Yesterday I went to a presentation given by a software engineer from the Madison Google office. In the hour he had to speak, he went over a really wide array of information. From life at the office to how Google goes about solving problems.
The most interesting part of the presentation, for me, was the information on their data centers. Seeing pictures of the meager beginnings of Google (nothing more than a bunch of computers and monitors set up on a banquet table) then transitioning to the servers they built themselves to fill their co-located data center space to the maximum, and then to their absolutely massive data centers they now have was really quite impressive.
At one point I asked about what languages would be good to focus on and he said that Google likes to find generalists. People who are good at a bunch of things rather than experts in one particular language or field. From his comments it seems like it would be smart to learn Java as well as look into languages such as C++, Python, Google's "Go" language, database programming, and specifically mentioned to look into programming for multi-core processors.
Overall I think it was a very good presentation, but I found myself wishing it could have been longer and more in-depth.
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