
Ask HN Googlers: Have a Google offer, looking for teams in MTV - DFK
So a few days ago Google made me an offer for a Software Dev position. We&#x27;re now trying to match me with a team in MTV and hence I haven&#x27;t accepted the offer yet.<p>I specified to the recruiter that I&#x27;m interested in building back-end services and not looking for front-end work. However, so far all the teams I spoke to were front-end web UIs (with a small service to surface out the data). I&#x27;m not sure if the recruiter is just trying to fill in gaps.<p>I&#x27;ve been out of college for 2 years, currently work for a big tech company building a high throughput and distributed service (Java). Ideally, I&#x27;d like to build services of a similar nature.<p>If you work for Google and know of a team that&#x27;ll be a good match then please reach out to me! Even better if you work for Maps or Search! :)<p>PS Are there any teams at Google that work with Scala&#x2F;Haskell&#x2F;Clojure? I did a bit of Haskell in college and I&#x27;ve recently got the urge to pick up a functional language again. It&#x27;d be awesome to learn and work with a functional languages at work!<p>Thanks!
danishkhan91, gmail.
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hacknat
I've never worked at Google, so if anyone at Google responds with an answer,
feel free to ignore what I've written. However, I know a bit about how Google
works from research and talking to people that have worked there.

It's very unlikely that you'll land into Maps or Search. Google has a, mostly,
blind allocation policy designed to fill in the gaps for teams that no one
wants to work at internally. That is where a vast majority of external
recruits get placed. There are some exceptions, like if you're a domain expert
of some kind, or quite senior in some other regard, but it doesn't sound like
that's the position your in.

I don't want to rain on your parade, but you're likely to be doing work that
you are overqualified for. Also, see Michael O. Church's Quora answer below,
but it takes a lot of work to finally get on a team worth putting on your
resume.

I don't want to be a downer, but these days just having Google or Facebook, et
al. on your resume isn't all that impressive to hiring managers at
companies/teams doing interesting work. If I ever interview anyone who started
working at Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Facebook after a certain year, respective
of the company, I'm actually going to dig into what team they were on. If they
were on an internal tools team, or [insert job they were overqualified for] I
am not going to be that impressed that they choose to work at Google, etc.

So, if you're doing this to resume build then I would highly suggest you
decline the offer. However, if you think you have the chops to actually climb
the ladder at Google, then you should definitely accept the offer. Just be
prepared to do a lot of work.

sources:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4712230](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4712230)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4712230](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4712230)

[https://www.quora.com/What-happens-when-Google-decide-to-
mak...](https://www.quora.com/What-happens-when-Google-decide-to-make-you-an-
offer) (scroll down to see Michael O. Church's answer)

~~~
alain94040
One personal comment... Sometimes on the Internet you'll see someone give very
strong and definitive advice. It may be wise to double-check the credentials
of that person.

For instance, I would steer away from career advice from a new grad who has
exactly 6 months of experience and got laid-off. There may be better advice
from people with more experience.

The problem is that you can't tell if the person giving you such strong advice
actually knows what they are talking about. Do you want to hear dating tips
from a 15-year old? I'm sure they are entertaining to read.

~~~
hacknat
I think I provided some decent caveats to my answer, I would hardly call my
answer "definitive" or "strong", and I cited other credentialed peoples'
answers, which I was pretty much summarizing anyways. I'm not going to reveal
my identity, so any credentials/experience I would offer up would not be
corroborable.

~~~
alain94040
Sorry, I wasn't taking aim at you, but at people you mention in your post.

