How did I join Google with a high school diploma?

Source: Internet
Author: User

Yesterday Google AlphaGo defeated the top master of the go or many people unexpectedly, I believe that we have been painted screen, a long circle of friends can not be calm, today do not talk about Weiqi, talk about life. This article is to tell an interesting personal experience, a high school degree of people through their own efforts to become Google Chrome designer, plain style behind is a thorough wisdom of dry goods, enlighten some impetuous human, tired of rushing in the meantime do not forget your beginner's mind and the scenery along the way.

Personal experience

When I joined Google two years ago, a lot of people asked me to write a story about my experience and how I did it.
I promised I would write but I haven't written. Maybe because I'm shy, maybe because I don't have the time, maybe I just think it's probably wrong to think that my experience is not that interesting.
I finally decided to face up to the promise and write it.
I hope it's not too late to give you some help.
I will try my best to sort out my experiences and stories, and summarize some suggestions from them.
Oh, there's one more thing. This is not a Google Job search guide. Judging from my experience, this is basically impossible. It does not describe the interview process in detail (for example, what questions are asked), nor does it reveal any confidential information.
The only topic in this article is to talk about some of the experiences I had before I joined Google. I hope to help you, even a little.

Long Bread and beret

If you don't know me, I am 27 years old, born in a small town called Lagny, in the vicinity of Paris, France. I spent the first 6 years of my life there, and then moved to some cities in southern France to live and study in Toulon, Hyères, Arles and Marseille.
Now, I'm a visual designer for Google Chrome and Chrome OS, living in San Francisco.

Learn

I got the "social and economic" high school degree, studied for two years in an ordinary science and Technology College, and then studied for 3 years in a multimedia project management school.
What these schools and courses have in common is that they teach you some general ways to deal with problems. Doesn't give you any expertise. In retrospect, I thought I was being taught how to be a qualified Swiss Army knife.
I began to study social sciences and Economics, while studying history and philosophy. With a little math, I got my high school degree.
The next two years will teach you all the things you can do with your computer, screen and camera. From programming, design to video and camera. A very broad course.
Last three years of media management, so I got a master's degree. Mainly on personnel management, projects, public speaking and ... Wear a suit.
Looking back, the longer I get into class, the less skills I can use in my daily work.
Through school I realized that I didn't want to do anything.
School is not just teaching, it's not exactly. It helps you to open your eyes. I've forgotten most of what I've learned in school, but it lets me see and realize what I want to do and what I don't want to do.
Only by learning a course can you realize that it is not for you.
I learned math before I found out I hated it, and I learned programming only to find that I was more interested in arranging pixels.
I wore a suit to find out that I didn't want to wear this every day. I learned project management and personnel management only to find that what I really wanted to do was to spend all day doing Photoshop, listening to Hans Zimmer and Amon Tobin's song.
Maybe it's not the best way to know things, it's just my way. Don't get me wrong, I also learned a lot of useful things in school, but it is these things that I hate to learn that give me the most important lesson, they point me to my core ability.
In each given project, I always apply for the design part, which is my shelter. I focus on the same thing, rather than trying to get a more multifaceted knowledge.
Five years after I got my high school degree, I gave up learning a lot of other things and was obsessed with the details of the interactive interface.
Is this a good thing? I do not know. I am not a fast learner. I'm good at this and I'm maximizing my strengths rather than looking for a wider range of knowledge.
After I finish my study, let's summarize what kind of person I am:
A dedicated interactive interface designer focused on web and mobile design. I can be very relaxed and very confident to show my thoughts in front of people.
I have a schedule, including 1.5 hours of web browsing, to discover what inspires me on the web, save, categorize, and then eight hours of visual design using Photoshop and Illustrator. Also, my English is very fluent, this is the key.

Job

My work experience is closely connected with the school life. My previous 3 years of multimedia project management learning is intermittent. I can only stay in school for one months and then work for one months at any other company that is friendly and willing to bring new people.
I am fortunate that, in addition to being responsible for coffee, these companies have made me do some practical work, and I will always be grateful. This is the most important thing I have learned, and I have no doubt about it:
The best way to learn is to work in a real company, with the real side of learning.
These people earn their living by this, and the benefit of studying and working with them is that they learn many times in school. Internships teach you how to work in real life more than any other class.
I'm not saying that school can't learn anything. You need it to teach you the basics, the design methods and skills of the books, but it is very rare to be able to use these guidelines in real situations and projects. For me, the best way to learn a lesson is to combine school learning with corporate internships, at least in our field.
First year
In the first year, I learned to print, do logo and document design. From an intern's point of view, I did a good job. But by the standards of a professional designer, I was awful. My work is messy, and there are many mistakes. Fortunately, not bad, I was the right person.
In your life, if you are lucky, you will meet the people who help you grow up. Standing on their shoulders, they will help you do a lot of things you think are unreachable.
In the first year, my boss is such a person, we are a two-person small company, he has a lot of experience, and is willing to share. He was patient, good at capturing my tiny talent and helping me make it bigger.
I don't expect to get this, I find it hard to meet someone who needs to earn a living and is willing to help you grow both personally and professionally. I'm trying to pass on this spirit now, but I haven't reached that height yet.
This requires a very selfless spirit.

Second year and third year

Second and third year of interrupted learning, I work in another company. I left the first company because I needed to make more money and he couldn't give an intern a higher salary, so I left.
This company is a small web agent founded by a person, he is tired of listening to other people's command, want to do something more cool for themselves.
Now let's pause and give a quick tip to the designer who wants to find a job/internship:
Smile and put on.
It's so simple. At that time, I was a little shy boy, self-introduction when a little self-confidence is not enough. It is an understatement to say that my self-introduction has left a deep impression on people. If it weren't for the support of this company colleague, I think I'm still looking for an internship. Anxious to find network work or in The wire.
Okay, back to the chase. Do you remember my first boss I mentioned earlier? Well, you can't answer here, either. It was lucky to meet two great bosses in succession. In my career, luck is also a very important factor, and I'll talk about it in a minute.
My visual design level has been incredibly rapid in the past two years.
I've done a lot of different projects: from complex web design to mobile apps. Self-learning and customer projects have a good balance. Work makes money while there are some free time. I even did a lot of email design for the mass mail, and I didn't feel very good about it, but it made me realize the reality of the industry. This is also important:
The things you want to do may and always make you feel very proud, but you can learn something from it.
As in school, doing something you don't like will also shape you and help you become a designer.
Fortunately these jobs are few. Most of the work is a challenging and interesting project for a young designer. Every project has made me grow up very fast, because I am free to play and I am responsible. My boss is a safety net, and when I need him, he's like a knowledge guide. He began to trust me and assigned me a lot of responsibilities so that I was filled with a sense of participation in everything I did.
Make a safety net for the person you want to cultivate. Make him feel his influence and control over the project and the decision-making.
I finished my studies and worked full time at the company. I spent a year in this company before I went to Google, and I like to spend every minute of it here.

Self -

If you have a passion for something, self-study is a natural thing. If you're having fun learning something, you're in a state of being.
My favorite way to learn is to look at other people's work and learn from them, which is why I still insist on sharing the material until today. A kind of feedback.
There will always be people who are more gifted than you.
look at them and try to catch up.
Interpersonal and Design forum
There's something I need to tell you: I hate being with people. I used to do that. It turned out to be a little better, but until now, I was still clumsy. I have a strange look on my face that sometimes makes people feel very annoying. I don't know, maybe I do. But I think the main reason is shyness.
In a word, I learned early on that interpersonal relationships are important to career development, especially in our industry. This is the charm of the network, you can communicate with people but do not have actual contact with people. As a designer you can shape yourself, as long as you join the forum you can build your own network image. Even if you are alone on an island, you also have the opportunity to be recognized for the same number of works as others.
Of course it's perfectly true that a person living in a San Francisco is certainly better at relationships with a brown bear who lives in a cave in southern France than a bad internet signal. But you know what I mean.
Fortunately, I am not a bear, I have a good internet connection and want to share something. I made a blog with TUMBLR. The
Blog is mainly used to share some design aspects and write a lot of notes. Similar to personal photo sharing. There are few readers, but it doesn't matter. I enjoy it. It's important to have a point about it:
If you're happy to share, even if you're interested in very few people, just stick to it if you like.
So I insisted on writing my little blog, and later a big French website about web design and designer inspiration got in touch with me. My attention has suddenly increased with it. This blog also has a higher degree of exposure. After seeing Orman Clark and his work on Premium Pixel, I began to switch from sharing inspiration to creating my own design resources, or "free service".
For me, this is a good way to improve, to satisfy my understanding of the pixel, but also give me something to share. I learned a lot from other designers ' free sharing, which is my way of giving back. I even started to write instructions for use.
later the owner of this blog site asked me the following question:
"Do you want to be invited to dribbble?" The

Dribbble

Dribbble has played a very important role in my career, and I think that's true for a lot of people. I joined it on March 6, 2011, and my first release was a boost for my followers. I also publish a free design every week. It takes a lot of time, and I hardly do anything other than work and create Photoshop items to share and update my blog every week. This has brought me a lot of unpredictable opportunities. For a time, many people began to invite me to work abroad.
Oh, Google is here to find me, too.

Free career

Remember that period of time, I work in the website agent company. That was my first year of full-time work, and I received orders from outside France for the first time through dribbble. The first copy I received from a Swedish printing company. This is a big thing for me. My English is good to understand them, but we are talking about business now. I had just come out of school, and I didn't have much confidence to do my own project alone.
So I proposed to the boss to take the job as a project of the company. He can teach me a part of the business, I am responsible for other parts.
That's how my first "pick-reverse telecommuting" started.
From my experience, if you are a young designer, you have the opportunity to actually do projects for people and seize this opportunity. It can teach you a lot of things.
The project went well, they were satisfied with the results, I delivered in time, we established a good relationship. This project added to my advantage and I became more confident because I left my comfort zone and made it.
Leaving your comfort zone will greatly improve your self-confidence.
I continue to publish my free templates on dribbble and then spend half of time using Photoshop to design one after another for websites, mail, IPhone apps and IPad apps. I give everything to design from athlete video to upload control (why?). I don't know, either. I got more and more attention and orders.
I received a project from France, Denmark and the United States. Each one has a different application scenario. From social platforms to DJ software.
As orders became more and more, I started to sift through the projects I wanted to do, and I did a lot of things myself while I was receiving orders for the company. Everything went well, for the simple reason: All my orders came from Dribbble, who knew what they wanted, they saw my previous work, and I knew what I could do. It's a luxury to be able to pick clients. I can do this because I have a full-time job.
If you have the time, and your situation allows, a full-time job to pick up some reverse telecommuting is a good try to see if it suits you. But be careful, because you may not have time to see the sun.
These customers also helped me to do a very important thing and set up a representative folio. and took me here.

Free work

I know this is a very delicate topic. Every job should be paid for. A lot of people are exploiting this opportunity to exploit young designers, and I've had a similar situation. "I want a website like YouTube, it should be enough" or "there are 5 other designers doing this project, I only pay for the option I have chosen".
The free job is to build up your portfolio of representatives.
Of course, if you want to be able to pay the net fee to do so. One of the benefits of doing this is that you can do the projects you want to do. You can do things that make you happy, which can be a reference for future work choices. If you are with the right person, this will also help you open more doors.
This is why I took a lot of free work, similar to the student community need a poster, a small website, the budget is very little, but I know this person, such things.
When you're a student, when you're willing to work a few hours with passion and try something different, do it. Yes, they will be cheap and even get something for free, but, as a young designer, you will get a valuable experience, you just have to be serious.
Because you can pick your own customers, free work is a luxury thing, and does not apply to everyone. I can do this because I have a boss, a family, and a full-time job that supports me. If you can, think about it, but do it for the right person.

"Do you want to talk?"

The year passed, and I received my first job posting, a company in Spain. It's kind of weird. For the first time, someone was willing to ask me to work for them, or a big foreign company. He wanted to know, I would like to "chat", and they want me to go to Headquarters to chat.
In fact I told the boss about it and he said to me, "Do it!" "Remember the kind of person I said earlier that helped you grow?"
So I went and agreed to go there and talk. Why not? I do not particularly love the city I live in, I love my work very much this is certain, but I see a chance of growth.
If you see a chance, but there is a hint of uncertainty in your mind or "what if", it's OK, let go.
They reimbursed me for the airfare and the hotel room, just to talk to me. I know it sounds normal to some people, but it's amazing to me. In my world, customers are reluctant to spend more than $ hundreds of on designing a website ... And they are willing to pay for anything.
So I went to the interview and got to know them more. Soon I was thinking that I might move from France to Spain. After all, it's not too far, and the people over there are really great. But a week after coming back, I received another e-mail.

I think it's junk mail.

You may have guessed that this email was from Google. I thought it must have been junk mail. It came out too unexpectedly.
I still replied ... You know...... What if.
During that time the United States was on holiday, so it took 5 days to get a reply, and also made me more convinced that it was spam.
It turned out to be true, and I couldn't wait to know more.
At the beginning, I got a call from a Google employee, and after confirming something, I would be willing to move to work in the United States if I did, and the recruiter informed me to enter the recruiting process.
At this time, I am grateful that I have spent so much time, at home while working while listening to all kinds of American drama. Otherwise, I would not understand. Although it is still difficult to learn a language passively and communicate with a real person is very different, at the age of 14 in the United States for a short 2 weeks on campus travel did not help.
I feel like I'm doing a terrible job on the phone, but obviously it's not, and they still want to continue the hiring. The next step is a design exercise.
This part is very exciting for me. I had the opportunity to show my thoughts and present the processed videos. It does not feel like working with a client before, perhaps because its outcome will be a change of destiny ...
I sent out the final version of the exercise, with my hands folded, praying that I would get a positive answer instead of being laughed at.
About two weeks later, they told me that they wanted to see me in Mountain View.

What am I going to do here?

At that time, my friend and I had planned to go to New York for two weeks four months ago. Like the ' We graduate ' trip, we want to explore New York and the United States.
The confirmation email was received at this time. I stay at Starbucks two times a day, on WiFi, check mail. I have shown myself in New York now, it will be better to meet in two weeks, you know, to save the transatlantic, to do it again.
They agreed, booked me a ticket, and two days later I flew to a place I'd never been, California.
I got off the plane in Los Angeles, and before God came, I was driving on the freeway with a rented car. It turned out to be my daily commuter route. The idea of "what I'm doing here" came into my mind when I was on my first trip to California, passing through a lot of city signs and writing San Francisco, Palo Alto and Cupertino. It's a terrific thing for me.
The next day was an on-site interview. The interview was progressing quickly, and I didn't feel it coming to an end. One thing I remember is that between two interviews, I was asked when I was going to join Google. I never thought that I would ever come here and it was a bit unreal for me.
Looking back, if this is not bad is also a very strange answer, but it is the fact. I was too tired to think how it would be a good answer.

Remain honest.

Think so, perhaps that's the answer. It sounds corny, but I think this applies to many situations, many job applications. You may be able to find a good answer at exactly the right time to get a good job, but you're risking not finding the right job, which may be inappropriate for you and your employer.
I didn't forget to smile this time.
This is the end, I just have to wait for the final decision. I flew back to New York by plane, looked at the San Francisco by the window, had never been here before, and wanted to find a place to live.
If you want to know more about Google jobs, go here. You will find a lot of useful detailed information.

Lucky

I received a call in Friday. Asked if I was interested in joining the Chrome team. It's no better. I did not hesitate to give a positive reply. This site helped me, and now I'm going to help it get better. You might say that I was really lucky to have joined Google. Luckily I learned what I wanted to do, luckily I met two great bosses and luckily I got an invitation from dribbble and a Google employee was just looking at my work, luckily when they wanted to see me, I was in America, and luckily I had a lot of visas available when I applied, yes, What you say is true.
Luck is a big part of this, and if it's not, I'm not going to write about it here right now. Add a little bit more:
Always be prepared, if luck comes, make sure you will seize the opportunity.

Conclusion

I read the story myself and it sounded like I was describing a dream story that was woven into a rainbow, pony, and so on, and I was like an avid fan of advertising. You may not agree with what Google is doing, and at the end of the day it will feel like a waste of time. These are just my own views.
I tried to really restore my thoughts and things.
I'm thankful to be here, surrounded by people who are much smarter than me. It's cool every day, huh? No. Sometimes it's frustrating, and you probably don't agree with everything. You are part of a huge machine that works at an unimaginable speed. It's also exciting.
Am I going to stay here forever? I don't know, I've had a rise and fall, but I do love chrome, Love Chrome OS, love my team and Google.
Now, I don't want to go anywhere.
I think it's an extraordinary experience to stay here, not just Google but the entire Bay area. I tried to remind myself that I was just a spoiled child. Deep down, I'm going to think that when they realize I might be a fake, I'll be sent back to the first plane in France.


This article turns from: Code farming Network

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How did I join Google with a high school diploma?

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