Seeking career advice from Senior SWE’s & SRE’s to get to Google (1st choice) or Airbnb

There's a lot here, so I'll split up my response into multiple parts. The good news is that you have a lot of the most valuable resource in tech (time), so there's a lot you can do.

Going to Google/Airbnb + Europe

• There are 2 of the hardest companies to get into, especially Airbnb. Google is also going through a hiring freeze, leaving many stranded in team matching, and a big layoff is likely coming soon. I would expand your horizons to cover more companies, especially in this current economic climate.
• It's generally hard to switch to an office you want that's outside of the country. I would also temper expectations there, especially given that you're targeting a very specific European office.
• Another idea is to move to Zurich first, which should make you a more appealing hire for the company as you aren't shouldering the immigration complexity on them.
• You will have much less negotiating power as you would almost certainly be hired as an L3 by Google/Airbnb. L5/L6 is generally when companies are more flexible accommodating specific location needs - I saw this at both Meta and Robinhood.

Improving Your Coding Ability

• From this post, it seems like most of your conviction is around getting into these very prestigious companies vs. what you want to do. I recommend taking the time to figure out what your genuine passions are since that will sharpen your profile as a software engineer.
• Since you have a lot of free time, I recommend using side projects to level up your coding skills.
• It seems like you have a bottleneck at work getting meaty roadmap work, so an idea to try there is to come up with additional scope (internal tooling is often a good area here). Here's a discussion on some ideas to try there.

Getting Certifications

• In general, I am very skeptical about the value of certificates, which I cover in-depth in my blog post about common learning traps junior engineers fall into.
• I have literally never seen a certification make a difference when it comes to hiring. This includes:
  • A certification pushing recruiting to give a candidate an interview
  • A certification giving a candidate an edge over another when deciding who to present an offer to
• The problem with certificates is that they're inherently mass-produced and accessible. If you have been able to do them, that means many, many thousands were able to do them too (and a lot of them are probably also applying to Google).
• FAANG has a much higher bar when it comes to quality of skill, so certificates tend to make even less of a difference there.
• That being said, it seems like you are targeting more niche roles. If a job posting or recruiter says the certificates help (or are a hard requirement), do them by all means. If not, I recommend using the time for side projects instead.

Choosing A Programming Language

• Some languages are more open-ended than others, but there will always be a million ways to do things when it comes to software, especially at the system design level. I wouldn't use this too much as a constraint for choosing a language.
• That being said, I'm sure Golang is a fine language for targeting Google as they literally invented the language.
• Python is a good language as well, used by many companies both big and small.
• It seems like you enjoy using Golang so just stick with that. Thinking too much about which language/tech stack to use is another common junior engineer trap. Once you find something you like and are able to build cool stuff, just commit to it and go deep on it. Simply doing the work is much more important than figuring out which lane to do the work in.

Should I learn Kubernetes?

You won't be able "learn" any skill at a Google-level on your own. I would look at the job posting and talk to a recruiter if you can - It's likely not a hard requirement, especially at an L3 level.

Can anyone speak to as what SRE-SWE work at Google is like and what the projects are?

I Googled for "Google SRE-SWE" and found this article, which seems pretty good. It talks about Zurich as well.

Luckily I already know my passions, I've had on my mind a long time - a side project with Godot where I make an online multiplayer game with an AWS or GCP infrastructure.

Great! Go build it and get it users! That's how you will separate yourself from others when applying to Google.

Should I focus on a side project to sharpen up or just jump into leetcode and apply to Google when I'm ready?

Check out this discussion for my in-depth answer.

Also, you should just apply to Google right now. You will never be "ready" for a FAANG company interview. Just try applying, and if you get an interview opportunity, put it really far into the future (this probably aligns with what Google wants anyways with the hiring freeze). You are currently making a lot of guesses in the dark about what's required, which isn't productive.

I thought GCP certs would be a credit to my profile when applying to Google.

Any commodity won't have value for FAANG companies for 99% of cases as they're commodities.

Also, if you haven't seriously touched either Golang or Python, do that right now! Build a side project with each and see how it feels. You have a lot of free time, and it's a slow work season due to the holidays. Finding stuff you like (especially the programming language) is really important at your career stage.

Hey Alex!

Should I learn Kubernetes?

Can anyone speak to as what SRE-SWE work at Google is like and what the projects are?

Improving Coding Ability:

Luckily I already know my passions, I've had on my mind a long time - a side project with Godot where I make an online multiplayer game with an AWS or GCP infrastructure. Other than games, I have a strong interest in working on mass scale cloud architecture.

Should I focus on a side project to sharpen up or just jump into leetcode and apply to Google when I'm ready? I thought GCP certs would be a credit to my profile when applying to Google.

Re: Golang, I actually haven't touched it but was thinking about picking it up. It seems cool that it compiles down to a binary for cloud functions. I've started working in GDScript in Godot is similar to Python. Python would be a good choice if I find myself wanting to pivot into AI where as I understand a lot of workloads are running in the cloud.