Google vs. God

Tee hee. :-)















While true, Google can tell you the answer to life, the universe and everything.

Blogger Hosting

If you're wondering where all the previous comments have gone, let me assure you that I didn't delete them. Well, not really. I switched over my blog to be hosted by Google's Blogger and was able to import all the posts. But, unfortunately, I lost the comments in the process.

Now though, at least RSS feeds will work and I get a whole bunch of new admin features. It's a change for the better, I swear :-)

CareerCup - New Features!

CareerCup: www.careercup.com

First of all let me thank everyone who's helped out by reporting bugs, issues and feature requests on CareerCup. Your feedback - both positive and negative - helps to make CareerCup better.

CareerCup is your source for interviewing and finding a job. Browse technical interview questions from major companies and find out directly from candidates what it was like. CareerCup also provides resume tips, interview tips, and other suggestions to help you find your dream job. You can post your resume and see companies like Google that are hiring.

The new changes to CareerCup help you stay more up-to-date with today's questions. Specifically, I added:

• RSS Feeds listing the question of the day and the ten most recently added questions.
• A Google Module that you can add to your personalized homepage.
• In addition to grouping the interview questions by company or category, you can also sort them by date
• A feature to invite your friends to CareerCup or to email them a question

Want your favorite feature to be implemented? Tell me about it here!

CareerCup

I'll admit, it's been a long time coming, but it's here. CareerCup has finally launched. Yes, that means good-bye to glaak.com/interviews. It's been fun, but we had to say goodbye to it someday - too much stuff up there, and it just didn't scale :-(.

CareerCup is even bigger and better. Here are just a few of the things it can do:

• Technical Interview Questions: Yep, all the same questions - and responses are there from before!
• Grouping by Categories: Questions can now be tagged as "Coding", "Algorithms", etc. This helps you more efficiently find relevant questions.
• General Questions and Comments: There's now a section just for all the general comments (or questions) about someone's experience
• Shout-Outs for Help: No more adding a comment just to say "can someone help me?" Instead, click the "Shout-out for Help" link next to any question and the question will be added to a special Shout-Outs for Help Page
• Question of the Day: Each day, one question will be advertised as the Question of the Day. See a question you think would be a good match for that? You can click to suggest it for Question of the Day
• Add a Question: Instead of having to add your questions all at once (which I think confused people), you now just add a single question (but you can add as many as you want
• Message Board: A messageboard for all your general thoughts or questions (What are the best courses to take in college to get a job? How can you improve your resume?, etc)
• Blog: What site would be complete without a blog? Right now I've dispensed a few pieces of advice on it: how to prepare a resume, and how to decline offers politely. Got something you want to write? Let me know!
• Job Search: Employers can post their job descriptions, and you can post your resume.
• User Accounts: You can now register an account which allows you to do all sorts of things. Employers can contact you, you can post your resume, etc. We even show stats about how much people have liked your questions and comments, to show off just how smart you are!
• Rate Questions: You can now rate questions as "Love It!" or "Hate It!" (or mark something as spam).
• Send Mail: You can send private mail to users. This will also be a way for employers to contact you.
• Favorites: Track your favorite questions with the click of a button, and receive an email whenever someone comments on them.

I think this is a great improvement over the old site in many ways, but I know it's far from perfect. Play around with it and let me know what you think by reporting bugs. I especially want to hear from those who were familiar with glaak.com/interviews and think that that site (even if in some small, minute way) was better.

Happy Interviewing!

Lego Logos

A lot of people ask me what it's like to work at Google. Instead of using the same old words like "it's a lot of fun", here's a little snippet from the Google Talk Blog

---

There's only so much silly putty you can play with before you start finding globs of red goo under your fingernails, in your keyboard and caked into the carpet. You realize, then, that's it's time to find new toys.

Of all toys, are there any more Googley than Legos? Not only does the color scheme for lego bricks match Google's own red, yellow, green and blue, but legos were also used in the initial Google computers. Even the Google booth at the lego theme.

So, software engineers Bob Day, Sean Egan and I set off for the Lego Store in Bellevue, WA. Yes, that's right - an entire store dedicated to legos - and it's every bit as good as it sounds.


Naturally, we head straight for the moving parts: wheels, axles, hinges, and doors. We emerge one hour later, armed with a large pre-packaged set of assorted legos (for the basics), and two hand-picked cups (for the moving parts and specialty items).






Back in our office, Sean and I debate what to build and decide on a Google logo constructed entirely out of legos. The tricky part here is creating the curvature of uppercase and lowercase G's. I get to work on the two G's while Sean focuses on the two O's, the L and the E. A few clicks and snaps later, we're almost there:


One minor detail: for a proper Google logo, the lower case 'G' needs to hang below the rest of the characters. There's just one way to solve this: elevate the rest of the letters (and put a lego man beneath it, just for fun).


What was next on our list? Google Talk! You see, a Googler's work is never done...