I think it’s very meaningful to let people know how a life of a software engineer is like. Thus, I’d like to share my experience as I’ve been in the industry for several years. However, the experience can be very personal and limited, as Google is my first corporate job and I have only stayed in one team at Google. The followings are my very personal experience.
My Job
I am a Machine Learning Software Engineer at Youtube/Google. I have been working in the same team (but different projects) for 2.5 years. I first came here just to continue my graduate-school research.
My job involves building machine learning models and classification serving systems for different video classifications products. Due to the research natural of my job, I usually spare out one day to read papers or talk to people individually to get new ideas. Obligatorily, I have a weekly meeting, which is only one hour weekly. For the remaining time, I spent on writing code, writing design documentations, etc. I usually find myself using 40% time to design and 60% time to write code. In the process of designing, it is very helpful to discuss the software design with teammates (engineerings and PMs) to validate my own ideas. My teammates are super smart and knowledgeable that I can almost always learn something by just talking with them. (I believe most people are like that in Google.)
Management Style
I really think that every manager is different as a person. In my team, I am usually given huge freedom to do anything that I want to do as long as it is aligned to the big direction. However, I would say it’s an American thing in general. Actually, I felt the same thing during my undergrad research in NTU too. I didn’t get the same experience from other jobs that I have done in Taiwan or the U.S.. Also,I do have a bias here because I have quit every jobs with any manager that I cannot get along with. I probably have picked a certain type of management style.
My Inspiring(?) Story
One of the things that I learnt the most in Google is how to ask questions. When I first joined, in meetings, they talked about things that were specific to the products, and I did not understand. However, I at times did not even know how to ask questions. I found being able to identify the question to ask is super hard. (If it’s now, I may just ask the questions: “is there any documents that I can read?” for everything I don’t know.) I felt that I probably spent my first three months at Google doing nothing because I did not understand the system well. Instead, I learnt things by reading almost every line of the code. On the other hand, I was impressed my interns, who kept asking questions, could actually get into writing production code a few weeks after they join.
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