Software engineer

• Name: Mike
• Title: Senior Software Engineer
• Office: Munich, Germany
• Hometown: Munich, Germany
• Education: PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) from the University of Passau

Why did you decide to come to Google?

I wanted to work at a tech company that has software as its core business instead of as a supporting role. I had always considered Google as a great place to work, but I had just come back from a research year in Sydney, and it wasn't time for me to leave Germany again. Munich is a great place to live, and so I was very happy to see that Google had just opened an engineering office here when I was looking for a new challenge. I was extremely happy that I got an offer and accepted.

Why do you like working at Google?

The one thing I like most at Google is the impact that one can have as a software engineer without being driven into management. In many companies career advancement means reducing the technical aspect of your work and moving on to management or consulting. Engineering at Google does an excellent job at bridging the range between high-level decisions and hands-on technical work. Engineers are very involved in planning as well as in executing the development of their project.

What cool projects have you worked on at Google?

I've worked mainly on internal projects that increase the productivity of other developers. Currently I am the tech lead of the build system front-end. As in many other areas the scale of development at Google is just amazing. This leads to many challenges to keep engineers productive. For example, we use massive parallelism and extensive cross-user caching of build and test results to enable test driven development with a fast turn-around time. Most Google engineers all around the world use our system daily to build Google products.

What is unique about your role?

Software engineering at Google is different than at many other companies. We work in small teams that are a very self-driven. We try to keep formal processes to a minimum and let teams organize themselves. This is very productive and - most importantly - a lot of fun.

What is your favorite perk/benefit about working at Google?

It's difficult where to start. There is so much that after some time you take the numerous perks for granted. I think the whole package is great: Free food, massages, Android phones for Christmas, etc. But to be honest: While benefits are a great add-on, the most important things for me are working on things that I like, an open environment and a great corporate culture.

What has been the most amazing experience or day you've had at Google thus far?

I think this was the engineering conference and ski trip that we had some time ago in Austria. First discussing technical challenges with bright people from all over Europe, and then going skiing with several thousand colleagues was just amazing.

What's been the biggest surprise about working at Google?

The biggest surprise for me was how much Google still feels like a small company, considering its size: The way you can just walk up to everybody (and I mean "everybody") and have a chat about what's important to you. That people can openly challenge strategic decisions and that top management listens and answers

• Name: Sara
• Title: Software Engineer
• Office: Munich, Germany
• Hometown: Lahnstein, Germany
• Education: MSc Mathematics and the Foundations of Computer Science; current DPhil at Oxford University, UK

Why did you decide to come to Google?

I got some insights into how Google worked when I was an Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship finalist in 2007. To find out what it was like working at Google, I did an internship in 2008 - and fell in love with what I experienced. Cool challenges, high impact, and superb people to work with. A year and a half later I joined Google as a full time software engineer and am happy to be back - this time not just to sneak a peek.

Why do you like working at Google?

It's fun. I love the combination of solving new problems at a huge scale, and providing solutions that will potentially change millions of people's lives, even more: improve them. I love the working environment - lots of smart, friendly people, and everyone's really laid back. And it's this great mix of team work and owning your piece of a project that completes the whole picture for me.

What cool projects have you worked on at Google?

The Google Dashboard. It gives you an overview of the data associated with your Google account. That includes all services - think Gmail, Picasa, YouTube, etc - and it's all combined on one page. It also gives you direct links to the corresponding privacy policies, and on how to change your settings or deactivate the storing of specific data (e.g. your web history). Privacy is an important topic, and giving users transparency and choice is essential. I'm excited and proud to be part of this initiative to build products that make privacy and sharing more understandable and accessible.

What is unique about your role?

Privacy is relevant for every single product Google offers. This means that we get to work with all the teams that manage those products, and believe me: there are a lot more Google products out there than I knew from my personal use of Google. Giving a good data summary of such different services is of course a challenge, but I like challenges. And I want to do much more to give users more transparency and choice. At Google I can raise my ideas and thoughts on what I believe would help along that way. Discussing such ideas and shaping them to get the bigger picture is another really exciting aspect of my work.

What is your favorite perk/benefit about working at Google?

Aside from the relaxed atmosphere, the smart people I get to collaborate with, the interesting topics we work on...the massages, definitely. Once a week a masseuse visits our office and we can book an appointment. And don't we all sometimes need a little goddess treatment?

What has been the most amazing experience or day you've had at Google thus far?

That was probably just the other day. In 2007 I was an Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship finalist, in 2008 a scholar. This year (2010) I had the unique chance to review applications, and go to the retreat again - now as a Googler. It was great to meet with with the new finalists and scholars, see what amazing work they're doing. And it was really strange to realize that they were listening to my every word now, asking for my opinion - just like I did other Googlers only 2 or 3 years ago. It felt great to see that I can - and already have - made a very direct difference for a couple of people out there.

What are your goals at Google – what are you working to achieve?

To me it's like this: The internet emerged, and exploded with lots of information. Privacy isn't something that was considered that thoroughly when this all started. Google did and is doing great job at organizing this information and making it more accessible.

I want to see - and be part of - such a ground-breaking change in the privacy-sphere, too. The Google Dashboard is a great start, but I don't think it's the full solution yet. Figuring out what that solution is and making it work, that's something I'd love to achieve.

Sounds ambitious? Sure, but if there's one thing that's encouraged at Google, it's to "think big". And thankfully there might just be a couple of other great thinkers and doers at Google that can help me along the way.

What's been the biggest surprise about working at Google?

From your first day working at Google, your opinion is taken very seriously. There's no hard hierarchy where you first have to have achieved this or that to chime into a conversation and bring up a point that hasn't been considered yet (or not enough). In general, it's amazing that you have access to just about the whole code base and can explore what others are working on. And, of course, suggest improvements - or even implement those yourself. While it's surely often mentioned, it was simply a surprise to me that everyone's more than happy to share. That includes getting those so seemingly basic questions answered, by the way.

• Name: Alex
• Title: Senior Software Engineer
• Office: Munich, Germany
• Hometown: Munich, Germany
• Education: Computer Science Degree Diplom (FH), Munich University of Applied Sciences

Why did you decide to come to Google?

Before I came to Google I enjoyed working for several years in a small yet dynamically growing startup, but I also spent some time in a very big and rather inflexible company. To me the fascination of Google lies in the incredible global impact of the company while it still today has lots of its startup ethos.

Why do you like working at Google?

Google is an impressive conglomeration of highly talented people, many of them award winning. This makes working at Google fun day by day. What amazes me no less is the set of utterly powerful self-created tools Google provides to its software engineers to conquer the giant code base of Google. And one more thing that really thrills me: it's pretty hard to find a project at Google that wouldn't have massive global reach. In my job I have contact with other teams at Google as well as with external partners in nearly all time zones of this planet.

What cool projects have you worked on at Google?

Currently I'm working on bringing the most powerful Google features into cars. I love to interact with all sorts of players of the automotive industry and it provides a huge amount of satisfaction to me seeing the results of my work up and running in cars of different brands. However, working at Google means to work on more than one project at a time, thus I additionally contribute to "Code Search" which is an important tool for almost all Google engineers navigating the huge Google code base. Before we developed the automotive focus in the Munich office, I acted for quite some time as tech lead of the global SMS sending infrastructure in Google.

What is unique about your role?

Software development is my passion since childhood, which is the reason for me working at Google as software engineer. Still, the unique thing of my role probably is the fact that I have lots of communication with external partners while the traditional engineering role at Google is very code centric. This interaction with external partners is a huge spur to me and I do my best helping them to make use of great Google services.

What is your favorite perk/benefit about working at Google?

Google has a very unique culture. It is defined by openness, democratic structures, recognition of the individual person as well as one another's work and it offers extremely high flexibility. The company also actively helps us Googlers to develop our skills with tech talks, trainings and lots of travel to other Google offices. But there is still something else: free massage and excellent food. :-)

What has been the most amazing experience or day you've had at Google thus far?

Watching and listing to Jimmy Carter as he visited the Googleplex in January 2006.

What are your goals at Google – what are you working to achieve?

Working on even more projects which help to bring useful information to the people.

What's been the biggest surprise about working at Google?

I was surprised by the very open culture of communication that traditionally existed and still exists in the company at all levels. One just needs to look at the amazingly deep insights that are shared in the “Thank Goodness It’s Friday” (TGIF) and “All-Hands” sessions; questions allowed, everybody is very accessible! And we as engineers are blessed with the permission to take a look at and improve nearly each gear that powers the Google machinery.

• Name: Jochen
• Title: Software Engineer
• Office: Munich, Germany
• Hometown: Heidelberg, Germany
• Education: PhD in Computer Science from the University of Freiburg, Germany

Why did you decide to come to Google?

Several of my friends work at Google and they kept telling me about how much they like working here. After finishing my research stay in Canada, I had to decide where to go next. I decided to give it a try.

Why do you like working at Google?

I really appreciate the high emphasis placed on good engineering practices. Without the mandatory code reviews and tests it would be impossible to work with our massive code base.

What cool projects have you worked on at Google?

I work on Google Chrome, primarily on improving the transparency and control of users over their data stored in the browser.

What is unique about your role.

Since Chrome depends on several other opensource projects, notably WebKit, my day to day work requires me to get involved in these projects and contributing to them. The road we are going down is actually quite amazing. We contribute our changes back to the community instead of forking all projects internally.

What is your favorite perk/benefit about working at Google?

This is really hard to say. Some of my co-workers call me spoiled, since I never worked at another company, so I couldn’t appreciate what benefits we have here. I guess I really like the foosball table.

What has been the most amazing experience or day you've had at Google thus far?

When I joined Google, I expected to undergo a more lengthy training before I could do any real work. Instead, I found myself in the middle of a final spurt for the next release tasked with implementing parts of the content settings that were to become to highlight of this new release. What was amazing about this is the amount of trust put in me, and the infrastructure and process used for development that allowed for getting a high quality release out in very little time.

What are your goals at Google – what are you working to achieve?

When I started developing software, my motivation was improving the software I use myself. Here at Google, I can continue to do exactly that.