DEV Community: Elias Groll

How I applied at Google when I was only 19 and made it in

Elias Groll — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 01:01:40 +0000

Many people ask me how I managed to get into Google back when I was 19, and I have to say - it is not the regular success story.

Being a Software Engineer at Google was my dream since I was 13 years old when I got my first internship as a Web Developer at a german banking company.

Until I was 18, I had some more Software Engineering Internships (also at SAP) and studied Computer Science while still in High School.

➡️ When I first applied, I GOT REJECTED 7 TIMES.

All these rejections were very generic, and I decided to look out for someone to refer me to Google.

A friend of a friend worked at Google, and after a chat, she decided to refer me to Google. I got rejected another time, and she referred me again - then I got an invitation for an interview, joined as an intern and later became a Full Time Software Engineer at #Google!

Want to achieve anything? Be persistent! 🚀

Comment if you want to hear more about the interviews and the process or why I finally left Google!

New year resolutions

Elias Groll — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 00:41:58 +0000

Just to hold myself accountable, here are some new year resolutions ✅:

🟣 Codesphere Inc. needs to be more convenient AND more affordable than #Azure, #AWS, and #GCP.

🔜 Launching end of January 2021.

Regex..why can’t you just be normal? 🤯

Elias Groll — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 00:37:24 +0000

The problem with regular expressions is that they are too powerful, hence often mistaken for a Parser + Lexer and therefore lead to code which is VERY HARD TO MAINTAIN.

Please devs, when you need to match a c struct - use ANTLR or whatever and avoid what I did back in the day:

/((\w+\s*(,\w+\s*))(\n|\s))?{([^}])}(\n|\s)(\w+\s*(,\s*\w+\s*)*)?;/g 🤪

(ps: it’s only one of many, yes it might have bugs, no I did not find them yet, no it’s not in production anymore..)

Hack the Chrome Dino Game

Elias Groll — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 00:35:19 +0000

How to 'hack' the Google Chrome Dino Game 🦖

Step 1:
Open the game (type chrome://dino in your Chrome Browser)

Step 2:
Open the Developer Mode (Ctrl + Shift + I or option + command + I)

Step 3:
Type this code in the console
Runner.prototype.gameOver = ()=>{};

Step 4:
Close the Developer Mode and start the game

Step 5:
BOOM! The dino goes past all cactus and birds 🤪

➡️ Webdevelopment is a superpower 🦹‍♀️

Comment hack below if you want more hacks!

We have a problem..

Elias Groll — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 00:28:47 +0000

It's a familiar one to most of us who work in #tech.

We spend more time setting up and managing #infrastructure than we do writing code for it.

Sometimes there are not even entries on #Google for that, and the only thing you can do is try it out.

For Codesphere Inc., Jonas Zipprick, Roman Frolov and me wrote many thousands of lines of ansible scripts, helm charts and code - for setup, not features.

While in the last weeks we tried out different tweaks to improve our huge kubernetes cluster, I am now proud to say we are building something from scratch so developers won't have to.

(For everyone interested: multi master, multi load balancer, external etcd and more...).