yours.

Facebook has a few Haskell hackers. I imagine they need a few more to combat not only spam but fake accounts, fake news and fake viral posts. Huge opportunity right there. I don't work at Facebook but follow their tech blog.

https://code.fb.com/security/fighting-spam-with-haskell/

Yeah I know of this team, and I'd love to work with them. The problems they are solving sound really interesting. I guess I am afraid of joining under the understanding I'd join that particular team, but then find I'm shuffled onto some boring Java CRUD app, with no escape. I've nothing against those apps, but I've been there done that, and I'm not interested in it.

In general, Facebook allows people to pick their own teams. You go through bootcamp, interview teams and managers, and then pick what you want to work on. Can't hurt to reach out and see, at least!

Also, even the PHP/Hack code is way more delightful than any Java codebase I've touched. :P

Reach out to them? I’m sure they can work something out..

Thanks! I think I will

I've often thought about whether I'd work for a company like Google or Facebook, where the pay and culture and everything is great, but at the same time you're part of an organisation which makes some ethically questionable products. How do you feel about that now that the decision is somewhat imminent?

It's tough, I agree. Is it naive to think you can have a positive impact from within though?

Hmm, I hadn't thought of it like that. Maybe you can indeed steer it for the better, but as long as the profit model is ethically questionable, I'm not sure about the good vs. bad impact of one's contribution.

Tough decision indeed.

Move protos around [0] :/

[0]: https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/

This is not true. There are many many interesting projects at Google. And mobility is very easy compared to other big companies. Please do your own research before falling for the HN dogma of "FAANG" jobs == boring.

Lol, have you ever worked for Google? When I was there, joking about how our jobs was all about moving protos around was a classic memegen topic.

It still is. But it's also posted as a serious rebuttal of "why not to work at Google" many many times on HN. Missed the /s :)

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