This morning I had the distinct pleasure of delivering the commencement address at the North Carolina School of Science and Math, my alma mater, where I graduated in 1992. NCSSM is a public residential high school in which students attend their junior and senior years, and of course as the name suggests has an emphasis on science and math curriculum (but it is so much more than that). For some reason, the students and administrators asked me to give the commencement address this year, which is one of the strangest things I've ever had to do -- in part because it felt like yesterday that I graduated from there (yet it was 22 years ago)!
NCSSM is dear to my heart and those two years were a transformative time in my life. I've blogged before about how my time at S&M saved my life -- it is difficult to overstate how important the place was to my formative years. (Actually I think I'm still "forming".)
I wore Google Glass to give the speech, thinking this would b…

In my last blog post, I talked about what it's like to get started at Google as a new engineer. In this post, I'll talk about how new projects get started.

Standard disclaimer applies: This is my personal blog and nothing I'm saying here is endorsed or approved by Google. This is only based on my personal experience. Take it with a grain of salt.

Google is well known as having a bottom-up engineering culture. That is, new projects typically arise because a group of engineers get together, decide a problem needs to be solved, devise a solution, and convince others to (a) join in the effort and (b) launch it. It is rare -- although not unheard of -- for a Google project to start with a high-level mandate from some executive. (I have heard that this is how Google+ got its start, but I wasn't there at the time, so I don't really know.) More typically, a grassroots effort emerges out of engineers trying to build something that they think is important and will change th…

Apart from how to get a job at Google (which I have previously blogged about), the most common question I get from people considering taking a job here is what the career path is like -- that is, how you get started, how you grow your career, how promotions work, and so forth. I thought I'd try to capture some of my perspective in a series of blog posts on the topic.

(But first, the obligatory disclaimer: This is my personal blog. Google doesn't condone or support anything I'm saying here. Heck, it's probably all wrong anyway. Take it with a grain of salt.)

This stuff is mostly targeted at new grad hires (at any level -- Bachelors, Masters, or PhD) for software engineering positions. (I don't know how things work in other parts of the company, like sales.) This may apply to a lesser extent to more senior engineers or researchers as well.

Before you join: The team match

Before your start date, you will be assigned to one of the many hundreds of teams at Google. Whil…