I just started at Google recently and while the culture is amazing and the food is great, I'm having a tough time contributing to my immersion project. My team members all have significant experience through internships at Big4s and one is an L4 coming in with work experience. I graduated this past May from college and I studied statistics so while my understanding of algos, data structures, and math are super strong, I have a tough time reading my team members' Java code. I used Java throughout my interviews and so I think I'm pretty well-versed with the built-in Java APIs (e.g. ArrayLists, etc.), but I don't understand things like build-files and the RESTful structure of the programs my team members are quickly able to grasp and then extend for the purposes of our project. I haven't really coded in a production environment before so many of the things my team members take for granted are foreign to me... How can I get up to speed ASAP? My mentor is friendly, but I'm really looking to hear from other Googlers on Blind who came in with perhaps less experience and became productive contributors. My learning style has always involved reading textbooks that emphasized rigor so I really need to develop the "hacker" mindset of most SWEs where they can pick up a framework and start coding in it quickly. LeetCode problems weren't that hard for me, on the other hand, for example (to illustrate how I think). How can I adjust to the environment and become productive ASAP? I should also mention that my actual Noogler project will be in C++... I've got some textbooks to learn this . Should I prioritize this over contributing to my immersion project (where I don't understand the structure of their code)? Thanks!
You will learn. Things that look hard become easier as you do a bit of hard work to understand. You must be talented that’s why you are there, and thus you are capable. You just need to combine that with hard work. Also take guidance from your manager so that you are on the same page with what he/she expects you to do.
Just keep that learning attitude and actually learning, you’ll be fine.
You need to learn how to learn in this environment. Figure out how to get comfortable with your immersion and then repeat for your noogler project. You have been hired, nobody is going to fire you for asking questions including asking those around you which books or other resources they used to learn this stuff. (Though books aren't as useful as just spending a weekend playing around with a framework, in my experience). You will burn out if you don't learn how to ask for help.
Take it easy. It's totally fine for new hire to spend 6 months to ramp up.
Can you elaborate more on your immersion project? Thanks in advance
I'm confused. What's the difference between immersion project and noogler project?
Even experienced people needs significant amount of time to ramp up. Google’s codebase is huge and lots of things are different from elsewhere. It’s expected and just take time.
An an ex googler, my experience was that as long as you’re showing initiative and drive to learn new things, that’s 90% of it. Not everyone joins with the same experience, and it’s expected you’ll take a few weeks or even months to get up to speed on stuff. Don’t sweat it. Just work hard and show that you are seeking out new things to learn in your team and org.