A Day In The Life Of A Hardware Engineer At Google
A day for this hardware engineer at Google is highly variable, encompassing "deep technical weeds" work alongside mentoring and coordinating projects, a reflection of the company's "bottoms-up goal" approach. The increasing prevalence of meetings, while sometimes hindering deep focus, also facilitates learning and collaboration, a dynamic the engineer finds enjoyable despite the time commitment.
Project Management, Teamwork, Communication, Problem-Solving, Leadership
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Bob Buckley
Hardware Engineer
Fortune 10 Tech Co.
UNL
UCSB
Engineering - Mechanical
Technology
Product / Service / Software Development and Management
First Generation College Student
Video Highlights
1. A day in the life of a hardware engineer at Google is diverse and dynamic, involving both individual technical work and collaboration with various teams.
2. There's a balance between independent contributions and mentoring/managing others to coordinate projects.
3. Effective meetings are crucial for leveraging others' knowledge and ensuring project success, although they can sometimes limit focused work time.
Transcript
What does a day in the life of a hardware engineer look like?
That's a great question. Everywhere is different.
Google prides itself on being more of a bottoms-up goal, where people are responsible for really understanding and being effective in their own right. There's some structure from the top, but it's not super rigid.
I enjoy it because my day is always very different. There are lots of different technologies and subgroups I work with. I think deeply about individual contributor efforts, getting into technical weeds myself, as well as mentoring and managing other folks. I also make sure projects are coordinated properly.
It really varies. As I move up and deal with more people, I spend a lot of time in meetings. This is good and bad. It's hard to focus and do deep work over long periods.
However, you can leverage and learn from others very effectively if meetings run well. Google and the people here have gotten really good at making meetings effective. So, it is a lot of fun, even though it takes a lot of time.
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