Goutam Nair, 29, has been a software engineer at Google's Mountain View headquarters since May 2022.
Prior to Google, Nair spent over three years as a software engineer focused on machine learning at Twitch in San Francisco. He also completed a two-and-a-half-month software engineering internship in 2018 at another Magnificent 7 company.
Based on his experiences, Nair shared his insights with Business Insider on Google's and Twitch's interview processes, onboarding structures, and work cultures — such as which one had a bottom-up work culture and which one was more fast-paced.
Both interview processes were rather similar
Nair found the interview process at both companies to be "fairly similar," he said, with strong emphasis on problem-solving, coding skills, and system design.
"Each company evaluated candidates for both technical expertise and cultural fit," Nair said, through four to five technical interviews and then a cultural-fit assessment.
However, he found Google's technical interview process to be the hardest out of the Big Tech companies he's interviewed at.
"It really tested my core understanding of computer science fundamentals and applying creative solutions to different problems," he said.
He added that Google's interview process also involved an additional process designed to match each candidate to a team that fit with the candidate's skills and interests. This differed from his experience with the other companies, which he said typically have candidates interview directly with the hiring team.
Onboarding: methodical vs. fast-paced
Nair found Google's onboarding process to be more welcoming, he said, due to the company's emphasis on community and knowledge-sharing.
He appreciated that his first few weeks in his job included a well-structured "Noogler" — new Googler — orientation program.
"We were split into teams, and each team was responsible for proposing and implementing a small project from scratch," Nair said. "After implementation, we could present the project to leadership."
He said it felt empowering to present to leadership just a few weeks after joining, adding that "it made the environment feel less hierarchical."
In contrast to Google's longer and more methodical onboarding processes, Nair found Twitch's onboarding to be "fast-paced," aligning with its startup-like culture.
As a new hire, he felt he was expected to ramp up quickly, have what he called a "self-service approach to learning," and start contributing in the first week.
"In my first month, I remember jumping into debugging a critical issue in one of our major systems," Nair said. "There was little hand-holding, and I had to rely on documentation and my team's Slack channels to figure things out."
This trial by fire was both stressful and exhilarating to him.
"It was stressful since we had to dig deep into our systems to understand the root cause of the outage as fast as possible and minimize the downtime, but also thrilling to be able to execute and collaborate with teammates under pressure like this," Nair said.
A bottom-up work culture and a strong sense of community
Google generally encourages a "bottom-up" approach, Nair said. Engineers can pitch projects that come from within their own team, rather than waiting for instructions from the top.
"I've worked on a couple of such projects that simply started off as a casual conversation between colleagues over lunch, got built into full-fledged features, and are now generally available to everyone," Nair said.
Nair currently works in Google's Ads organization, focusing on search ads.
"At first, it was quite mind-boggling and hard to comprehend the scale of these large systems that serve billions of users and customers across the world," Nair explained, something he said feels unique to Google.
He added that the scale of his work means that cross-functional collaboration is the norm, and he regularly works with the infrastructure, product, and even legal and policy teams.
"This creates a culture where people take ownership seriously and think carefully before shipping anything," he said.
At Twitch, Nair felt that the work culture was more informal and often prioritized speed and iteration over perfection. In his experience, employees had high levels of autonomy to propose and implement new projects.
There was also a strong sense of community embedded within Twitch's culture, he said, both internally and externally.
"We were encouraged to interact closely with streamers and content creators," he said, adding that the company organizes a semi-annual TwitchCon, where community members can meet streamers and content creators.
He learned lessons from both Google and Twitch
Reflecting on his two Big Tech experiences, Nair said each company taught him different lessons.
He said he couldn't imagine a better learning experience than he had at Twitch, saying, "It sharpened my ability to move fast, make independent decisions, and adapt quickly to changing priorities."
On the other hand, "Google empowered me to think big and innovate," Nair added.
Nair believes that what it takes to succeed at these two Big Tech companies is similar.
He said, "Engineers who take initiative, collaborate effectively, and keep improving their technical expertise tend to thrive in these environments."
Do you have a story to share about landing a job in Big Tech or AI? Contact this editor, Jane Zhang, at janezhang@jkmperu.com.
