Ask HN: How do I make myself employable at Google as a programmer?

[sina]

I love programming. I have been working at a couple of startups in the last 5 years. I want to move my career forward and improve my chances of being hired at a big company that is relatively more stable. I am in my early 30s and I am feeling insecure about the future. I have sent my CV a few times to Google and I didn't get a single response back.

Outside work, I write little programs for fun and to solve my own problems. I contributed to a couple of famous open source projects and blogged about it. I have put most of my personal projects on Github (link in bio). I am willing to put as much hours as required to make myself more employable. But I feel stuck. I don't know what to focus on, what projects to start, or what books to read to get them to notice me.

I would appreciate any advice or suggestions. Thanks.

[arkro]

Read this blog : http://haseebq.com/

This guy majored in English, was a world class poker player before he made his move into tech. In 1 year he learned enough to crush every single interview in top tech companies ( Google, Uber. Airbnb, etc. to name a few ). His blog posts provides information in extreme details. It might be of help. Cheers!

[samfisher83]

So I guess its more about learning to play the interview game than anything else?

[bbcbasic]

Catch me if you can....

[nickjj]

Google reached out to me for a software development position about 9 months ago and the recruiter told me the main contributing factor was GitHub but he ended up making the initial contact through LinkedIn.

I never bothered applying because I didn't want to invest a lot of time preparing for the interview.

I would say keep doing what you're doing, just more of it. It wouldn't hurt to learn languages they use internally too.

[aphextron]

> I have sent my CV a few times to Google and I didn't get a single response back.

This is not how you get a job in tech. Big companies like Google receive thousands of resumes from all over the world on a daily basis. Linkedin and Github are all you need to worry about. Build cool things, network with interesting people, and eventually they will start knocking on your door.

[umbs]

Over time I collected many tips, blog posts and links to prepare for interviews at companies like Google, FB etc. But I didn't prepare for them yet, but I hope you'll use them.

Granddaddy of all collections:

===

https://github.com/andreis/interview

Blogs

===

https://medium.com/always-be-coding/abc-always-be-coding-d5f...

https://medium.com/always-be-coding/four-steps-to-google-wit...

https://medium.com/@dpup/whiteboarding-4df873dbba2e#.z3ya1rp...

http://www.restlessprogrammer.com/2013/09/hacking-coding-int...

https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/get-that...

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing...

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000073.html

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things...

http://haseebq.com/ <--- just added after comment from @arkro

Hiring Companies (like TripleByte) or Companies giving you training for a fee:

=== https://www.hireart.com/

https://hired.com/

http://interviewkickstart.com/

https://www.interviewcake.com/

https://www.pramp.com/

https://triplebyte.com/

https://www.smarthires.com/

Interview Prep Sites ===

http://leetcode.com/

http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/

https://www.careercup.com/

https://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=ProblemArchive

https://codility.com/programmers/

http://interviewing.io/

https://www.quora.com/Where-can-I-find-difficult-algorithm-d...

http://www.gainlo.co/#!/

https://www.interviewbit.com/

https://github.com/mission-peace/interview/wiki

[dudul]

I receive messages from Google's recruiters once in a while (maybe twice a year). Always through LinkedIn so I would recommend to polish your LinkedIn profile.

[bbcbasic]

Why Google in particular? How about the other tech giants?