"Choose what not to learn (while being outwardly supportive of endless learning)."
So that's why I didn't hear back from the (initially enthusiastic) Google recruiter.
(edit): I re-read the email thread and I think I was being unfair in the previous iteration of this comment. "See randomness" and all that.
You must keep in mind Google's perspective. They have a firehose of great candidates to choose from, requiring an assembly line of recruiters and interviewers to filter them. They could use any filtering method, no matter how inaccurate or impersonal, and still get a large group of great people.
You are joining a pop culture that measures, judges, and hires people by how much they know about the current pop culture. Worse yet, everyone who tries to escape this conformity appears to just switch to a different conformity (OOP programmers switching to FP. Emacs users switching to SublimeText. Javascript people switching to Go. Programmers switching to Entrepreneurism. Etc.).
- Choose what not to learn (while being outwardly supportive of endless learning).
- Learn your excuse list for not understanding things now, and sit quietly while energetic people try to "convert" you.
- Choose what you actually want. (Many people are successful in unseen ways, and you never hear about them.)
- Know that you won't get it right the first time, but you will develop a feel for what to pay attention to after a few times around the hype cycle.
And, as always, keep learning.