Read you resume. Un-fuckin-real. wow.
My Google Internship
61–70 of 270 posts
Re: My Google Internship
#62Nice writeup. My favorite part is >> simply practiced interview questions for about three to four months, every day, from morning till night. I then had three phone interviews around November, which I passed. It's interesting (& funny) to see both high schoolers and experienced people spend similar amount of time (~several months) practicing for these types of technical interviews.
What it should be, is sad. These types of questions are often very different from actual work. The fact that you have to study or train for an interview process specifically, is absurd. Just being qualified for the job, should suffice.
Just being qualified does suffice.
It's the definition of qualified that needs to change.
Re: My Google Internship
#63I'm curious about the negative on work/life balance. Did they really talk about how to improve it, or was it tongue-in-cheek?
Well, they did mean it for real. They didn't directly give me feedback on how to improve it, other than "go home, man". It's a personal choice in the end :)
For a defined 3-month internship where your primary goal is to suck up as much experience as possible at a young age during said internship, I think you can give insane work hours a pass and just accept that they're making the most of the short-term opportunity. Just don't let it become habit in a fulltime job and you'll be sweet.
Re: My Google Internship
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
In that midpoint form I mention there's a box you can tick if you want to do "conversion" interviews at the end of your internship. Since I still have two more years of uni I didn't tick that box.
IMHO you're on the right track. Just try to get some fun while you're in the university because you ain't gonna find that environment (parties, girls, friends, etc.) elsewhere. Even if you do find something similar, sure as hell won't be the same.
Agreed. Don't let uni just be a gateway to employment. It's also a really good young adult experience where you can form social networks trivially easy that will serve you well into the future. It's your last hurrah of the innocence of no constant commitments and obligations before fulltime work too.
Re: My Google Internship
#65I love reading accounts like this. As someone who had an internship in high school, I'm always happy to hear what other people's experiences were going into and out of the process. I think my immediate reaction is that Google creates an environment that simply doesn't exist at most other places.
I interned at two companies in the defense industry. You could argue that our experiences were different because of security, but I disagree. The environment you described sounds like an absolute heaven: you have challenging, fun work, and have extremely well placed and delivered benefits. At both of my internships, the problems were hard. They weren't particularly fun to solve so much as they "had" to be solved and I was the only one to solve them. I got similar rewarding experiences completing tasks, though everything I did had to be "on the clock." As soon as we stopped working, we were expected to stop billing or move to some other task.
The offices were dull, boring, and expensive to spend time in. Your internship had availability of food and technology that kept you happy. Neither of mine did this. At one internship, we had a free snack room. That's it. If we wanted to eat lunch at the cafeteria at my second internship, we could at great personal cost. We were stuck with "hand me down" hardware that was a menagerie of hardware pulled from random places throughout the building. If you were given a bad keyboard on day one, too bad -- it was yours forever.
I complain like this because you had the exact opposite of the experience I had. Your experience is an irregularity, at least compared to what I've seen. This all comes down to culture, I think. The Google corporate culture is modern, focused on employee happiness, and focused on diversity. Things like getting your own hardware choices and free food go a long way to adding goodwill, and failing to take basic measures like that shows what I consider to be a lack of caring.
I wish more companies would copy Google on how they treat their employees and interns. Even if it might seem a bit cheesy to go after the low hanging fruit, employee happiness goes a long way to building a thriving, mutually beneficial relationship between an employee and a company.
Seeing a post like this makes me feel like my internship hosts haven't cared in the slightest. That's pretty painful, if I'm brutally honest.
Re: My Google Internship
#66Great read. However, he lost me at > Googley to stand up for diversity and inclusion, such as protesting against binary gendering on toilets Is it Google's business? Why should Google be involved? Why cater to 0.6% of the population, at the expense of convenience for the 99.4%? At my last job we had "non-binary", "all-inclusive" bathrooms. They're just awkward. Not the stalls themselves, but having to share the bathr…
It's a good deal more than 0.6% at Google, fyi. And the toilets in question aren't stall toilets, they're room toilets, like you'd see in a smaller restaurant.
Re: My Google Internship
#67Nice writeup. My favorite part is >> simply practiced interview questions for about three to four months, every day, from morning till night. I then had three phone interviews around November, which I passed. It's interesting (& funny) to see both high schoolers and experienced people spend similar amount of time (~several months) practicing for these types of technical interviews.
What it should be, is sad. These types of questions are often very different from actual work. The fact that you have to study or train for an interview process specifically, is absurd. Just being qualified for the job, should suffice.
Actually its good. If you study for months on interview questions to be able to pass the interview, you have "gamed" the system to get in and will likely be washed back out in 1-2 years depending on the mercy if your leadership team. People who spend the night before brushing up on their CS and passing the interview are those that actually pass (and stay and grow) and that is who the company really wants. Its just hard to weed out people who are very determined to game their way through.
Re: My Google Internship
#68Sorry, it seems like some kind of pseudo-utopia for people who want to feel special and intelligent all the time. People in silly spaceship themed rooms, meditating or hacking upside down, or maybe in sensory deprivation chambers for deep focus? It all screams: I'm entitled to coddling and acceptance--nay, encouragement of my eccentricities--cause I'm special. I just don't know if that's healthy or necessary, if Goog…
"for people who want to feel special and intelligent all the time."
Who doesn't want that?
Re: My Google Internship
#69Interesting, well written. Gives a window on how a corporation manages relationships with young smart people, and the actual psychological impact it has, the effectiveness. Thank you. Nitpicking: "Disclaimer: All opinions expressed below are my own." ??? Who else? How does poor legalese help your story? I swear: nobody will sue you.
Actually this is good policy, professionally speaking.
Re: My Google Internship
#70Incredible maturity at your age - Google does a great job at finding talent.