Surfin’ USA

Zurich, there and back again (once more)

I think I’ve mentioned earlier that I was in the process of interviewing with Google for a software engineering position at their rather young Zurich office. Well, after a couple of phone interviews they eventually invited me to Zurich for an on-site interview (or rather six of them, to be exact).

Last Sunday around noon I thus got on a plane to Zurich where I then had the afternoon off to explore the city, with really nice and sunny weather. Fortunately I had more time on my hand than last time and thus I strolled along the lakefront of the famous “Zürisee”, explored the old city center extensively and went for a nice dinner. My hotel, also located in the center, was very nice as well (four stars). By the way, did i mention that Google covered (almost) all expenses?

Anyway, on Monday I was then scheduled for six interviews with some of the local Google engineers, each lasting 45-50 minutes. I am not allowed to give any details about the content, but I can say that the interviews were quite tough, very technical and e.g. involved writing code on a whiteboard. What I can also tell is that apart from the actual work (which is very interesting in itself) Google seems to be a nice place to be employed: Free breakfast and lunch, free soft drinks and snacks all day long, foosball and pool tables and a lot of cool people.

I didn’t receive any direct feedback that day, however, after I had returned to Aachen they called me and told me that they won’t offer me a job, at least at this point: They said I had left a good impression and performed remarkably during the interviews, yet they felt that I’d need more hands-on experience before starting a job with Google. Hence they said they’d be happy if I’d reapply in the future, after gaining more experience in software development…

This rejection is of course a disappointment for me, but fortunately I still have some other options (which I’ll write about some other time, though). But in any case it was a good experience, the interviews were interesting and fun — and of course a free trip to Zurich is always welcome as well.