Work in Tech: How to Get a Data Center Job at Google
Expertise is important, but it’s not your biggest strength
![Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during Google I/O 2016 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre on May 19, 2016 in Mountain View, California. Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during Google I/O 2016 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre on May 19, 2016 in Mountain View, California.](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt8eb3cdfc1fce5194/blt853767eeafe32695/66210b1bd2113b2d9c441117/sundar-pichai-google-io-2016-getty-e1477695945794_0.jpg?width=1280&auto=webp&quality=95&format=jpg&disable=upscale)
If you haven’t worked on Google’s data center team in the past, you won’t have the exact expertise you’ll need when you join, so, although expertise is important when applying for Google data center jobs, what’s more important is a sharp and flexible mind.
No one built a network to support applications at Google’s scale before Google, so Googlers learn many of the skills required to operate and continue expanding that network on the job.
“There is no book that you can refer to,” Joe Kava, Google’s VP of data centers, says. “The technology we deploy was invented here, so you’re not going to get a person with that specific expertise.”
In the nine years that he’s been at Google, the company’s data center team has grown more than 10-fold, and it’s continuing to grow, although not as quickly as it has in some previous years, when he would hire more than 100 people per year. The core team today is big enough to where it doesn’t have to hire at such extreme rates, but the search for good people never stops, and it has gotten harder.
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See also: How to Get a Data Center Job at Facebook
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