How To Get a Job At a Mega-Corp

Barence writes "'With the economic hangover starting to wear off, the technology giants are once again recruiting in earnest. Apple, Google, and Microsoft all have vacancies on their websites, and now could be the perfect time to land a job at one of computing's biggest hitters.' PC Pro talked to people inside Microsoft, Apple, and Google to discover how to track down the best jobs, and what it takes to get through the arduous selection and interview processes." With lots of experience both within and without, what other words of wisdom can be offered to those wishing to break into a mega-corp?

Comments

Re:Apple Retail IS NOT EQUAL to Apple

[Ethanol-fueled]

Long ago I promised myself that I would never again work in a retail environment, no matter how technical it may be. Being treated like peoples' bitch puts a real hurt on your self-esteem. Here are the customers to avoid, and why:

• Asians - picky, pushy, with chalkboard-screech voices. They will try to get you to do everything for them.
• Arabs/Indians - They will load up shopping carts filled to the brim, then they will just leave. Alternately, they will go to check out, and toss items away one by one when they see the prices rung up. Guess who gets to put all those go-backs back on the shelves?
• Jews - similar to Asians above, except that they will insult your merchandise. They will find any excuse to schvitz.
• Old people - A combination of Asians and Jews above. They are by far the worst customers of all and they will always complain to the manager. If you see one, run.
• Gimps - kinda like old people, but not as bad. Make no mistake about it - they are pissed off and will invent excuses to take their rage out on you.

And now the good customers. The results may surprise you:

• Hispanics - Usually polite, very family-oriented. They tend to buy lost of foodstuffs because they make thier meals from scratch.
• Blacks - Very easygoing, with well-developed senses of humor. Contrary to popular stereotype, they are very patient when they have to wait or when something goes wrong.

And with garden-variety Caucasians you have around a 50-50 chance. They tend to be impatient.

Re:Freelance decker

[turgid]

Idealistic, young, shrewd people know that working 80+ hours a week for a megacorp is a hiding to nothing since by definition, megacorps are marketing-driven and can't produce anything truly interesting and exciting.

If you are really clever, you will work for a reasonable company 35-45 hours a week and pursue your dreams in your own time on your own terms.

Why sacrifice yourself to a bunch of ignorant, blinkered PHBs?

Re:Other words...

[antirelic]

Yes, it would be much better and environmentally friendly if we all lived like medieval peasants. Al Gore can rule over us from his 12 bedroom mansion, and drive down in his massive SUV and feed us scraps from the troves of food he bought with his carbon credit scam.

Best way to get hired is to show initiative. Its not difficult to get into the corporate world. Have a "can do" attitude, show a little independence and ability to learn.

Re:anyone noticed the snide arrogance?

[TheGratefulNet]

my pet peeve: if you have to call them in for an INTERVIEW to learn that they do or do not know 'linked lists', buddy, YOU have failed already, as the interviewer.

the time to determine if the guy has programmed, ever, is simple BS detector stuff at the resume level. if you can't tell, you should not be in the interview loop. plain and simple.

I have 30 yrs in the field and I'm insulted that someone asks me (on each interview) to explain how linked lists or sorting works. geezus! I mean, could a person HONESTLY get to a principal position and have written all this software (verifyable, too) if they couldn't master non-array structures?

come on, newbies. I know you want to show off your compsci101 skills but KNOW THE DIFFERENCE between a guy who did that stuff 30 yrs ago and someone who need to prove himself due to having no experience at all.

ask college-boy questions to those straight out of school. save the rest of us this incredible waste of time. ask me what I've DONE on my jobs, not simple data struct 101 questions. I'll think more of you, too, if you do.

Re:anyone noticed the snide arrogance?

[The End Of Days]

But the boomers are retiring now.

Or maybe you're silly enough to think they don't have that attitude in spite of decades of evidence.

Re:anyone noticed the snide arrogance?

[Gorobei]

Wow, I'd fire anyone in my group who could not explain quicksort. It's about the most basic "partition and recurse" algorithm known to man. If quicksort isn't in your mental cache, you are nothing more than an HTML monkey.