I interned at Google's Boulder, Colorado office from May '16 to Aug '16. I thought it would be fun (and possibly informative) to detail my experience here!
Landing the Internship
"How did you land the internship? Did they ask you crazy questions? How hard was the interview?"
I was originally contacted by a full-time recruiter through LinkedIn in July to kick off the process. After I explained that I was still an undergrad, he said he would forward my info appropriately. Fast forward to late September, I was contacted by a university recruiter to begin my technical interviews. The interviews were essentially two back-to-back general technical screenings. While I can not divulge the questions--they were very reasonable to anyone with a data structures and algorithms background.
A few weeks later I was notified that I made it to the host-matching phase. This is the point where you are potentially interviewed by an individual team for a prospective project. There is no guarantee that you get a single host-matching interview; there are stories of applicants going through the process multiple times without any success. With the possibility of other offer deadlines approaching, this can make for a very stressful situation.
My first few interviews were not very interesting. One with a host in Boulder, however, seemed like a great opportunity. Everything from the host himself to the work environment sounded amazing. I would be working on a public-facing project that would potentially be deployed to millions of users. A few days later (mid-December) I was notified that there was a match. I was then officially offered an internship!
Orientation
Since I was interning at the Boulder office, I was flown out to Mountain View for orientation. Every "Noogler" intern goes through a week of orientation to learn the Google ropes and become familiar with the company culture. It was a great opportunity to meet a lot of incredible people and learn a ton about the inner-workings of Google. Plus, it was my first taste of all that amazing free food! The info sessions were pretty spectacular and very informative. Looking back, it's pretty crazy how much info they fit into one week of orientation.
Boulder
I had been to Boulder once before my internship. A friend and I had accepted California internships and had decided to road trip out. We stopped in Boulder for a quick afternoon break and really enjoyed it. I remember thinking to myself, "I could definitely see myself back here someday." Ironically enough, about a year later, I was back! The first few days were the typical unpacking/move-in/meet the new roommates deal. I decided to take advantage of all the outdoorsy activities around and bought a Road bike, joined a Crossfit gym, and started going hiking. The oxygen change definitely kicked my ass at first, but the adaptation wasn't too terrible.
The first week of real work was mostly spent learning about my team's product specifically (Realtime API) and learning about their workflow. Google interns work very closely with their "host" to set milestones and work through technical challenges. My host was really great in that he gave me a lot of design and implementation freedom. While I unfortunately can't go into specifics about my individual project yet, it was definitely a significant challenge that taught me a lot technically. Google has a massive technical infrastructure with an incredible amount of resources and documentation. As one manager put it, "One of the most important skills at Google is learning to learn."
One of my favorite parts of the internship was the people. There were about 35 interns total across SWE and EP (Engineering Practicum) that became very close. Between lunch bike rides, to weekend hiking, to rock climbing after work--there seemed to be some sort of impromptu intern event almost every day. Similarly, my team was really, really great. As a whole, they were fairly young which was pretty different from what I was used to. Between weekly trivia at a local brewery to Rockies games and a Coors tour, we did a lot of team activities that really helped make me feel welcome. They also provided a ton of professional and personal guidance that I could not be more thankful for. I met and worked with some of my best friends this Summer--an awesome bonus on top of an already amazing internship.
The summer went by surprisingly quickly. Before I knew it, I was at my midpoint evaluation and shortly thereafter some of the interns started to head back to college. There was so much going on day to day at Google that everything passed in a blink of an eye. The free breakfast and lunches was amazing, as was the ping pong table, pool table, rock climbing wall, weekly drinking events, etc. There really was a "work hard, play hard" mentality that helped make work extremely enjoyable. Believe it or not, the work-life balance was also top-notch. Very rarely did you see anyone in the office past 6pm and the place was pretty much a ghost town before 9am.
One of the things that surprised me most was how much responsibility and trust interns were given. Very rarely was something marked "Fulltime Only" or an event restricted to non-interns. As a whole, we were treated as real employees, with real tasks and real expectations. Personally, that created a work environment that I was able to appreciate and thrive in. Prior to this summer, I viewed Google as this monolithic software empire that made more money then they knew what to do with and simply hired all the best engineers because they could. What I found, however, was an incredible company culture that trusted its employees, provided amazing resources and benefits, and challenged anyone and everyone to grow to their fullest potential. I can't thank Google enough for the unforgettable experience!