First of all, please accept my apologies for not having posted in a really, really long time. Last week was extremely busy. I worked for about 12 hours giving campus tours and representing UR at a local college fair. I also had a test and a quiz and pile of homework. To top it all off, I was sick with a cold. Just as I was starting to get healthy, a nasty stomach virus knocked me out for the better part of this weekend. I’m back to normal today, though, and I’m hoping that I’ll be healthy for the rest of the year so that I can enjoy the spring that hasn’t quite made it to Rochester yet. It’s been snowing for the past four or five days in a row! The seasons have been so backwards this year – we’ve had a white Easter and a green Christmas.
On to the point of this post – my summer plans. I decided about a week and a half ago to take a job with IBM. I’ll be a member of what IBM calls a “Speed Team,” a group of six interns that spends an entire summer overhauling a mission-critical component of the business. We’ll be working on the automation of the dice, sort, and pick process for MPWs (multi-project wafers).
I was on another Speed Team two summers ago, and it was a very positive experience for three reasons. Speed Teams at IBM have a lot of executive visibility – we often had meetings with managers three levels above us during which we had to present, with metrics, our methodology and progress. It gave a sense of importance to our work. Secondly, there was never a shortage of things to tackle. I am the kind of person that needs to be kept busy and to have two or three projects going at once so that if one stalls then I can move on and come back to it laster. Lastly, it was a blast to be in a room with only other interns. We had our own lounge/meeting space, and could shout to each other over the cube walls if we had questions. I’m hoping that this summer will be just as rewarding.
“What happened to Google?” is the question you’re all probably wondering about. Continue reading ‘Finalized Summer Plans’
It’s been over a month since I had my first phone interview with Google, but I’ve finally got a second one set up for Monday the 19th. It took more than a few emails to prompt the recruiter to do this, but I’m glad that it’s finally happening.
Most companies are wrapping up their intern hiring by this time, so I wanted to make sure that I had a backup plan in case Google didn’t come through. I interviewed for a few positions at IBM over break and got two job offers that sound interesting and challenging. Both want a response by this Friday. I’m not willing to let those go in order to chase a Google internship that may not happen, so I’ve let the Google recruiter know that I’m on a tight time schedule in hopes that she can find me a group within the week.
I’m not sure how the intern hiring process works at Google. The recruiter mentioned that it can take anywhere from “one week to two months” to find an appropriate match, and that matches are made based on “intern experience, skills, and interview feedback.” The emails that she sends make it sound like they want to hire me, but they’ve really let the ball drop these past few weeks. I think that they must be busy trying to hire people to fill full-time positions. I also wonder if maybe this process would have gone faster if I had applied for an internship out in California, where they have more of their workforce.
Either way, I’ve got another week until I have to make a decision. Both options have their merits. If I work at IBM, I can live at home for free and hang out with all of my friends. I would give all that up, though, to have the chance to live in New York City and meet a whole new set of people. I think I’ll be happy no matter which way it goes, but I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed anyway…
Update: The second interview went alright. There were more abstract math questions this time, more emphasis on algorithms rather than data structures, although there were a few questions about trees and lists at the beginning. Once again, the interviewer was really interested in hearing my thought process, so I tried to think out loud as I was solving the problems.
This pleasant surprise was waiting for me in my inbox when I came back from class earlier tonight:
Tyler:
Your first interview went well! We will now begin the process of matching your experience and preferences with groups within Google who are looking for interns this summer. Once we find a match, we’ll set up your second phone interview.
I’m looking forward to it. Now that I’ve gotten past the initial screening, I feel like I can relax a little bit. Hopefully the second interview will be less of a quiz and more of a way for my potential coworkers to determine if I would be a good fit on their project.
The first interview went really well. I got asked about my previous internships, then I was grilled on data structures and Big-O analysis. The culminating task was solving a design problem based on the one of the data structures we had just discussed in detail. My first solution was inefficient, but after a bit of prodding I had a stroke of genius and came up with one of the two optimal solutions.
My advice to anyone who has a phone interview with Google is to know your data structures. Know them well. If it has been a while since you took a data structures class, review them. I was really lucky that the stuff I reviewed was exactly what I was asked about. The questions aren’t simple, but having a good core understanding of data structures and other computer science fundamentals will help immensely.
And now I will cross my fingers while I wait for next week to arrive!
Recent Comments