My Google Journey (3)
Day 3 (5/24/17)
Activities:
- Weight lifted for the first time in too long
- Attended an Information Security workshop, a Code Health workshop, and an Engineering Practicum Intern Alumni Panel
- Explored the Google Visitor Center and the Google Merchandise Store
What I learned Today:
- Sometimes, it’s okay just to take detours that you don’t originally think will be fun or exciting. I originally thought the Google Visitor Center wouldn’t be much more than a set of pamphlets, but in actuality, it was an amazing collection of Google’s history. I’m truly so glad we decided to stop inside even when I didn’t really look forward to it at the beginning.
- Social engineering is one of the most prevalent and effective ways for hackers to get your information, and there are a lot of ways they will try to fool you into thinking you’re secure. Today, I was exposed to some of the ways I can catch their common tricks.
- “Healthy” code is code that is monitored and examined closely throughout every step of the process to ensure readability, bug resistance, and more so that it stays as efficient and easily managed as possible.
- To be a good intern, you have to take ownership of your projects. I can’t always speak for all companies, but at least in Google, they like it when their interns speak up if they think there are better ways of designing the UI of their project, or if their opinion on how to structure the code is different from their mentor’s. In the end, it’s your project — not your manager’s.
Reflection:
Today we continued to attend various classes related to our work at Google. While I enjoyed all of them and felt they were all beneficial to attend, I found the Engineering Practicum (EP) Alumni Panel to be the most interesting. It was great getting to see a panel of people who have gone through this internship and successfully converted to full-time at Google, but most of them had interned multiple times if not had all of their summer internships at Google. I wondered if this was the norm when one of the panelists mentioned that they regret not interning somewhere else after their EP internship. This makes me wonder whether it would be a better choice overall to go somewhere else if I do receive a return offer. Or is it more important that I gain the rapport with Google by returning in the hopes that I can more easily get a full-time offer?
Another thing I noticed was that the majority, if not all (as one of them didn’t mention where they graduated from), of the panelists graduated from Ivy League — or Ivy League-level — universities. It felt strange looking up to these people because I felt as if I wasn’t part of the common demographic coming from a state school. Is it strange that I go to one of the largest universities in the nation, but somehow we are grossly underrepresented at places like Google? I don’t regret choosing to go to ASU, but when you’re surrounded every day by people from Yale, Brown, Harvard, and more, it makes you feel at least a little alienated. Or maybe I’m just being too sensitive.
One thing I’ve found I really appreciate here is how nice everyone is — even all of the interns. I have yet to meet anyone who wasn’t open to chatting or even giving directions. Yesterday, I was struggling to put my bike on the bus’s bike racks for the first time, and a kind gentleman just took up the initiative to help me out. Today, a man stopped us in the middle of the hallway to ask if we were looking for something specific since we were obviously lost. It’s been very refreshing to see that everyone is so open to help each other out as well as get to know each other.
