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Hired by Google as L4 but rejected by top colleges
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- radicaldreamer 3y agoUniversity of Texas has an excellent CompSci department and this person should be happy to attend. Also, there are plenty of engineers at Big Tech companies and at startups who have no degree other than a high school diploma and a huge number don’t have a computer science degree if they do have one. There is also a large contingent of folks who have terminal degrees in law or a PhD in Physics but work in software engineering. I think the college application process is a crapshoot for the most part but its likely that this person didn’t distinguish themselves in that particular area but apparently had no issue passing a completely different criteria and process for an engineering gig at Google.
- 9991 3y ago[flagged]
- jordigh 3y agoAre you saying someone with a last name of Zhong won't get admitted into universities?
- btilly 3y agoDid you miss https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf? And what they can't do through the front door, they are trying to do through the back door. https://www.opportunitynowsv.org/blog/-lawsuit-claims-ucs-forced-dei-alignment-is-illegitimate-discriminates-against-asian-faculty https://www.opportunitynowsv.org/blog/-lawsuit-claims-ucs-fo... talks about one of many follow-up lawsuits.
- 9991 3y agoNo, but it is 10 times harder. A black woman with Zhong's resume would have gotten in everywhere, and you know it. Anyways, it's not me that's saying it: https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/ https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/ They recently won a court case you may have heard of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v._Harvard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v... But that decision is too late for this guy.
- jordigh 3y ago> and you know it Black women have it so easy, and I know it? You think I know that black women have an unfair advantage and that's why universities are unfairly full of black women?
- MagnumOpus 3y agoNo. He is saying the former. The latter is not true, but it is the case that black women drop out at disproportionately high rates out of these programmes.
- Gunax 3y agoNot of all these schools participate in AA. Caltech notably does not.
- tzs 3y agoThe most likely reasons he didn't get into Caltech are probably: 1. Caltech is a lot smaller than most of the others, only admitting a little over 400 per year. 2. Caltech puts more emphasis on producing researchers than most of the others do.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jonny_eh 3y agoWhy bother with working for a large corp or going to college? Seems like he should focus on his organically fast growing startup.
- hijinks 3y agoi agree but some people are so brainwashed from such an early age that they need to go to college and the best one out there or they won't be successful in life. I should point them to my old neighbor who didn't go to school and worked as a HVAC tech. Then started his own company and he barely works now and is 42. That's true success in my book
- tkiolp4 3y agoThe teenager the post is talking about and your neighbor are not the norm. For normal/average people (like me, for example), going to university and getting a degree is the best way to maximize our chances to get a decent income and average way of life (paying bills, eating good food, etc.) I think it’s kinda obvious. Haven’t you seen the enormous amount of people out there without studies that have a very difficult life?
- WillPostForFood 3y agoThere is value for an 18 year old to work for a bit before trying to work a start up. It will help him meet people, pay rent, save some money, maybe learn some new tools, and something about management and business.
- lupire 3y agoYou missed the part where he has a profitable company already. He does more management and business at his own company than as a low level engineer at a megacorp. A better answer is that his startup is done and generating cash flow with part time work, and doesn't really have a future growing to really challenging DocuSign.
- matwood 3y ago> Why bother with working for a large corp Like at a FAANG? That's easily the fastest and lowest risk path to financial security.
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoKid’s making bank, congrats! But as an ex-L4 Googler I need to say, I’m sure he’s similarly frustrated as I was. I don’t live to maximize income - I want to maximize learning and fun. Compared to successfully launching a startup fixing bugs and launching minor features as an L4 is depressing as hell. Not everyone will have it that bad. Hopefully he’s having a better time than I did.
- mertd 3y agoNot a bad place if they make the most of it. They'll learn pretty good SDLC best practices and get exposed to Google's internal tooling. All of these are useful for running a technical team at some point.
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoYes. Doing commits the Google way was a positive learning experience. Not applicable to really small early companies but a good tool for most other situations.
- imbusy111 3y agoCan confirm - L4 is super depressing for ambitious engineer.
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoQuit! I did it and now I’m interviewing for roles where I could build the team from 1 to 5 engineers. Lots of good proven founders out there that want an ex-Googler.
- imbusy111 3y agoI haven't worked there for 5+ years now.
- vore 3y agoSometimes maximizing learning and fun is having enough money to pursue your interests outside of work.
- wildrhythms 3y agoI went to community college and a tiny private college nobody has ever heard of and I got a good paying job in tech as an engineer at a prestigious company. And I understand the obsession with Stanford and MIT, the networking opportunities, the namesake, but I never felt like I had to attend a prestigious university to study what I wanted. Just my 2c. Ironically the community college prepared me better for a career in tech than the 4-year school.
- JohnFen 3y agoI personally know a half-dozen high-performing devs at FAANG companies who have never attended college at all, too.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jordanpg 3y agoYeah, I think that, at least with respect to programming, the important question is, does college matter anymore. I think that ideally, it should not, because there are so so so many other ways to learn and prove yourself. I think college is great for a lot of things like physics or philosophy, but maybe, outside of theoretical CS, it just doesn't matter anymore. And that's OK.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago[flagged]
- naniwaduni 3y agoI doubt the 1590 really did him much worse than 1610!
- sand500 3y agoThe current max SAT score is 1600. They changed it from 2400 a few years ago.
- sho_hn 3y agoThe real news (to me) here is that Google is smart enough not to care about college degrees.
- unglaublich 3y agoWhat a bunch of gossip.
- 9991 3y agoIf you took away the gossip, dcurbanmom wouldn't have a website.
- woodruffw 3y agoThere's some incongruity here: college admissions are by no means fair, but they also don't evaluate for nearly the same things as Google's hiring process does. Put another way: colleges aren't qualified or equipped to make the kinds of determinations that Google does when hiring engineers, and being hired as a Google engineer prior to going to college isn't any particularly strong signal that you're prepared to go to a specific school. I sympathize with his situation, but I think treating college acceptances as a foregone conclusion based on demonstrated engineering prowess is an error.
- shaburn 3y agoThen what are the comp sci departments screening for and why?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- woodruffw 3y agoWe don't have any indication that he was rejected by a department; he may have been filtered outright before any CS department could have a say.
- WillPostForFood 3y agoIt is the 1590 SAT, 4.42 GPA, individual achievements, and Asian last name that make the College rejections notable, not that Google hired him.
- naniwaduni 3y agoNotable? It's just another Tuesday.
- figassis 3y agoidk, that is partly true. Then there's all the college signaling that academics are not enough. To be admitted in a top school you need to show extra curricular experience and generally be extraordinary, but now that's not enough. Well, I'd like to see the applications.
- dadrian 3y agoGood for them. I am however, confused by the list of accomplishments, one of which is "wrote tests". I think this goes to show that audience matters---that list looks a lot better as items on a resume at an undergrad career fair than it looks to college admissions or even looks on a resume of someone a few years out of school.
- cj 3y ago> RESTful APIs, workflow orchestration, metrics and alerting, horizontal scaling, CDN, rate limiting, security hardening This more than likely reads like gibberish to the average admissions officer.
- solveit 3y agoYes, that's almost certainly true. It's very odd that American schools generally run their undergraduate admissions with minimal input from their faculty.
- botswana99 3y agoIt's no surprise -- being good at work is not the same as being good at school.
- JoshTko 3y agoI mean is there any question why he was rejected?
- Philorandroid 3y ago>Stanley Zhong graduated from high school in June 2023 I think it's safe to assume that Mr. Zhong is of an Asian background. My guess is that he is, unfortunately, lacking in "interpersonal skills".
- gresrun 3y agoThat's a dangerous, biased assumption.
- gruez 3y agoI suspect it's not supposed to be taken at face value. It's a reference to Harvard admissions process, where asians seem to get suspiciously low "personality scores" compared to white applicants. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollment-applicants.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollme...
- Philorandroid 3y agoI totally agree, which is why it's disheartening that universities like Harvard use it as a metric to exclude Asians: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/15/harvard-discrimination-case-personal-rating-system https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/15/harvard-disc...
- synergy20 3y agoUniversity of Texas, which one? if it's UT Austin then its CS program has been top 10 in the nation for quite a long time, so, good college CS program did admit him. SAT 1590 is nothing for MIT or CMU or things like that though, esp for male students with Asian names, you need way more than just a great SAT score and a perfect GPA, a lot more indeed. The high bar on Asian male for good universities just made them even stronger academically, with internet and free job market nowadays, nothing can stop a smart and determined mind, and they might actually have saved a lot of money because some colleges rejected them based on their ethnicity.
- scottlamb 3y ago> Shortly after he turned 18, Google hired him as an L4 software engineer, a position typically offered to candidates with multiple years of professional experience as well as a college degree. L4 is the entry level for Google's SWE position, and Google absolutely hires SWEs straight out of college (no professional experience). A Google SWE without a college degree is more rare but I know a few. I'd never heard of an 18-year-old landing a full-time Google SWE position, though. Congratulations to him! edit: sorry, got mixed up, entry level is L3. Thanks for the correction.
- gresrun 3y agoL3 is entry-level for fresh college grads.
- altgoogler 3y agoGoogler here. L4 requires experience. New grad hires are L3.
- scottlamb 3y agoOh, you're right, I spaced. I've been away from Google for a few years now, and I remembered the titles and Lx being off from each other but had it mixed up. Thanks for speaking up; I was wondering what the deal was with the downvotes. * L3 = Software Engineer II, entry level. (There's no Software Engineer I.) * L4 = Software Engineer III. * L5 = Senior Software Engineer. * L6 = Staff Software Engineer. * ...
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoAren't interns L2?
- pge 3y agoCan anyone verify the accuracy of this statement? A random post on a message board doesn’t merit a response without a little more evidence…
- dongping 3y agoAt least this specific case was cited in a congressional hearing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zu5cdfv9kk&t=2587s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zu5cdfv9kk&t=2587s
- kyleblarson 3y agoSounds like he dodged a bullet landing a solid 6 figure job rather than paying tens if not hundreds of thousands for the next 4 years (or going into that much debt)
- GlenTheMachine 3y agoI went to a small rural high school in the 1980s. Taught myself to code, started a business writing software, entered and won the regional science fair and placed second in the CS division of the International Science and Engineering Fair in 1987. Won a prestigious NASA internship, got glowing letters of recommendation from my NASA mentors. Took every AP class available to me (all both of them). Graduated third in my class. Also played on the varsity basketball team, was an Eagle Scout, and served in my church. Oh, and scored 1460 on the SAT and 34 on the ACT. And I got turned down flat by MIT and waitlisted by Yale. Actually, MIT turned me down twice, once for undergrad and again for grad school. I also ended up at the University of Maryland, and had the time of my life there. And I've had a wildly successful career, which occasionally means I fund MIT professors. It's a crap shoot. I'd love to know what happened when the MIT admissions board looked at my resume, because as a rational exercise I don't get that decision.
- Retric 3y agoPrestigious schools are ranked in part based on how selective they are which incentivizes rejecting people rather than having some standard and growing to accommodate everyone who meets it. This incentivizes them to make admissions seem somewhat random so people that are unlikely to make the cut also apply. Even less selective schools want to reject some applicants simply to maintain a consistent number of students year to year. Which isn’t to say things are random internally, just that they don’t want most people to be able to know if they would get rejected.
- ncruces 3y agoAbove a certain threshold, and if you can't raise admissions, a random selection process is perfectly fair. It's certainly fairer, IMO, than having a perfectly objective ranking system that mirrors biases in society, and then using affirmative action to counteract those biases.
- Retric 3y agoFair isn’t necessarily the most important metric for schools. If your parent is a billionaire it’s perfectly rational for them to prefer you over somewhat more qualified applicants.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- byteware 3y agoI'm trying to find the takeaway, should kids not go to college? or that nobody reads the comments, since one of them raises the question, "is there proof?" and claims that not according to their linkedin
- blaufast 3y agoIts because he's not rich. I don't understand why this is not more widely understood. These schools are not for meritocracy. Schools with sports teams fill much of the incoming class with athletes before they even consider an application, and then they start picking from places and people who'll keep their prestige reciprocally high. The son of a foreign dictator would never attend the school that produced the only human with two unshared nobel prizes, because that's not the game they're playing. And when they pick, they're starting with schools the admissions officers have relationships with (rich people schoools) that require rich people middle schools to attend, etc... The chain starts in childhood, you don't just take a bunch of tests available to the public. I've had friends whose job it was to interview kindergarteners for access to their exclusive schools. Others had to deal with two sets of parents suing each other over one's access to that school. And before you say this is conspiratorial, I've verified this with admissions people and deans from these places.
- blaufast 3y agoAnd yes, racism, but a more pedestrian sense than a true sense. Any wealthy arab or prestigious african has access to these places, just not normal ones. And these colleges looooove it this happens. Their numbers get better and they didn't have to do anything that compromises their design philosophy. And having interviewed people for much less prestigious 'diversity' programs, I can't help but relate. The African diplomat's son with an excellent international education interviews well and gives your organization a future 'success' story.
- BeetleB 3y agoProbably not intended by the poster, but this gives me hope. Universities shouldn't overvalue these. Ultimately, they are focused on academics. The profile of this person screams "Will drop out before graduating". I mean, if he applied to average universities and got rejected, that would be notable. But applying only at top universities and getting rejected? That's not at all notable.
- lazyasciiart 3y agoThey're not all top universities though, are they?
- BeetleB 3y agoOnly one isn't
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- _hark 3y agohttps://archive.is/HgqAy https://archive.is/HgqAy
- rurp 3y agoIs this all that surprising? College admissions are not optimizing for people who can currently pass a tech company interview. Maybe they should focus more in that area, but that's a separate discussion, and currently schools neither select for nor claim to select for those skills. Plus both processes have immense amounts of variance. It's not hard to find excellent candidates who were rejected from a particular university or job.
- Gunax 3y agoWhile that's true, there seems to be enough for universities. He has the grades, the SAT, and the extra curriculars. I feel like we are missing something. Someone with perfect grades, SAT, and leading a competition coding team should get accepted to more schools (many are strong but not name-brand).
- pledess 3y agoI don't know anything about this specific applicant. Often, an applicant to a top school meets with a volunteer alumni/ae interviewer from the applicant's local area. They might get a competent interviewer with a dev background. There normally won't be a quiz on software development but there will be a conversation about a project. If the applicant asserts they did 95% of a project's work with 5% help from a parent or other contributor, but the applicant's responses give the interviewer a much different perception of the percentage, this can be flagged as an embellished claim. And that can sometimes be much, much worse than not mentioning the project at all.
- Gunax 3y agoIt's true that unis and corporations care about different things. However, I am surprised that he would only be accepted at two of those universities, given the grades, SAT, and competitive coding. Most of those schools are solid but non-name branded.
- lazyasciiart 3y agoSome interesting hypotheses in the thread based on other people’s anecdotal experience: didn’t care to write application essays, didn’t take expected minimum classes (e.g 2 years of social sciences or whatever). For example Cal Poly says minimum 4 years of English classes in high school and they recommend 5 years by doubling up or doing early college.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- elromulous 3y agoI don't oppose this being flagged. But I'm curious, why was it flagged?
- oldbbsnickname 3y agoMAANG isn't hiring officially, and only for critical roles and senior engineers on the q.t. It's an ostensible belt-tightening that's really about repress wages and placating Wall St. by extracting even more money during economy-wide years of massive profits. MAANGs don't have below L3 or L4. L3 or L4 is entry-level while IC6-7 are senior, and IC7-9 are custom tailored, under-specified roles of engineers who can make a million or more in TC. Mandatory bragging: When I glance left, I can see a reflection of the top of UT tower and the capitol in my window. Also, I-35 S traffic is backed up as far as the eye can see and I-35 N is inching along like lukewarm molasses.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago> Also, I-35 S traffic is backed up as far as the eye can see and I-35 N is inching along like lukewarm molasses. sounds about right. at least you can get drunk on dirty 6th with the rest of the uni folks
- dongping 3y agoThis case was presented to the House Committee on Education & the Workforce in the hearing on "How SCOTUS’s Decision on Race-Based Admissions is Shaping University Policies": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zu5cdfv9kk&t=2587s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zu5cdfv9kk&t=2587s
- EGreg 3y agoHow much does Google L4 make as a starting salary and bonuses? Where can we see this, glassdoor or something?
- spants 3y agoKids, change your names before applying for places. Sincerely, Wanda Abimbola
- danseop08 3y ago[flagged]
- j45 3y agoIs there a reason this post is flagged?
- lazyasciiart 3y agoWell, he certainly did something wrong in his applications. His high school doesn't even know he sent some of them, going by the failure to mention eg Maryland or Wisconsin in their list of colleges applied to this year. (And I get the impression this place tracks them pretty closely...) https://gunn.pausd.org/campus-life/college-career-center/college-outcomes https://gunn.pausd.org/campus-life/college-career-center/col...
- motency 3y agoI went to this high school. They used to require you report every college you applied to, but no longer do (due to… privacy concerns I think? Not everyone wants intense speculation in where they may or may not have applied.) so he could have just not reported it.
- lazyasciiart 3y agoWould he really have not reported acceptances though? (Maryland)
- jamesbond009 3y ago[flagged]
- aabbnanzhong 3y agoThere have been speculations about whether family connections played a significant role in the hiring decisions. For example, the fact that Stanley Zhong's father Nan Zhong is engineering manager at Google may lead to concerns that a reference or recommendation from that parent, who holds a high-ranking position, influenced the hiring process. Moreover, some have pointed out that the Stanley Zhong's primary background in the case was founding a startup that utilized services from a major tech company, like Amazon Web Services (AWS). This situation has led to discussions about the potential overlap between the teenager's career development and the parent's professional connections, as Nan Zhong happens to be previously software engineer manager at AWS.
- ehhthing 3y agoSo having applied to Google multiple times on different referrals and gotten exactly 0 interviews, I can say that it probably doesn't affect your application to have "connections" nearly as much as you'd think. In any case, he did competitive programming on the side and he was certainly very good at it, which makes the interview portion trivial to pass. > Moreover, some have pointed out that the Stanley Zhong's primary background in the case was founding a startup that utilized services from a major tech company, like Amazon Web Services (AWS). This situation has led to discussions about the potential overlap between the teenager's career development and the parent's professional connections, as Nan Zhong happens to be previously software engineer manager at AWS. This is BS. Every web app runs on some cloud infrastructure (or I guess on-prem is an option if you have a lot of money), but as a high school student your budget will be determined based on how much free credit you'll get. Google Cloud and AWS both have generous amounts of free credits for startups, so realistically these were the two best options. I think it's slightly easier to get AWS credits than Google, but regardless, they're pretty easy to get (I have a friend who has gotten tens of thousands of dollars worth of free credits for simply having registered an LLC and getting a Mercury account).
- aabbnanzhong 3y agoIs that your father or mom who you got referral from or just some random friends? It's totally different if the referral recommendation is very strong. As a software engineering manager at Google I can tell you that you don't underestimate the power of managers these days. One can easily connect resources and asks for which team is actively hiring and put in some good words. Otherwise, if the candidate is that strong, why did he never spoken about being offered position at aws or even meta? Likely he just get rejected by minimum qualification requirement by resume.
- starchild3001 3y agoCollege admissions are broken, plain and simple. Completely opaque. Success criteria unclear, appears highly subjective, subject to gaming and monetary influence, officially biased against non-alumni & non-affiliated children. Simply F'ed up. I don't have any words for it. Schools or someone else have to clean up this mess. My only hope is that people will see through how potentially useless college education is. For many people, it's simply an extended daycare if you need additional time to find your life's direction. Kids like this one don't need it. Kudos to him! Teaching models are largely broken. All you need is youtube and an internet connection these days. Structured post-K12 education is over-rated.