[segmondy]

No surprise. You can learn a lot in a year, but you can't level up your computer science knowledge in a year. Some people might be offended or disappointed by this comment, but don't. Just keep your heads down, learn a lot, expose yourself to lots of different things and the experience will come with that.

With that said, I'm not surprised that he didn't get a phone interview. Even if Google knew about him, they might want to let people know that their interview process can't be gamed. If I was hiring, I might be concerned that someone who put in that much effort, might stall once they get hired. I want someone who has put that kind of effort not leading up to the interview, but over the years due to genuine curiosity due to love of computing and not because they want to get a job.

[guitarbill]

> You can learn a lot in a year, but you can't level up your computer science knowledge in a year.

This makes no sense? Level up to what? CS degree level? Because correct me if I'm wrong, but the majority of interview questions are based on CS 101 (or the equivalent). So literally the first year. Guess it depends what kind of depth of knowledge you want/need. Again, if you're only doing it for interviews and not to go into CS research, don't think you need too much depth.

[16bytes]

> Because correct me if I'm wrong, but the majority of interview questions are based on CS 101

AFAIK, they actually send out a prep-sheet which recommends experience with not only big-O and simple algorithms, but knowing how search algorithms compare, dijkstra's algorithm, A*, graphs, trees, networks, http, combinatorics, etc.

I'm not sure which CS 101 you took, but to me that's not 101 stuff. They definitely expect a candidate to know nearly all of what you'd learn in an entire typical CS program.

[lomnakkus]

Depends very much on where you're interviewing, I think.

(Not that I support the use of "how do you reverse a linked list using only one pointer?" type questions at all. It only encourages "cramming for the exam" vs. actually have a broad understanding of "why would I even need to do that?" and "what is the cost of stack space and could we allocate more?", etc.)

[ohstopitu]

Knowledge - yes it can be gained in a year.

Experience - nope nope nope nope nope!

I'm sure everyone here can relate too - What you learnt in university was not as useful as real life experience (even when working on your own side projects).

While he spent his time (a lot of it too) on learning how to game Google's interview process, he didn't seem to consider experience at all :S (I mean, 8 months learning algorithms but not even a month working on some kind of portfolio showing off your work?)

I am not saying EVERY dev out there needs a portfolio, but he said he didn't have CS background/experience and this was his way of getting into Google, but without actual experience (note: NOT work experience, just experience in general), how does Google know he's up for it?

[Spoom]

Google optimizes for new grads. To a certain extent, experience can actually make the interview process harder (because they will expect more of an experience candidate than a new grad).

[maverick_iceman]

Why not? I went through half of CLRS in three months, don't see why someone would be unable to ramp up their CS knowledge in a year.