Bangladeshis at Big Tech: What’s it prefer to work at Google?

The tech titan Google, providing various sorts of online-based services to the masses for many years, is probably the most well-known technology company on the planet. Day by day, an increasing number of people have become considering joining the workforce of Google. Very good news is, the amount of Bangladeshis getting selected and doing work for such an excellent company is increasing. So that they can get a better understanding of this job sector, we talked to Anik Sarker, a Software Engineer at Google. He shared his valuable insights around about the working environment of Google, the task to land the work, in addition to, what the future candidates can expect on the way to the multinational company Google.

We asked Anik Sarker about the initial work culture of Google that attracts top talents and his experience of working for Google. According to him, he's finding Google's work culture to be very welcoming and inclusive. All of the newly hired employees get called 'Noogler' there, plus they have to proceed through a detailed and an extended group of online training on accepting diversity, respecting coworkers and working as a team. He assured the possible workers that, the business targets work-life balance very attentively where employees get two days off per week and several month of personal vacation. Google also manages medical insurance, immigration hassles or any other emergency needs of their workers.

Anik Sarker is now continuing his home based as a result of current situation, and therefore, he did not get the opportunity to go through the Google campus yet. However, he has heard all of the praises for the Google canteens from his colleagues there. Google canteens are incredibly famous for their foods with wonderful taste, and according from what he has learnt about it from others, perfect nutrition balance gets ensured there aswell. He is looking towards trying out the foods himself.

Moreover, while discussing his personal connection with working for such a huge company, he said, "Well, to spell it out the feeling in a single word, working at Google is overwhelming! I am honestly perplexed by the scale, of which Google runs, together with, the hugeness of its codebase and internal infrastructure. It is quite unbelievable how successfully so many engineers will work together on building services each day while keeping all the existing Google services ready to go 24/7. It feels excellent to view something, which is helping billions of individuals every day, grow and become increasingly useful."

Meanwhile, Anik Sarker shared his journey to getting selected in the business with us, which began after his graduation when a "Googler", who knew him perfectly, referred him to Google. He dropped his Curriculum Vitae at Google's career website in January 2020 and received the possibility to participate in an interview afterwards.

"My CV strongly highlighted my programming contest achievements, that was an essential factor behind me getting an interview call. Initially, I had an online phone interview of 45 minutes, where I had to solve two Computer Science related problems. Through the interview, we'd a shared Google Doc, where I would write the code, and the interviewer could see what I was writing. I also had to keep to talk to him over Google Meet at the same time, and make clear to him the logic behind my code," he remarked.

Then, Anik Sarker was informed about him passing the online round after 2-3 days, and his onsite round was scheduled for the next month. However, his onsite interview round also occurred virtually due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic of this time.

"There have been five interviews in the onsite round, four of these were coding interviews, and the other one was about behavioural and leadership skills. The format of the interviews was also identical compared to that of the web phone interview. I was informed after seven days that, I passed this round as well. Then my team matching round happened, where I and my Google team manager, discussed ourselves to check if we match each other's interests. From then on, there have been some internal Google meetings about approving my hiring, and subsequently, I got the offer letter in May 2020", he noted.

Anik Sarker, who's already trying to help a great many other Bangladeshis in obtaining their dreams, recommended Computer Science students to concentrate on programming contests as programming contests can help them a whole lot in improving their problem-solving skill, which is quite crucial to ace the coding interviews of tech giants. There are lots of online coding competitions organised by these businesses, like Google Code Jam, Facebook Hacker Cup etc. Hence, having a good performance in these competitions will immensely increase their opportunity to getting an interview call.

He also encouraged others, who are studying beyond your Computer Science curriculum to be optimistic about getting a job at Google since deciding on Google is open for non-CS graduates aswell. Google only requests a Bachelor's degree in another field. There are a lot of Googlers who are from non-CS departments. So, if anyone from other departmental background has a strong passion for programming, she or he should also take part in programming contests and practice problem solving whenever you can. These can, to an excellent extent, help one secure their dream job at Google.