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We had a chance to speak with intern Lu Chen this summer for the Googler Beta Series, and she shared with us 5 reasons why interning for Google is awesome. Continue below to get Lu’s unique perspective on working here at Google. Interested in being a summer intern at Google? Visit www.google.com/students to apply today. Name: Lu Chen School: UPenn Internship Focus: Google Blogger Team Hobbies: Eating/Hanging around the kitchen; Graphics & Animation Top 5 Reasons to Intern for Google 1) The People. Without a doubt, the Googlers are truly what makes working here awesome: every person I met was intelligent, dedicated, and just plain cool. Discuss this piece of code? Sure. Switch gears and talk about the latest episode of Top Chef? No sweat. There are smart and cool people at any job, but here at Google, finding them is a sure bet! 2) It’s real. Over the course of my internship, I have gotten an accurate taste of what a career in software engineering is actually like. Interns are treated as, and essentially are – full time engineers. I worked within the same codebase and wrote to the same standards as my colleagues. Additionally, my project wasn’t some busywork that no one would ever see or use after I left — rather, I had the pleasure of working on some front-end features that will end up being seen and used by thousands of Blogger users! From the practical experience of working on such a large and fast-paced application, I’ve learned a lot about web development, product life cycles, and programming in general. 3) Being ‘Googley’. Everyone at Google works insanely hard, but there is also a sense of fun that is endorsed by the company culture. During one offsite, I went on a white water rafting trip! Through the intern program, I also had the opportunity to have some fun with my fellow interns: paintball, indoor skydiving, hiking, etc. Alongside all of the fun, there is an unspoken expectation that every Googler knows his workload and gets it accomplished bt the end of the day. I wasn’t told what hours to work or where on campus I should work (work next to frozen yogurt machine, anyone?). Not many companies give their employees such trust and freedom, and the culture is one area where Google really outshines its competitors. 4) One big company, lots of diverse opportunities. Although I was a part of the Blogger team, I got to experience and learn much more than Blogger engineering. For example, I took a mini-course on UX (User Experience) sketching and learned how to draft quick prototypes on paper. I even took a seminar on making mochas and espressos! Between tech talks, seminars, and 20% time, Google offers so many opportunities to continue learning. Even in the scope of my own project, it wasn’t just daily coding; I had the opportunity to contribute towards the user experience, design, engineering and testing of my feature. 5) Where else will you find a T-Rex being attacked by pink flamingos?

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Googlers Beta – 2009 Edition – Lu Chen

We are relaunching our Googlers Beta Series and bringing you the unique stories and experiences of Google interns. Our first post for the season comes from Asit Mishra, a Google Summer Intern and PhD student from Penn State University, who will share with you his experience as a Software Engineer (SWE) Intern in our Seattle office. A sit’s Story: Think about the 100+ tools that Google has launched, the billions who query our search engine everyday, and the 10,000+ crazy (in a good way) software engineers working at Google; there is a plethora of jobs that our server platform ma chines must serve each day. Our machines serve a diverse set of workloads, and managing and makin g sense of these workloads is a big challenge. But learning the behavior of these workloads can help us, among many other things, to make better scheduling decisions, to better project our machine growth, and to customize our cells to handle the jobs better. During my internship, I worked on a very interesting, and in my opinion, high-impact project where I modeled the workload of Google’s machines. I used a variety of tools, including time-series modeling, clustering and statistical methods to capture the workload signatures. After months of brainstorming with my mentor (Joseph Hellerstein) and the “Borg-Team”, I was at a point where I could categorize the workloads into smaller groups. This gave us an opportunity to investigate the workload behavior at a macro-level and makes the analysis simpler. Aside from the free food, massages and the rock-band set-up, I found the “Google-culture” to be really amazing. It is not very different from the culture one would see at a university or research lab. The openness and the helping attitude of Googlers, here, helped me a lot in my work. Between the numerous brainstorming sessions with my mentor and the “Borg-Team” and the two trips down to Mountain View to dig-deep into our findings, these experiences have gone a long way in shaping the outcome of my project and enhancing my overall understanding of Computer Science. For me, it’s been one of the most productive and enriching experiences within a 3-month span. I had never seen terabytes worth of data before coming here! Once, my mentor told me that here at Google people don’t worry about storing megabytes or gigabytes of data; if it’s terabytes it a slight concern and if it’s petabytes – that’s where you actually start thinking. A note from Joseph Hellerstein, Asit’s host: We had great fun with Asit during the summer, and it was very productive. Asit’s work is impacting how Google does cluster scheduling and capacity planning. Also, we submitted a paper to ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review. Oh, and we got some really cool jackets for our work with the Google Cluster Management Team. Want more information on internships at Google? Visit http://www.google.com/jobs/intern for more information. You can also learn more about the exciting research going on at Google by visiting http://research.google.com/ .

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Googlers Beta – 2009 Edition!

In the spirit of graduation season, we’re doing a series of posts every Friday throughout the summer that provide tips for graduating seniors, so stay tuned for more! Transitioning into post-college life can be pricey, so chances are, you’re living (or planning to live) with roommates. Managing expenses and a tight budget can be tricky, especially when you’re not just managing your own. So we’re letting you know about the ’shared house expenses’ spreadsheet available in the Google Docs templates gallery. It covers all the usual house hold expenses: electricity, gas, water, Internet, phone, groceries, etc. Just enter dollar values for how much people spend on each item, and the spreadsheet will automatically display charts and details like how much each person owes everyone else. This spreadsheet template was actually created by Googlers who live together and have to manage their own household expenses together. Here’s a video of them talking about their own experience. And if you’re also interested in better managing your own money, you can browse the template gallery to find other helpful tools, like the personal budget tracker and the credit card payoff calculator . For more Apps news Did you know that Google Docs is just one of several products in Google Apps? To get updates and news on all the Apps products, check out the Google Apps Blog ! Posted by Joyce Sohn, Google Apps Marketing Manager

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Grad tip: Manage home expenses in a Google Docs spreadsheet

Back when I was in college (which wasn’t all that long ago), we used a command-line program called Pine to check our email. It was much faster than the school webmail, but you had to learn all these keyboard shortcuts just to get anything done. I remember sitting around the dorm, eagerly sharing tips with friends (like “Did you know that ^Y sends you to the previous message?”) Those days are over for most folks, and my friends and I now share tips with each other about how to be more efficient with Gmail. We thought lots of people would be interested in these kinds of tips, so we asked Googlers for their best tips and tricks on how they use Gmail, and put the best of these into a guide at www.gmail.com/tips , entitled “Become a Gmail Ninja.” We even made a printable version of the guide that you can pin to your wall or keep on your desk. And for the first 1024 of you who want them, we’ll send a limited-edition, laminated guide for free. Just fill out this form with your address. Sorry, we can only ship to addresses in the US. If you’re not one of the lucky 1024, don’t fret because you can still buy a laminated guide at www.barcharts.com/gmail . If you’re already a Gmail ninja and have your own tips you’d like to share, let us know and we’ll add the best ones to the online guide. *Our lawyers asked us to make sure it was clear that your contact information won’t be maintained in any way and this offer is “void where prohibited and only while supplies last.” Posted by Zach Yeskell, Gmail marketing manager

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Are you a Gmail Ninja?

At Google, we are committed to helping the innovators of the future make the most of their gifts. As part of this commitment to build and retain a strong and diverse talent pool in computer science, we’ve created the Google FUSE program. This summer, FUSE will provide an opportunity for successful and invested first year computer science students who are historically underrepresented in the field to connect with one another and with Google. We’ll be bringing rising college sophomores from across the US and Canada to our New York office for two days of networking, learning, and fun. Our goal is to form a network that will allow these top rising sophomores to learn about the research, academic, and industry opportunities that lead to great careers. We also want to make connections between students and Googlers who have paved this path before them. If you’re currently a first year student who has declared a CS or related major and are interested in connecting with other top students, we want to hear from you! Students from historically underrepresented groups in technology — female, Native American, African American and Hispanic students as well as students with disabilities — are encouraged to apply. Learn more at www.google.com/jobs/students/fuse. Posted by Zach Geller and Hanah Kim, University Programs Specialists

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Connect at Google FUSE