Student Window

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

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog ) We had a busy summer here at Google interacting with students through a wide variety of scholarship, internship and networking opportunities across North America. Here’s a look back at a few of our programs (you can bet we’ll be hosting them again!) along with news on some upcoming initiatives. Rising college sophomores participated in two Google programs: Google FUSE , in its inaugural year, and the Google Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI). For FUSE, we welcomed 50 rising college sophomores to our New York City office for a three-day retreat designed to connect students from groups that are under-represented in the field of computer science. The retreat focused on making connections between students and Googlers, encouraging students to create meaningful academic experiences and allowing them to learn more about possible career paths via hands-on activities, panel discussions and a bit of fun around the New York City area. Another group of twenty rising sophomores spent two weeks at the Googleplex in Mountain View for the second annual Computer Science Summer Institute. This special program included an interactive and collaborative Computer Science curriculum, as well as a living-learning residential experience for student networking. Students worked in teams to create an interactive web application using Python in Google App Engine. When not in class, they heard technical talks from Google engineers, spoke with professionals from across the technology industry and academia about the many things they can do with a Computer Science degree. They also had some fun joining the Bay Area summer interns on a boat cruise and catching a baseball game after an exciting San Francisco scavenger hunt. In addition, our engineering internship program hosted more than 450 college (undergraduate and graduate) interns in 15 locations across North America. These interns were an integral part of the engineering team and made significant contributions this summer working on exciting projects including Android, Chrome, Docs and machine translation. We also had more than 100 students working across multiple functions, including sales and engineering in Mountain View, New York, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Boston as part of the Building Opportunities for Leadership and Development ( BOLD ) Program. BOLD is a 10-week internship program designed to provide exposure to the technology industry for students from groups that are historically underrepresented in technology. This summer experience includes a unique glimpse into a business or engineering career, professional development and leadership courses, as well as one-on-one mentorship designed to further support professional growth. Of course, we realize that growing future leaders in engineering and business doesn’t just start with college students. For this reason, we partner with the LEAD programs in both business and engineering to encourage outstanding high school students to pursue careers in these fields. This year, all four LEAD Summer Engineering Institute participants had the opportunity to tour a local Google office to attend technical talks and interact with Google engineers (okay, with some tasty food and video games thrown in as well). As part of Google’s ongoing commitment to recognizing student achievements and promoting leadership, we also offer a number of academic scholarships. We are currently accepting applications for the Google Lime Scholarship for Student with Disabilities in the U.S. and Canada, and the Anita Borg Scholarship in Canada , Europe, the Middle East and Africa , and the United States . In case you’re curious, we offer a host of scholarships for many other international regions. If one or more of these opportunities sounds like something you’d like to participate in, you can find applications for full time opportunities and summer internship opportunities on our student job site . Visit our scholarship page for more information on our scholarship opportunities. And follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates on application deadlines and new program announcements. Making an early connection playing People Bingo at Google FUSE . Taking a break from bowling during Google FUSE. Posted by Kyle Ewing, Talent and Outreach Programs – University Programs and Recruiting

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Growing the next generation of computer scientists and business leaders

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!

(Cross-posted on the Google Docs blog ) The Google Docs team is getting ready for back to school. We’ve been doing our homework this summer to make your school year go a little smoother. Today we’re launching a handful of features that will benefit both students and teachers. Speaking from experience, as students ourselves, we know that these features will come in handy on any given day. Check out the schedule below to see how. Time Schedule 9:00am Spanish Literature [Bldg200-253] Writing essays about Gabriel García Márquez is hard enough in English; try it in Spanish. At least now I can make sure I’m on the right track by defining and translating Spanish words. Like any research essay, I have to double space the document and cite my sources. I use footnotes to cite sources. They are automatically numbered so I don’t have to keep track of them and they sit in the margins for easy reference. As of today, I can even print footnotes as endnotes, consolidated on separate pages at the end of my document. 10:00am Gym break I keep track of my daily workout progress using a variety of Docs templates . Today I’ll be using the Runner’s Log: 11:00am Hiking Club [Student Union] T h e o ther club officers and I make sure that we cover all important topics by collaborating on an agenda outline before each weekly meeting. As the secretary, I also take notes on the outline so I like being able to customize how the list is formatted. The officers also work together to make sure our website is up to date. With Google Sites we can each edit the site when necessary without learning html. My favorite feature is the ability to embed maps, documents, and calendars directly into a page. 12:00pm Lunch I keep up to date on the go by viewing and editing my docs on a mobile phone . 1:00pm Probabilistic Systems Analysis Lecture [Bldg32-123] This class moves pretty fast. My friends and I sit near each other and take notes on a single Google Doc to make sure we don’t miss a thing. With the new equation editor feature, it’s much easier to read and understand each others’ equation notations. And whenever I walk into class a little late, I can just do a revision comparison of our shared notes document to see exactly what I’ve missed. 2:00pm Solid State Chemistry Tutorial [Bldg5-320] In order to lead this tutorial, I often put together some slides beforehand and share them with my students. Now that Google Docs Presentations supports subscripts and superscripts, it’s even easier to make and edit these slides. Want to try out these features in your routine? Find some more detailed information about the features here . Posted by: Rita Chen and Stephanie Vezich, Google Docs Summer Interns

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Day in the life of a Docs student

It’s that time of year again. Time to brush off the sand from lazy days at the beach and hit the books. Time for group projects, club registrations, and dorm events. As I start my senior year at Stanford, this is the last time I’ll experience back to school, and I’m hoping to make the most of it with a little help from Google Docs. I’ve collaborated with classmates on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations throughout my college career, but after interning at Google for a summer and talking to many of you about how you use Google Docs, there are a few new ideas I’m itching to try, like new templates for resident assistants , teaching assistants , and student leaders . Curious to learn more about Google Docs yourself? Check out our new Google Docs page for college students . You’ll find tips and tricks — based off much of your own feedback — for great ways to save time with Google Docs both in and out of the classroom. For one particularly fun way to reap the benefits of collaborating with Google Docs, check out this video about a lovestruck student on a mission. Enjoy, and have a great school year! Posted by Stephanie Vezich, Google Docs Summer Intern

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Love school with Google Docs

Salone is a rising senior at Stanford University and has spent her summer interning with the Search Marketing team in Mountain View. As summer jobs wrap up and stores abound with “Back to School” sales, the end of summer vacation is imminent. For me, the end of August means registering for classes, endless packing sessions, shopping trips to buy a growing list of “essentials,” and the inevitable jitters that accompany the start of a new academic year. Whether you’ve been dying to get back to school or suffering from the end of summer blues, we at Google put together some study tips to help you jumpstart your school year. From getting a head start on your reading and research interests with Google Books and Google Scholar to slicing and dicing your research with timeline or wonderwheel, we hope these tips help you stay on top of your classes and get the most out of Google. But don’t fret – we know that back to school is also about catching up with your friends after a long summer. So take some time out of your busy class schedule and plan some downtime with Google, too. Good luck and here’s to a great first semester! Posted by Salone Kapur, Associate Product Marketing Manager Intern, Search Marketing Team

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Jumpstart your school year with Google

In the spirit of graduation season, we’ve been doing a series of posts every Friday throughout the summer that provide tips for graduating seniors. Check them out here . With summer soon coming to a close, we want to leave those of you who’ve recently started a new job with one last tip: Go Google . If you love using Google products in your personal (or school) life, why not help your company (or future company) go Google? Check out this video for inspiration, then find out more and spread the word . For more Apps news 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: Go Google at work

Stephanie is interning with the Google Docs Marketing team this summer and surveyed students to find out about how you’re using Docs on and off campus. Last month I asked you how you use Google Docs on campus. After hearing from over 50 students, I wanted to share some highlights of what we learned from you along the way: How do students mainly use Google Docs? Brainstorming Whether it’s taking notes during a group project brainstorm session or outlining a research paper, Google Docs helps you get your thoughts down quickly and allows you to access them from anywhere later. Group work Many of you use Google Docs to contribute your part to a group project, but just as many use it outside the classroom. Student groups are collecting RSVPs with Google forms, taking meeting minutes with Google documents, and balancing budgets with Google spreadsheets. Personal record keeping Have a to-do list or want to keep a weekly budget? Many of you are using Google Docs to stay on track with daily tasks. Your favorite thing about Google Docs? Collaboration Backing up important work is great too, but far and away students enjoy being able to contribute to the same document with friends and classmates. And it’s not just about the class projects. For instance, Students for Obama used Google spreadsheets to tell each other who had participated in phone banks, who was going on certain trips, and who would complete certain tasks. Most creative uses we heard from you: “Two of my friends used Google spreadsheets to play Dungeons and Dragons with each other.” – Chris, Worchester Polytechnic Institute, Computer Science “We used Google Docs to plan a spring break trip for Habitat for Humanity. It helped us keep track of phone numbers, dinner menus, etc.” – Jacinda, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science “Our club leadership used Google Docs for everything from constitution-writing to picking the new board, and during interviews, we would take notes on interviewees in the same doc.” – Justin, Harvard University, Anthropology Thanks to everyone who volunteered your time; it really helps the Google Docs team key in to what’s important to students so we can continue to make the product better for you. With back to school right around the corner, I’m interested to try out some of your ideas in my own campus life, and I hope some of these ideas may inspire you to get started with Docs as well. Posted by Stephanie Vezich, Google Marketing Intern

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The results are in – how students like you use Google Docs