Courtesy of Edwin Toh
- Edwin Toh skipped university and was in the Singapore Army before getting hired by Google.
- He started his career as an intern in NYC and became a business owner and UX engineer.
- After six years at Google in NYC and California, he left in April to join an AI startup.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Edwin Toh, a former UX engineer at Google in New York. It has been edited for length and clarity.
My friend told me what I should expect at Google's New York office before I started working there. You don't get the vibes you see in the movies — it's just a big office building.
But when I stepped inside the lobby during the summer of 2018 and saw the big logo with the interactive screen, I still thought, Wow, I'm actually entering Google.
I think anyone would want to work for Google if they had the chance, but I never really thought I'd get there. I ended up working for Google for six years.
I didn't take the typical route
I was born and raised in Singapore in a family of five. Getting a degree would've been expensive, but I realized I might not need it. I could see how fast technology was moving.
While studying at Nanyang Polytechnic for my diploma in digital media design, I remember my lecturer learning about a new development and teaching it to us simultaneously.
I needed to complete my compulsory military service in the Singapore Army, so I was a full-time national serviceman for two years. When I left, I joined a digital ad agency in Singapore to save up and started applying for US internships three years later.
I was sponsored as an intern by Firstborn, a digital agency in New York
I worked in New York City for five months. I then returned to Singapore, where I launched my own digital design agency, and Firstborn became one of our clients.
After running it for three years, I realized most of my time was occupied with management tasks, and I was concerned my growth as a programmer was starting to stall.
I closed my company and returned to the US to rejoin Firstborn as a full-time staff member in September 2015. The industry had changed mostly due to the launch of the iPhone, and many app startups had launched.
I wanted to apply for Google, but I suffered from imposter syndrome. I didn't feel like a real developer. I'd been making marketing websites that only needed to be fun and creative, not for real products that people would depend on and use every day.
A friend referred me to Google
A television company offered me a job two years into working in the US. When I was about to sign the offer, a friend who worked for Google told me they were looking for UX engineers, and she pushed me to apply. It was the perfect role for me.
She referred me, and then the hiring manager at Google contacted me. The interview process started with a phone interview and a basic technical test. Then, I had an on-site interview.
When I went for the Google interview, I didn't think I would get the job, so I just viewed it as an experience. I also thought it was cool that I got a chance to visit Google.
What surprised me when I stepped into the Google office was how big the building is
It spans one avenue and takes four minutes to walk from one end to the other. There were four cafés, each serving different types of food, and baristas pouring coffee.
The interview day consisted of five rounds. I started by presenting my portfolio to five interviewers from different parts of the company.
Then, I had three one-on-one interviews that featured technical tests and another that focused on Googliness to see if I would be a good culture fit. The interview process took a full day.
You can ask any question during lunch without counting toward your interview score. I had lunch with the hiring manager, who also did my phone interview. He made sure I was comfortable and checked that I was mentally ready for the next half of the interview because he knew how tiring it could be for the whole day.
Once the interview day is over, your application goes to the hiring committee to decide whether it's a yes or no, and then the offer committee returns with an offer. This process usually takes multiple weeks, but they knew I had a pending offer, so it was only two weeks from the initial contact to the offer.
I got the propeller hat, a jigsaw puzzle, a T-shirt, and a handwritten note through the mail to say welcome.
I spent six years working for Google
I worked on everything from Search to Google Pay. If you want to move between the organizations at Google, you must apply. Poaching people from other teams is seen as bad form.
During the pandemic, I moved to the Mountain View office in Silicon Valley to work on a moonshot for Google at X (formerly Google X). The vibe between the Google offices in New York and California is very different. There are way more engineers in Mountain View, while there's a mix of sales, engineering, and design in New York.
I knew what Mountain View was like because I'd been there both for work and as a tourist. The campus had a very magical vibe. Even though it's laid-back, you can feel this is where everything happens.
The X office in California had a different feel to the Google office in New York
Robots roam the floor in California. You can see them everywhere.
I worked at X for a year until Google Labs acquired the moonshot I was working on. I moved back to New York because I missed the convenience of a city.
My favorite thing about working at Google was how easy it was to get to know some of the most brilliant yet humble people in tech. I've been lucky to work with some of the smartest people in this space, most recently on a team called Playspace, which has been working on bringing useful generative AI features to Workspace.
I left Google to join an AI startup
Working for a big company like Google can often dilute or delay your impact. In a startup, your survival depends on your contribution. Anything that you do can make or break the company.
I left Google for a startup called Runway in April.
I forged close relationships with the people I worked with at Google, and that's what I'll miss the most.