Why I can never get a job at Google

I haven't fact checked this.

But one of the pieces of information doing the rounds on the job market is that Google will hire you only if you have a college degree.

It means I can never hope to occupy an 8 x 8 at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California.

Which is where Google is headquartered in the Bay Area. And where they come up with all those crazy algorithms.

But wait.....I may have already occupied an 8 x 8 at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway.

Wasn't Palm, one of my former employers, located at that address at one point of time?

I do believe that when Palm vacated its headquarters at Mountain View to join 3COM at its sprawling and swanky campus on Great America Parkway in Santa Clara (complete with Valet Parking), Google moved in to take its place.

So maybe I can say,  "Hey Google!  Who needs you?  Been there.  Done that."

But on a more serious note, why do I not have those letters at the end of my name that would make me Google-worthy?

This is My Story

Back when was I enrolled in the Undegraduate Bachelor of Arts program at Jyothi Nivas College, Bangalore, I didn't get the memo.

You know - the one about the minimum number of classes you need to attend.

With the result, my attendance was short and I was barred from taking the year-end exam.

I was told I could take it 6 months later.

But since this would put me out of step with my classmates, it had no appeal.

'This going to college business is not working for me, ' I told myself. 'Better to switch to independent study'.

Basically giving myself the license to carry on with my activities and diversions. Just as I pleased.

As to these activities and diversions, some were respectable, some not.

The Truant Student Becomes A Teacher

Overnight, it seemed, India had become a mecca for Middle Eastern students seeking a college education.

These students needed to learn English ASAP.

My college-professor sister started offering them English language lessons.

We (another sister and myself) decided to jump in and start giving these lessons as well.

So when I switched to "independent study", I was tutoring 4 students, and making quite a chunk of change.

House of the Rising Sun

Then there was my guitar.  Where there's a teenager, usually there's not one far off.

Except that this teenager knew all of 6 guitar chords.

With those 6 chords, I would spend all my free time (created from not going to college) singing "The House of the Rising Sun' , Joan Baez's  'Banks of the Ohio', and whatever else comprised Baez' most monotonous songs.

Over and over and over again.

It must have been quite challenging for the neighbors.

One of them came to our door.

"Please,", he pleaded to my parents, "if she must sing, can she mix it up a bit? She's repeating the same songs over and over again."

Move over Beethoven

'House of the Rising Sun', Joan Baez and my 6 guitar chords were a launching pad for me to start composing music.

You have no idea.

While my family delighted in my creative output, the neighbors and anyone who was trapped in our house would find themselves at the receiving end of mind-blowing lyrics like this:

"A Tooter Who Tooted the Flute.
Tried to Tutor to Tooters to Toot
Said the Two to the Tooter
Is it Harder to Toot
Or to Tutor two Tooters to Toot
And she sells sea shells on the sea shore
And the sun shines on the shop signs
And the sun shines on the shop signs
And I'm stuck for more rhymes to go on".

Yes, I actually composed a song, the lyrics of which were entirely composed of Tongue Twisters.

I still know the tune to this little ditty and can sing it for you, sans guitar.

Mercifully, I abandoned the guitar as soon as I was exposed to "real" musicians.

My present neighbors have no idea how lucky they are.

When The Sun Shone At Night

Not going to college released me from peer pressure.  So I was quite the oddball.

For a while, I wore sunshades day and night. Michael Jackson style.

Folks later told me they thought I had started using something.

Actually, I just liked the way I looked in shades.

The most significant thing which happened as a result of doing my bachelors in escapism, masters in goofing around and PhD in musical torture was that I began to write.

I would find an entertaining topic, write up a little sketch and send it off to the local newspaper.

A few pieces got accepted.

One of those pieces caught the eye of someone who worked in an advertising agency.

She knew my sister.

So she called my sister and said "we have a copywriting job for that sister of yours who writes for the newspaper."

The rest is history.

Ogilvy. But Without The Castle in France 

I joined a local agency as a Cub Copywriter.

And never looked back.

That is until...

I emigrated to the US and switched careers. And discovered through reading job description after job description, that just maybe I would have been better off finishing college when I was supposed to.

What prompted me to think about all of this was that James Altucher, a Hedge Fund Manager, author and Stockpickr.com founder, did a controversial interview on Tech Ticker recently - discouraging people from going to college.

In this interview  "Don't Send Your Kids to College - It's a Scam", he talks about why the high costs of college tuition are not worth it.

In a follow up to this (and as a response to the huge amount of backlash he received), he went back on Tech Ticker with "8 Alternatives to College."

As one of those unfortunates without a college education,  I couldn't help getting a warm feeling from these frontal attacks on formal education.

Terrible as it sounds, I do feel vindicated.

Even if the hallowed hallways of 1600 Amphiteatre Parkway will forever be beyond my reach.