My First Couple Weeks at Google

The first week of my internship began in Mountain View, CA, over at Google's headquarters. They round up most of the non-Mountain View interns there for orientation. It was a week long, and I stayed in Sunnyvale right next to Mountain View. After dropping off some of my stuff at my then to be Airbnb place for the summer, I boarded a plane at LAX and flew toward SFO.

I taxied over to the hotel we were staying at and kind of just relaxed for that entire Sunday. I had a roommate, Kenny, who came in late in the day. He and I would also become friends during orientation week, and we attended many of the events together. On Monday morning, we took the Google bus over to Mountain View!

We mingled for a bit, got our badges and accounts and commenced our day of orientation. Oh, but before that, I was introduced to my first "microkitchen" (or MK). Within about 150 feet of every employee, you'll find an MK stocked with snacks, drinks, fruits, coffee, etc. all available for your taking. All of them in Mountain View are pretty much the same. They have a fancy coffee machine with a touchscreen that grinds the coffee and makes it for you on the spot in addition to an espresso machine and grinder. Most of the snacks are healthy but they have some unhealthy ones at the bottom of the shelves to make them less appealing. All kinds of drinks from teas to sodas are available. I'll talk some more about MKs when I get to describing the ones in LA, because they're especially interesting.

After figuring out the coffee machine and the rest of my breakfast, I went to a conference room where we all sat. On my chair beside my name tag was a Chromebook, an awesome backpack, and my Noogler hat. We set up our Chromebooks and were lectured for the rest of the day on the typical things you'd expect such as Google's mission and values, ethics, and rules. When we broke for lunch, I got to experience my first Google cafe.

Me being excited about being a Noogler. Sorry for the poor photo quality. It's a screenshot of a Snapchat that was downloaded from a photo uploaded to Facebook.

In Mountain View, Google has over a dozen cafes, each specializing in something. The cafe I ate at on Monday specialized in Mexican food. It was awhile ago now, so I don't remember what I got, but I was instantly very impressed. I couldn't wait to continue trying out the different cafes. Anyway, at the end of the day, I did a hangout with my host in LA, and he welcomed me, like everyone else, to Google.

The rest of the week was filled with technical orientation. We learned how to use various Google technologies (we started coding on our second day!) and got lectures on various relevant topics. The most interesting lecture was by far the one on Google Web Search. One of the team's engineers gave us an overview of how the whole process works from when you hit enter to when you get the results, filling up an entire whiteboard. It was extremely interesting and very inspiring.

Throughout the week, I also toured the campus. There was so much to see, and I was nowhere near able to uncover it all. The campus is so large that they have hundreds of bike always at the ready for you to grab and ride between buildings. I felt like I could spend a week just uncovering all the different things on campus.

Riding a Google bike. It's hard to tell in this picture, but like a lot of things in Google, they're colored with Google colors.

Alongside my friend Kenny is just a random, fascinating display in one of the buildings. You could interact with it by turning the wheel Kenny is holding onto.

On Thursday I attended my first TGIF (just ignore the fact it's on Thursdays). It's a company-wide weekly meeting where the founders, Larry Page and Sergey Bin, and various people present about what's happening in the company. It's a very social event and Larry and Sergey pull off a comedy routine. What's most fascinating about it, though, is that anyone can stand up and ask a question right to Larry and Sergey in front of the whole company, no matter how critical the question is. They answer these questions in stride, and it's culturally accepted to ask them. It was my first experience showing off how much constructive criticism is valued at Google.

So that was my first week! It was a wonderful time, and I was really excited to start actual work in LA the next week. Nonetheless, I was sad to leave Mountain View, also fearing that a small, remote Google office couldn't be nearly as good, but when I started the next Monday in LA, I was pleasantly surprised.

I chose an Airbnb location close to the office so that I could bike to work, and that's what I did on Monday morning. I parked my bike at the office and waited for a tour in the lobby. Eric, an employee who was our tour guide, was fantastic and showed us the ins and outs of the entire office. The tour quickly took away some of my greater worries about being in a remote office. The facilities were easily up to par with Mountain View. Since it's a small office, they do a lot to make it look and feel as diverse as possible. All the conference rooms are themed after what they're named, and they're named after famous people and places depending on the floor you're on. Even the microkitchens are themed after different things. They don't do either of these things in Mountain View. Like most of their offices, they try to incorporate the location's culture, so it's very beach and sun themed. I was also very happy that they have a game room next to my office which has a few guitars and drums, both of which I enjoy playing.

After the tour, I found my desk and met my teammates. They were all very helpful in getting me started, and I started to look at my team's codebase to get acquainted with it. Later I met my intern host/manager, Alex, and we all went to lunch. There's only one cafe at the LA office, so the selection is obviously significantly smaller, but the selection is very diverse, and I'd argue the quality is even a little higher than Mountain View. I have been very satisfied with the food.

There's a group of Googlers who play ultimate Frisbee twice a week at the LA office, and one of my teammates was one of the members. Being a Frisbee player at school, I gladly accepted his invitation to join. They play on the beach, which is a short five minute walk from the office. It was a great time, and I've made some friends from that which I'll talk about in another blog post.

During the rest of my week, I worked on fixing a couple bugs as a way to get more acquainted with the code base, I learned about my project for the summer during my first one-on-one with my host, and I even got to check in some code! I'll try to write a blog post at some point with my experience from a programming standpoint.

That weekend, the intern coordinators organized the first intern event for the summer between LA interns and Irvine interns -- an Anaheim Angels baseball game. I drove three other interns to the game, and it was a great time, even though it lasted thirteen innings and they lost. The people whom I went with, Ben, Isabella, and Sam quickly became close friends, and we have all done a lot of things together throughout the summer. I actually met both Ben and Isabella at orientation (Sam started two weeks before). We proceeded to eat dinner together and hung out for a little bit at the office. We also made plans to do something on Monday of that Memorial Day weekend.

All four of us at the Angels game!

On Monday, I proposed that we drive on Mulholland Drive and, given my new found love of hiking, I also proposed that we all go to Runyon Canyon. Unfortunately Sam wasn't able to join us this day, but the rest of us ended up doing both starting with Mulholland Drive. It's famous for its turns, expensive houses, and beautiful views of the valley, and it did not disappoint.

A view of the Hollywood sign from an observation point off Mulholland Drive.

We then drove down to Runyon Canyon. It's this public park in the Santa Monica mountains pretty close to where I live with hiking trails. The trails took us to numerous peaks and we kind of did a circle around them all.

Panoramic view atop one of the peaks.

During one part of the hike, we took a different way down than we came up. Once we came all the way down and looked back, this is what we saw.

After a long hiking trip, we walked over to Hollywood where we saw the Walk of Fame and got some Starbucks. The Walk of Fame was very cool to see!

So that was my first couple of weeks! I'll probably post next about this three week stretch where Annmarie visited me, then my parents visited me, then I went home, or maybe I'll post about my Airbnb experience so far. We'll see... Thanks for reading -- until next time!