blog.zacbrown.org - just run away, now.

cheers

So I found out a couple evenings ago that I got the internship with Google. I would start sometime in mid-May and finish up sometime in mid-August. It would be good fun though it is mildly disappointing that my friend (Danny) that works for Google wouldn’t be there during the time I’d be there. He’s finishing up his last semester of college andwill be arriving there about the time that I would leave.

I’m excited and anxious all at the same time, dealing with getting myself a place to sleep will be interesting. Maybe I can just sleep under my desk and shower at the office?

jeers

I was less than pleased with my grades this semester. I ended up with a B+ in both Algorithms & Software Eng. This could change though for Algorithms as I emailed the professor and he said we could speak about possibly getting me an A- which would be great.

Software Engineering on the other hand, I apparently bombed the final. That puzzles me but I’m going to meet with the professor. Surely I didn’t do that poorly? I’m not a bad student…

notes

Anyway, back to programming on wine

Well today is the big day. At 16:00 EST I’ll have my first of two phone interviews with Google for a software engineer intern position at Google SMo (Santa Monica for those that don’t speak Googlese). A friend of mine that works at Google SMo was the one that helped me get an interview, and it will be his boss that I interview with for my position. Immediately following the first interview, I’ll have a 15 minute break for a second Google employee calls me to interview me.

I spent some time reviewing some basic algorithms stuff (ie: different sorts, dynamic programming, greedy solutions) but I figure at this point that I’ll just play it safe and be myself. If they aren’t able to accept that not everyone has all the answers then its probably not a good fit for me. Most everyone I’ve talked to that’s either worked for Google or has experience in the field seem to unanimously agree that there’s no use freaking out, just solve the problems :).

On a different note, I received a survey from Microsoft that they send to all potential employees regarding “race and gender equality efforts.” It was basically a 3×5 index card that asked for my gender (or “prefer not to share”) and my race with a “check all that apply” instruction. I filled it out for kicks and we’ll see whether they’re interested enough to fly me to Redmond. I would like to get involved there just because F# is coming out and I specifically asked to work on the F# team. Anyway, here’s to internships *raises beer*.

My new fun adventure is figuring the ever complex and baffling practice that is Java enterprise development. I have pretty much no knowledge of the process of developing a web app in java, other than a faint idea that I need something like Tomcat or Jetty or JBoss or one of the other million frameworks. We’re working with a GWT frontend and its my job to develop a java back end of sorts or some other suitable backend that will talk dirty (or nicely if you like) to the GWT frontend to provide some data.

Anyone got any hints on how to do all that? Just a basic guide is needed, I just need something to jump start me.

Stay tuned, later this evening or early tomorrow I will post two blog entries (one for each interview) about my experiences and the questions I was asked in my Google interview. Thats all folks

PS: Welcome to the wordpress version of my blog. Blogger.com was taking too long to update my blog to my domain, so I decided to just convert to wordpress hosted on my domain. Cheers to how simple it was!

ncm: Well the main problem with me interning with Aspera is I’m not a third year student, I’m in my second year, granted I’m taking classes that a third year student would be taking. I’m also not comfortable with my skills in TCP/IP protocols yet, network programming is a weak area for me that I’m working on currently. If you see a way around this and know of an in on getting an internship with Aspera, you have my full & undivided attention.

On a side note, the feedback I’ve heard from friends here that have done internships with Microsoft have enjoyed it quite a bit. I’ve heard goods and bads all around really. People already in the industry have given negative feedback for the most part about MS, while people younger in the field have given fairly positive responses. Apparently they treat them pretty well.

One of my good friends on the other works at Google and pulled a couple strings to get me an interview with them though that one makes me more anxious for obvious reasons. We’ll see how that goes.

So I’ve been hard at work getting myself an internship with a company, preferrably Microsoft or Google. I’m somewhat anxious about the technical interviews that I’ve heard others speak of. I feel confident in my skills and knowledge as a programmer, I just get a little anxious over these things.

For Google I don’t quite know yet what I’d be doing but I suspect if I’m asked I would say ask for something in the data-mining or search optimization areas. I’ve always been interested in such problems and this would be a good opportunity to learn more about this.

In the case of Microsoft, I’ve asked to be put to work in the Compilers & Language Design department. I’m very interested in F#, their OCaml + C# + Haskell hash up that should be interesting. I’ve been picking up OCaml on the side now for a little bit and this would be another interesting opportunity.

Anyone have any suggestions or tips on getting through the technical interviews?