Do I need a MS or PhD from a top tier school and how's the interview process like?
HARD 💦
What’s the motivation for going there, other than buying high on their current prestige?
More interesting work than regular development?
It's easier if you start in Google Nose
Or start at Google Toes and work your way up: "started from the bottom, now I'm here"
My friend works there, with only a Bachelor's. Then again, he's a Google Code Jam winner and an IOI gold medalist, so that might've helped...
No shit. IOI gold??? Google's lucky to have them
Damn. Why cant we all have 155 IQs.
There's always diversity hiring...
3%
Not impossible. With time and effort, you can get there.
What does it take to get in there? I am sure effort and time has to be focused.
There are many ways. One way would to be join Google as an engineer and prove yourself for a couple of years via good reviews. May be do a ML course on side. Then slowly get into some ML teams. Prove again. Then talk to a hiring manager at Google brain and get in. Again prove you are worth to stay there.
The interview process is the same as SWE with a couple of ML rounds. But what is your motivation to go to the brain? More often its iterations it is your ML pipeline and data infrastructure that delivers impact than changing the ML model itself. So, if you are looking for later than it would be really hard while the former is where most of the folks usually work..
Both, not sure what I want to do yet.
Then pursue PhD in ML.