Programming prodigy or: My experience getting rejected by Google
Greetings, internet! Time for a story.
For those who don’t know me, I’m a filmmaker and backend web developer. For the past few years, I’ve been building up a portfolio of personal projects while trying to get a job in either the film or tech industries. I’ve sent out roughly 300 job applications for positions ranging from software engineer to web developer and I’ve gotten a wide variety of responses: most outright rejected me, some ghosted me, a small few of them liked my resume and gave me coding problems that I couldn’t get past, and one of them gave me a coding problem that I passed but still rejected me because I don’t have any actual experience working for a tech firm.
Not too long ago, I was contacted via email by a Google recruiter who apparently saw my LinkedIn profile/resume and wanted to see if I’d be interested in learning more about the Big G.
When he reached out to me, I was thrilled! I thought I was so special. Egotistical thoughts regarding my prodigious-level intellect and God-tier coding skills began to fill my mind:
“My major in college wasn’t computer science or any engineering discipline, I didn’t graduate with a GPA greater than or equal to 3.0, and somehow my programming autodidacticism has managed to pay off. How great of a programmer am I that one of the biggest tech companies reached out to little old ME?!”
I later found out that these recruiters reach out to a bunch of potential candidates all the time, meaning this recruiter probably saw me more like a name on a sheet of paper rather than a programming prodigy worthy of being handpicked to enter the sacred domain of Google. Still, it was a big confidence booster.
Later, the recruiter called me and we had a brief chat. He told me more about Google and its culture and I gave him the rundown on my programming experience and resume. When I told him I was interested in interviewing with them, he set me up with an initial phone screen coding interview for an L3 software engineering position (that’s entry-level, for those of you who don’t know).
Then he emailed me a bunch of links to some studying material. And that’s when my anxiety kicked in. There was so much material and I didn’t know most of it. When I signed up for LeetCode and looked at some of those questions, I immediately felt dumb. Suddenly, my egotistical thoughts evaporated and the dark clouds of doubt came a-stormin’ in:
“What’s a hashmap? What’s a binary search tree? Those are the EASY LeetCode problems? Where’s that prodigious-level intellect when you need it most?”
The imposter syndrome was strong with this one. I felt like the dumbest beginner in the world. That syndrome, combined with the fear of failing to get a job at one of tech’s biggest brand names, led to some hardcore procrastination. Goodbye, studying for the Google phone screen. And hello, European soccer highlights and pro wrestling videos on YouTube.
A week or two before the phone screen, I reached out to my recruiter and told them that I needed more studying time. The recruiter was nice enough to let me reschedule it one month later than the original date that it was supposed to go down. I signed up for a LeetCode course on Data Structures and Algorithms. But again, my anxiety and procrastination kicked in again, but this time I managed to do SOME studying. I watched some programming videos on YouTube (CS Dojo is a favorite of mine) and I went through a chapter and a half of the aforementioned LeetCode course. But that’s pretty much all I had the courage to do. Hey, some studying is better than none.
When the day of the phone screen interview finally came, all bets were off. But my thoughts were neither egotistical or filled with impending doom. They went more like this:
“Screw this. I may not be a programming prodigy, but I’m not gonna let fear prevent me from getting to where I want to go in my career. I’m gonna take this friggin’ interview and if I fail, I fail. If I work hard, there’ll be other opportunities in the future.”
It helps that right before the phone screen, I discovered a Reddit thread full of other people who also did poorly on their first try. That helped ease my nerves a little. When the time for the phone screen came, I found a quiet space, opened up my laptop, and did some deep breathing to get myself in a relaxed state of mind. After that, my phone rang and the caller ID showed that somebody was calling me from Mountain View, California.
I actually didn’t do that bad in the phone screen. I was able to write a small bit of code and pass the first tiny portion of it. (I used the wrong syntax to solve this tiny portion, which the interviewer corrected almost immediately.) But as for the main coding problem itself: I bombed hard. The interviewer was even nice enough to give me hints and clues when I straight up told him that I didn’t know how to solve it. Eventually, at the end of the interview, he showed me the solution. I told him that I had a lot of work I needed to do. After he hung up, I felt humiliated.
A week or so after the phone screen, a new SWE technical recruiter reached out to me via email and asked me if I had time to schedule a follow-up phone call. The email said that my candidacy and potential next steps would be discussed in this follow-up. I was excited. I did some more online searching and came to the conclusion that whenever they want to schedule a follow-up call, it’s usually a good sign. I mean what kind of company would be so cruel as to schedule such a phone call with a candidate just to reject them?
Anyway, today was the day that we scheduled the follow-up call. The technical recruiter called me two and a half hours ago. And this phone call lasted…
…wait for it…
…less than three whole minutes.
This recruiter gave me the feedback that I never received from the phone screen interview, informed me that I wasn’t moving on to the next round, and told me that I could re-apply to Google again in 6 months, which is their usual cooling off period. It’s not so much the rejection that rubbed me the wrong way. I knew it was coming and based on my lack of studying, I felt like I deserved it. It’s the fact that they took the time to schedule another call with me, which made me feel like I was moving on to the next round.
Why not just call me a day or two after the phone screen? Why drag it out? Or better yet: why not just send me my feedback and rejection in an email? Everything that the SWE recruiter went over in our phone call could have been sent via email. This whole follow-up process confused me and filled me with a false sense of hope that I had somehow miraculously made it to make it to the next round.
Idk. This whole story is mainly just a way for me to blow off steam now that they’ve officially handed me my rejection. This was my second ever time doing a coding interview/problem for a Big Tech firm. (I tried do a coding problem for a software engineering job at AWS three years ago. But unlike Google, Amazon didn’t bother following-up with me after I bombed it. They just ghosted me.)
This whole experience with Google was anxiety-inducing, tough, and the ending gave me a slightly sour taste in my mouth. While I’m grateful to their recruiters and everything I learned over the past few months, I’m not sure I’ll ever apply/interview with them again based on how it ended.
I’m disappointed I didn’t get past their first round, but I’m still proud that my resume was strong enough to warrant a Google recruiter reaching out. In retrospect, I should have said “screw it” sooner and plunged into studying rather than letting fear and procrastination rule over me. But it is what it is. I may not be a programming prodigy, but I’m making progress and I’ll take the lessons I learned from this experience to heart, work on solving those pesky LeetCode problems/courses, and keep applying.
Moral of the story: keep going. Put yourself out there. And DON’T let fear of failure get the best of you. We all stumble, make mistakes and fail. It’s a part of the process. Some years ago, Google actually rejected my job application WITHOUT giving me a phone screen. But I kept learning new things, adding websites to my portfolio and one of their recruiters reached out to me. I may not be where I want to be yet, but I’m getting there.
So keep coding and keep applying. The worst they can say is no. (Or get your hopes up by scheduling a follow-up call and THEN saying no.)
Guess it’s time for me to create some more websites for my portfolio and send out another 300 job applications. Who knows? Maybe I’ll finally get hired someday and one of you fine readers will become my co-worker.
Anyway, thanks for reading!
