Google Student Blog

Congratulations to the 2018 Google scholarship recipients!

2018-05-07T14:01:00.000-07:00

Here at Google, we recognize the challenges faced by underrepresented students in the tech industry. We strive to make education more accessible by creating programs to engage students around the world. As part of our initiatives focused on expanding diversity, we offer academic scholarships and a trip to a Google office to learn more about our company and culture, network with a community of fellow scholars, and participate in professional development opportunities. Our goal is to not only support their academic pursuits, but also empower scholars to encourage and inspire others.

We are thrilled to announce this years recipients who represent 89 universities in 22 countries. This year’s scholars have demonstrated a passion for technology, academic excellence, and have proven themselves as exceptional leaders and role models within their communities. We recently selected recipients for the following scholarship programs:

Women Techmakers Scholars Program (US, Canada, and Europe, Middle East & Africa)
Generation Google Scholarship for high school and university students from underrepresented backgrounds in computer science
Google Lime Scholarship for students with disabilities (US/Canada) and Google Europe Scholarship for Students with Disabilities
Google Student Veterans of America (SVA) Scholarship for student veterans

Congratulations to our 2018 scholarship recipients! These students will join a community of over 2,500 Google scholars who are becoming leaders in their field and inspiring the next generation of computer science students. We can’t wait to see to see how these students continue to shape the future of computer science.

Click here to see the full list of winners.

Stay tuned for our announcement of the Women Techmakers Scholars Program for Asia Pacific.

My Path to Google: Alex Grant, Partner Operations Manager for Google My Business

2018-05-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the 25th installment of our blog series “My Path to Google.” These are real stories from Googlers, interns, and alumni highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.

Today’s post is all about Alex Grant. Read on!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I was in the first Information Engineering cohort at West Point and focused on using cognitive psychology and human-computer interaction to create solutions with technology. After five years in the Army I knew I wanted to work in tech. I started at Google in 2015, and now live in Washington and work in the Kirkland office.

What’s your role at Google?
I’m a Partner Operations Manager for Google My Business, which means I supervise the support we offer to agency customers and contribute ideas for improving the product. The leadership skills I developed in the military are vital in my day-to-day work coordinating teams across two cities.

You recently returned to Savannah to help out at a Grow with Google event. What was that experience like?
Yes, I was stationed in Savannah as a transportation officer for five years during my military service.

Helping the Savannah community through the Grow With Google program was so inspiring and gratifying. It’s a dream opportunity and what I care about most. I was so happy to see the growing community of small business owners that will help introduce Savannah to the rest of the world. Working with veterans was particularly satisfying; I devote some of my personal time to aiding transitioning vets, so I really enjoyed the opportunity to support them with Grow with Google.

It’s often assumed that people looking for jobs have the skills needed to navigate the process. Grow with Google invites people to learn the most important skills, gets them started with resources, and gets them used to engaging with people in tech communities. Every time we have an event, someone who thought that tech wasn’t for them might change their perception of what they can do.

What inspires you to come in every day?
When veterans leave the military, one of the big losses they face is the sense of camaraderie that comes with that community. When I started at Google, I got some of that back. I feel like I’m part of something positive and my coworkers make every day count. They are really the difference between Google and everywhere else. There’s a huge amount of pride that comes from people of this caliber relying on you to lead.

How did you decide to apply?
The truth is that there wasn’t a clear pathway to Google when I left the military. I had offers from conventional companies but didn’t want to work in the energy or defense industries. Military recruitment firms typically try to hire officers into supervisor and manufacturing jobs, so at the time I really had to invent a new path.

At first I worked in fulfillment at Amazon and tried to make my way to headquarters. There wasn’t an opportunity to grow so I transferred to a startup and gave myself a deadline — I would either get a job at Google or move back home and supervise a warehouse. I got in touch with recruiters at Google and was connected to Courtney, who was actively reaching out to veterans. She helped me find the right role to apply to and introduced me to Monica, the recruiter who ultimately offered me my job. It was a long journey for me and now I’m passionate about helping others in my position find their way here.

How did you prepare for your interviews?
I was extremely prepared when I finally went in for interviews. A few steps I took to get ready:

I referenced a lot of job descriptions and did informational interviews to learn what my resume should look like and how my military experience could translate in the civilian world.
I prepped for and attended career conferences to practice interviewing, build confidence, and compare offers. During these conferences, I practiced telling my most powerful stories from my Army service.
I read about Google’s culture and hiring practices in Eric Schmidt’s book, “How Google Works” and another called “I’m Feeling Lucky.” Reading about Google helped me create context with my interviewers and show that I was very familiar with Google’s culture. Today, there is a newer book called “Work Rules” that has great content about hiring.

What’s your advice to others applying to Google?
My greatest dream is that someone who is in the same position I was five years ago will read this and use these resources to find a job. When I was getting ready I looked around for anecdotes but they were hard to find. Here are my tips:

After you figure out what job you want, take time to learn about similar and related jobs, including lower-level positions that may feed into that specific role.
Promote yourself. In the military we are used to giving credit and celebrating success as a team, but it is critically important for you to share your specific impact on the team’s success.
Be data-driven. Show results on your resume or cover letter by using real data to show impact, whenever possible.
Network! Use all of the help that you can find in your local or alumni network, both for informational interviews, and referrals where appropriate.

Grow with Google offers free tools, trainings and events to help people grow their skills, careers, and businesses.

My Path to Google: Satyaki Upadhyay, Software Engineer (Google Maps)

2018-04-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the 24th installment of our blog series “My Path to Google.” These are real stories from Googlers, interns, and alumni highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.

Today’s post is all about Satyaki Upadhyay. Read on!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I grew up in Kolkata and Navi Mumbai in India and graduated from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani with a degree in Computer Science.

I like math and algorithms. When I'm not working, I would most probably be taking part in some type of programming contest. I love watching and playing football and listening to progressive rock music!

What’s your role at Google?
I am a software engineer working on Google Maps. And I am also involved in Kickstart, Google's well-known programming contest that helps hire some of the best graduates from around the world.

Complete the following: "I [choose one: code/create/design/build] for..."
I code for Google Maps.

What inspires you to come in every day?
It's definitely the free food and massages. :)

On a serious note, my peers are absolutely fantastic and I get to work on an incredible product that affects millions of lives across the world.

Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?
I had always wanted to work for Google, even since college. I worked for a year at Directi in India and learnt a lot there. After 15 months there, I felt that it was the right time to join Google. I got myself an interview call, had some challenging interview rounds, and I made it! :D

How did the recruitment process go for you?
The recruitment process was a lot of fun. The questions asked were of a very high standard and I had an exciting time solving them (with hints from the interviewer, of course :)). I was worried initially that I might mess up in the interviews, but as they kept happening and I was able to solve the problems, I grew more and more confident and each interview turned out to be a discussion with my interviewer, rather than a typical "question-answer" round.

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process?
That it's not always necessary to arrive at the correct answer. Your thought process is what you are judged on and that it's almost as important to have soft skills as it is to have technical skills.

Can you tell us about the resources you used to prepare for your interview or role?
I did not specifically prepare a lot for my algorithm interviews. I continued taking part in coding contests on Codeforces and Topcoder, and I was already familiar with most of the concepts. I looked at previous interview questions on Careercup on the last day. I also practiced previously asked problems from Kickstart which helped a lot in my preparation.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?
Don't be intimidated. Just head into the interview confident in yourself and your ability. Your interviewer is there to guide you through the round, and it will be a fun experience. :)

Want to learn more about Kickstart, a global programming competition? Check out g.co/codejamkickstart or tune into our recent YouTube Live where Google engineers walk through tips on how to solve Kickstart problems. Be sure to register here for Kickstart before Round B on April 21st. You can find the full schedule of online rounds here. See you on the scoreboard!

My Path to Google: Annie Jean-Baptiste, Global Product Inclusion Evangelist

2018-03-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the 23rd installment of our blog series “My Path to Google.” These are real stories from Googlers, interns, and alumni highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.

Today’s post is all about Annie Jean-Baptiste. Read on!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I am a Boston native, and went to school at the University of Pennsylvania, studying International Relations and Political Science. I love New England sports teams, my dog (who comes to work most days), travel (I speak five languages and was a nanny before working at Google), music (I play the cello), and dance (I have danced many genres all my life and most recently danced half-time at college basketball games).

I'm passionate about healthy practices for underrepresented communities and use my platform as an American Heart Association Spokesperson and One Young World ambassador to ensure equal access to resources for communities of color. I think my degree was actually very helpful for my roles at Google—multidisciplinary, global in nature—it taught me to seek out, value, and elevate different perspectives.

What’s your role at Google?
I am the Global Product Inclusion Evangelist for Google. I help ensure we build products for everyone, with everyone. I most recently worked on several projects for Black History Month, including a Google Docs easter egg, where if you typed in #blackhistorymonth and clicked on the explorer box, you got awesome content about black history! What I like most about my role is that I can fuse my background (I started in our Global Business Organization as an Account Manager) with my passion (inclusive products and services).

Complete the following: "I [choose one: code/create/design/build] for..."
I build for communities that typically have not had their voices at the forefront, but are brilliant, innovative, and changing the world!

What inspires you to come in every day?
I am constantly inspired by Googlers and their commitment to dreaming big and creating a world where everyone—no matter their background—can see themselves in our products and use technology to create a better world.

Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?
My brother was actually a BOLD intern and encouraged me to apply. I was a senior in college and didn't think Google was for me, given my non-tech background, but I deeply believed in making information universally accessible and useful. I was worried about not fitting in or getting the job, so I was so excited to get it AND be able to move back to the Cambridge office to be close to my family. I stayed in that office for four years, and it's still my favorite office to date!

How did the recruitment process go for you?
I applied directly and Google came to my university. I remember how friendly my recruiter was (fun fact: he had been a recruiter previously at my high school), and I also very much appreciated starting with a cohort of new grads—it made the process super fun.

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process?
That there are so many roles at Google—you don't have to be an engineer or a certain type of person to work here. In fact, my team's mission is to make sure that there are diverse perspectives, so we can build products for everyone.

Can you tell us about the resources you used to prepare for your interview or role?
For the interview, do your research—keep up with current events, what's going on in the tech industry, etc. Have a position on what excites and intrigues or challenges you in the tech landscape. Think of questions for your interviewer as well—it needs to be a fit for you, too!

Do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?
Have a deep commitment to always learning. Ask questions. Be humble. Think about those voices you typically don't hear and how to ensure they have a seat at the table.

My Path to Google: Christof Leng, Site Reliability Engineer

2018-03-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the 22nd installment of our blog series “My Path to Google.” These are real stories from Googlers, interns, and alumni highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.

Today’s post is all about Christof Leng. Read on!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I was born and raised in Germany, near Frankfurt. I first got in touch with computers as an elementary school kid when my cousin introduced me to video games on his Commodore 64 and showed me how to write simple BASIC programs. The power to teach a machine anything I could imagine, seemed like magic to me (and still does).

Many years later, I received a PhD in computer science from TU Darmstadt on the topic of stochastic replication mechanisms in unstructured peer-to-peer networks. After my PhD, I've been a visiting postdoc at UC Berkeley, working with the AMP Lab folks on Apache Spark.

I also used to be a DJ for gothic parties, founded and led the Pirate Party Germany (which had over 35,000 members at some point), and I've been a vice-president of the German Informatics Society. I also taught a masters course on Site Reliability Engineering at my alma mater.

My hobbies are underground music, graphic novels, computer games, Tolkien, and other nerdy stuff. I live with my wife, my son, and our three cats in Darmstadt.

What’s your role at Google?
I'm a tech lead/manager of one of the Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) teams that runs Google's developer tools. My team is working on Google's continuous testing system and issue tracking system, among other things.

The developer tools at Google keep amazing me and it's an honor to be in charge of keeping them up and running. As a SRE, I thrive in ambiguity. We don't do the same manual tasks over and over again, like a classic operations role, but implement automation or redesign the system to fix the problem for good. That way, we have the time to pick up new interesting challenges every day. With our daily tasks changing all the time, SRE as an organization evolves at a breathtaking rate.

What inspires you to come in every day?
First and foremost, the fantastic colleagues I get to work with. Secondly, the great work environment Google provides, both the infrastructure and the organizational framework that gives us the freedom to do the right thing.

The scale at which Google operates is simply mind-blowing. You can fire up thousands of servers with the press of a button. You see petabytes of data flying by. And you know that you provide the infrastructure for products used by billions of people around the globe, making things possible everyday that I couldn't even dream of when I was a kid.

Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?
Google was never an option for me. Even though one of my mentors at grad school moved on to become a manager at Google, I never applied myself. I heard the interviews are terribly hard and imagined I had to move to California, which seemed very far away at the time. My dream was to become a professor, not to work for a large corporation.

Coincidentally, I eventually ended up in Berkeley, California and was approached by a Google recruiter. I guess my LinkedIn profile said something about "big data." They asked, "Have you considered becoming an SRE?" and I was like, "What is that?" I think they had to explain the role to me three times during the interview process (and I still didn't get it). In hindsight, I'm extremely grateful that my academic career didn't pan out. Most stuff at Google is so much more advanced than what I would have been working on in academia.

How did the recruitment process go for you?
I was approached by a recruiter. I was surprised and excited. I also had no idea how to get through the process. Most job interviews in Germany are quite different than the Google process. I got myself two books and gave it a shot. The interviews were as tough as expected, but never unfair. I thought I got lucky with the questions I got, but thought I bombed one session. I think it was the most thorough screening of my technical skills I've ever been through. My recruiter was always very supportive and explained the process to me.

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process?
Probably how to negotiate an (even) better salary — I still have no clue how that is done. One thing I'm *glad* I didn't know is how much I would like my job. I would've been much more nervous and probably screwed up in the interviews.

Can you tell us about the resources you used to prepare for your interview or role?
The Google Resume and Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell. Sending my resume to a number of friends and colleagues for advice and proofreading.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?
Follow your dreams. Always challenge the status quo. But be pragmatic. It's not helping anyone if you have your head in the clouds, but don't deliver results, no matter how little they may seem. One step at a time. Be open to change, especially if it scares you. I regret my failures much less than the risks I didn't dare to take at the time.

Interested in our SRE roles? Learn more and apply now!

Getting to know a research intern: Cathy Wong

2018-03-19T06:30:00.000-07:00

Google Research tackles the most challenging problems in CS and related fields. Being bold and taking risks is essential to what we do, and research teams are embedded throughout Google, allowing our discoveries to affect billions of users each day.

The compelling benefit to researchers is that their innovations can be implemented fast and big. Google’s unique infrastructure facilitates ideas’ speed to market — allowing their ideas to be trialled by millions of users before their paper is even published.

Today we’re talking to Cathy Wong, a former Research intern. Read on!

Left: Cathy; Right: her fellow intern

Can you tell us about yourself and your masters topic?
I’m a masters student at Stanford University, where I’m a part of the Computational Vision and Geometry Lab — I actually just joined this October, and I’m working on projects related to semantic segmentation. I also studied at Stanford as an undergrad, and previously I worked under Sebastian Thrun with Andre Esteva and Brett Kuprel on deep learning for skin cancer detection. So I work on a lot of vision projects, and I’m especially interested in projects that lie at the intersection of machine learning and healthcare. I’m also really interested in human cognition! I loved reading books by Oliver Sacks and other neuroscientists as a kid, but when I first started in computer science, I never considered that there would be much of a direct overlap where I’d get to actually mess around in both fields. Within artificial intelligence research, though, it seems like we still have a lot to learn from actual human brains.

How did you get to work in this area?
There’s this class at Stanford, CS231N, on deep learning for computer vision. On the very first day, I remember that the professor who co-taught the class — Dr. Fei Fei Li — went through this presentation, and one of the slides was about how the initial layers of convolutional neural networks learn basic edge detecting filters that actually closely parallel the basic edge detectors found in cat and human visual cortices, suggesting that there was a deeper and more fundamental connection between these two vision systems. I thought that was insane, and also insanely cool. I joined Sebastian Thrun’s lab a little later, and have been working on AI research since then.

Why did you apply for an internship at Google and how supportive was your masters advisor?
I’d heard really great things about research at Google, and even in my classes and labs, read lots of very impressive work coming from teams in Mountain View, London, and Zurich. I was hoping to get a better sense of what research looks like outside of an academic setting, and the scope of projects and expertise was a huge draw. Also, zillions of GPUs.

My master’s advisor at Stanford is Dan Jurafsky, who is the man. He’s a computer scientist and linguist, has written a book about the language of food, and is basically the best, as far as I’m concerned. He was super supportive.

What project was your internship focused on?
I worked under Andrea Gesmundo from the Applied Machine Intelligence team on Multitask Neural Model Search, a framework to automate deep learning architecture design using reinforcement learning. This work builds off of the Neural Architecture Search research done by Barrett and Quoc from the Google Brain team - that framework was one of the first to successfully apply reinforcement learning to automatically generate convolutional neural networks.

Our project focused on extending that framework so that we could automatically design architectures for multiple different tasks, simultaneously. For example, the same framework could design a model that worked well for sentiment analysis tasks, and another that worked well for language identification, at the same time.

We then showed that it was possible to transfer that framework, so that knowledge learned from designing architectures for previous tasks could be reused in totally new, unseen settings. When actual humans design machine learning models, we don’t start completely from scratch every time — we can take advantage of general intuitive design patterns we’ve observed before, as well as remember what models did and didn’t work on similar tasks in the past — and this research tries to take a step closer to doing the same thing in our automated model design.

Did you publish at Google during your internship?
Yes! We submitted our work to ICML, where it’s currently under review (so fingers crossed). The pre-print is also up on Arxiv.

How closely connected was the work you did during your internship to your masters topic?
Although Andrea and I discussed a bunch of project ideas in the months before the internship, this project was actually a chance to try something fairly different from my master’s research at Stanford. For me, at least, that turned out to be one of the best things about this internship — I really loved the chance to explore a very different aspect of AI research, especially one that benefited from the guidance and computational resources available within Google, and I left with a much deeper interest in reinforcement learning that I’ve continued to explore back at Stanford.

Did you write your own code?
Heck, yeah! And then I deployed it ~~cavalierly~~ with enormous care across tons of GPUs. One really awesome thing about interning, though, is the chance to build off of the collaborative engineering effort of other incredibly talented engineers and researchers. I worked pretty closely with code that was being updated almost daily by researchers on the Brain team over in Mountain View, and that kind of cross-continental engineering work feels really neat.

This is your third internship at Google. What were the reasons to come back to Google Zurich?
Third time’s the charm? But actually, I’ve been lucky enough to work at a different office, on very different projects, during all three internships at Google — after my freshman year, I worked with the Glass team in Mountain View, and later I worked in New York on Google Classroom. Each time, I left with a much deeper understanding and appreciation for that particular field, and the care and expertise each of those teams brought to those particular domains. This summer, though, I wanted to come back to work on research in particular. Both of my previous internships had been very software engineering focused, and I was excited to work on AI research that more closely parallels the work I’m excited about at Stanford.

Also, Zurich! I’ve never been to Switzerland before, and this summer, one of my fellow interns and I took a train out to hike past the Matterhorn. She wisely remembered to bring along a Toblerone bar for comparison. The real thing is much more breathtaking (but a lot less chocolatey.)

[Editor’s note: the photo referenced is the photo at the beginning of this post!]

What key skills have you gained from your time at Google?
My team held a weekly reading group, where we’d gather to read and discuss cutting-edge AI papers chosen by different members of the team. This turned out to be one of the very best experiences of the internship — it was incredibly helpful to step back and get a better sense of what’s happening within a very rapidly changing field. Listening to colleagues step through these papers helped me learn to more rigorously assess any given paper — to ask what the experiments really mean, and how its conclusions could generalize to our own current and future projects. Those are questions that I’ve tried to ask more about any work since the summer. That commitment to keeping up with the very coolest things happening within the field also just serves to remind me, often, of what exactly I love about this work and how much there is left to tackle.

What impact has this internship experience had on your master's?
A ton. I really enjoyed diving deeply into research that was largely outside of my own master’s expertise. So much is changing within reinforcement learning right now, and I’ve definitely brought back what I learned — and a sparked interest in related work — to my research here.

Looking back on your experiences now: Why should a master's student apply for an internship at Google? Any advice to offer?
There’s a kind of magical combination of people and resources that means you can work and learn so much within so short a time — especially if you love research and haven’t yet done a PhD, like myself. The internship offers that same rigor and breadth of very cool projects in a very compressed package.

When you’re here, definitely ask questions. Talk to other people about their research, because it’s going to be very awesome and maybe even directly relevant. Join a reading group. Or start a reading group. And get someone to show you how to actually use the espresso machines. That milk frothy thingie? Life changing.

Ready to grow your coding skills? Registration is now open for Code Jam and Kickstart!

2018-03-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

Looking to grow or test your coding skills? Don’t miss two of Google’s fun and challenging programming competitions — Kickstart and Code Jam.

Registration for Kickstart and Code Jam is open! These two programming competitions are designed for programmers of all levels looking to put their coding skills to the test. All of the problems are designed by a team of Google Engineers to inspire and challenge participants. People from across the globe are invited to join the fun! We have a community of current competitors, former participants, and fans of the competitions across Twitter, YouTube, Google+, and Facebook.

Here’s everything you need to know about Kickstart and Code Jam:

Kickstart: Want to grow your coding skills?

Throughout the year, Code Jam hosts online Kickstart rounds that give participants the opportunity to grow their coding abilities, while getting a glimpse into the programming skills needed for a technical career at Google. There are 8 rounds held throughout the year, and you can participate in one or join them all! Check out a recent YouTube Live where Google engineers walk through tips on how to solve Kickstart problems. If you want to practice before the official rounds, check out previous problems from the competition and try them out for yourself.

Register here for Kickstart before Round A on March 18th. You can find the full schedule of online rounds here.

Code Jam: Want to put your coding skills to the test?

Code Jam is Google’s longest-running, global programming competition. Join programmers around the world to challenge yourself, test your coding skills, and practice in a fast-paced environment. The top 1,000 contestants receive limited edition t-shirts featuring code from the previous year’s competition. The top 25 finalists will head to Google's office in Toronto, Canada to attend the World Finals where they'll compete for a cash prize of up to $15,000. We'll livestream the whole event for fans to join in the action! If you want to begin practicing, get started by working your way through previous problems, and join us for a practice session beginning March 23rd at 18:00 UTC.

Be sure to register for Code Jam before the online Qualification Round begins on April 6th. You can see the full Code Jam schedule here.

Whether you are a student or programming professional, contestants are eligible to participate in both Kickstart and Code Jam.

We hope to see you on the scoreboard!

Black History Month Pay It Forward Challenge: Recognizing students making a difference

2018-03-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

In honor of Black History Month, Google hosts its annual Pay It Forward Challenge as a way to recognize individuals who are making a positive impact in their communities. The variety of submissions we received this year serves as a reminder that there are so many ways in which students can “pay it forward!” We’re excited to share the work of the students below, and hope that you feel inspired by the different ways in which students across the U.S. are expanding access and opportunities for their local communities!

Digital Initiatives
Individuals are increasingly moving to digital initiatives in order to make a positive impact and reach a large audience. Check out how these students are navigating the digital space in order to ignite change in their communities.

Tim Salau

Image by Yolissma Vance

Tim Salau is a current Master’s student in his final year at the University of Texas at Austin studying Information Studies. He is a former Google design intern and creator of the Mentors & Mentees community, an international community centered on career mentorship and personal development. They’ve held webinar and workshops around topics like leadership, how to effectively use LinkedIn, and networking!

Jehron Petty

Jehron Petty, a sophomore at Cornell University, is the co-creator of Minority Wealth Management, a YouTube series which seeks to raise awareness of wealth creation and preservation in the minority community through educational videos and social commentary.

Defining Your Community
There is no one correct definition of “community.” From Ghana to Mississippi, these students scaled their initiatives in order to impact the communities that they felt closest to.

Cynoc Bediako

Cynoc is sophomore at Cornell University studying Computer Science. He was born and raised in Ghana, and he has a passion to make Africa a better place through computer science and technology. As such, earlier this year he organized a hackathon in Kumasi Ghana called “Ghana Hacks.” The program sought to give science students a window into the world of computer science and its vast potential for development in this era of technology.

Aisha Saffold

Aisha Saffold is a native of Lexington, Mississippi, attending Jackson State University. She founded P.E.A.R.L.S. in order to empower young women in Holmes, Rankin, Hinds, Leflore, and the Grenada Counties in Mississippi (close to home). The P.E.A.R.L.S. Leadership Academy, Poise and Etiquette Training, and Get Fit with P.E.A.R.L.S. programs are all examples of ways in which Aisha seeks to mold young girls into role models and powerful women who achieve their own hopes and dreams.

University Initiatives
Busy college students can find ways to impact their local communities by engaging in initiatives with their universities.

Pearis Bellamy

Pearis Bellamy is a senior Psychology major and Leadership Studies minor at Hampton University. She founded the Black College Business Woman Connection as an effort to promote entrepreneurship and community among women. Participants leave the events not only informed and empowered, but with a tribe of women ready to support them!

Taylor Montgomery

Taylor Montgomery is a junior Physics major at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and only the second African-American young woman to be the Team Lead for the Fisk University Rocket Team. With the Rocket Team, Taylor volunteers to educate underrepresented minority students in the Nashville Metro Public Schools by engaging them in rocketry, robotics, and STEM activities.

Google Initiatives
There are several ways in which you can leverage Google’s programs and resources in order to positively impact your communities!

Koko Lawson

Koko Lawson is pursuing a MBA at Emporia State University. She is a Community Impact Lead for Google Fiber in Kansas City, Missouri, where she works to close the digital divide in the area by providing community organizations with tools and resources to improve the digital literacy of Kansas City.

Recap
Thanks to all of the amazing students who submitted entries to this year’s Pay it Forward Challenge! For even more inspiration of ways you can pay it forward, check out this year’s features below:
Taylor Mathis
Jordan Williams
Breonna July
Victor Hunt
Chanice Lee
Olamide Olowe and Rechelle Dennis
Diana Wilson
Kristopher Alford
Kirstyn McLeod and Lyndsay Hamilton
Noah Mcqueen
Amanda Lawson

Keep up with us on social (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, G+) to hear more about our initiatives!

My Path to Google: Anjali Khetan, Software Engineer (Google Maps)

2018-03-01T15:51:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the 21st installment of our blog series “My Path to Google.” These are real stories from Googlers, interns, and alumni highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.

Today’s post is all about Anjali Khetan. Read on!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I grew up in Stamford, CT, before attending college at the University of Pennsylvania. I spent the first two years studying Chemical Engineering, but after Intro to Computer Science (CS), my heart was forever changed, and I transferred to Computer Science!

What’s your role at Google?
I am a Software Engineer (SWE) on Google Maps. My team works on getting live events on the map all over the world! I love our team, because we strive to organize event data and understand how it relates to maps, places, people, and navigation. This means our work fits in with Google’s overall mission, but it also brings delight to users through fun features like drawing rainbow routes for Pride and other events, and showing them cool things to do in their area.

What inspires you to come in every day?
The people! I love our product and the projects we work on, but my colleagues are far and away the best part—I have never worked with or met such an inspiring and fun group of people.

Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?
This was my third time applying. It's always worth the energy and effort to chase your dreams, but definitely not a smooth road :D. I joined Google right after college.

How did the recruitment process go for you?
I was contacted after being rejected for an internship. Although I had applied for the SWE New Graduate role, the recruiter felt that I would be a great match for the Engineering Residency program, so we went forward with that.

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process?
That showing an interviewer *how* you solve a problem is just as valuable as what your solution is.

Can you tell us more about the resources you used to prep?
I used “Cracking the Coding Interview,” HackerRank, and mock interviews with friends.

To finish, do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?
When you love something, the work is easy!

Want to learn more about the Engineering Residency? Watch our video, or head over to g.co/EngResidency. Ready to apply to the residency? We're currently accepting applications at https://goo.gl/rhBmj1.

My Path to Google: William Edward Bailey, III, Software Engineer (and CSSI alum)

2018-02-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the 20th installment of our blog series “My Path to Google.” These are real stories from Googlers, interns, and alumni highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.

Today’s post is all about William Edward Bailey, III. He participated in the CSSI class of 2012 and now works at Google. Read on!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Hello! I am William Edward Bailey, III, or WEB3 for short (yes, I chose the right career for my name). I was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up in a small town outside the city called Douglasville. In 2012, I traveled up the East Coast to study in New Haven, Connecticut, at Yale University. I graduated class of 2016, with a combined Bachelor and Master of Computer Science. I now work as a Software Engineer (SWE) at Google under the Search Infrastructure division.

As for hobbies, I enjoy playing video games (Legend of Zelda and Smash Bros), hiking, and talking with friends. I like superhero movies (Marvel) and cheering my favorite sports team (Go Falcons!). Recently, I've become a fan of travelling and taking pictures of my various journeys across the country.

I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior when I was 12. Christianity has been a large part of my life since.

What’s your role at Google?
I have worked on a few projects here at Google. In 2013, I interned with the Engineering Practicum (EP) program and worked under AdSpam Engineering Productivity. My manager was developing a release script to automate the process of pushing our binary to production. I wrote some unit tests to ensure the correctness of the tool and then developed a fault injection tool that could simulate several errors and prove an additional level of correctness.

In 2014, I interned as a general SWE intern under the Access and Energy division. I worked on a team that was developing cloud-managed wifi routers. My task was to integrate this service with another product at Google. I worked as a full stack engineer developing the code to request data from the backend, pipe the data through our server, and display the data in our frontend.

I currently work as a Software Engineer on the Search UI Infrastructure team in Mountain View, CA. Our team is responsible for maintaining the Google Web Server (GWS for short). GWS is responsible for processing search requests that come into Google. When we get a request, GWS contacts our backends to retrieve relevant search results, renders the results into an html page, and returns the response to our users. My team focuses on the infrastructure of the server ensuring that latency is low and it is easier for developers to build upon the platform.

One thing that I like most about Google is the breadth of projects. There's something here for almost everyone. If you like Operating Systems, you can work on the Android OS. If you like frontend work, you can develop UIs for our desktop and mobile applications. You can work on web browsers (Chrome), iOS apps, or Android apps. You can work on large, established code bases like Search or newer teams like Assistant. In many ways, it can feel like working at a different company all within Google.

What inspires you to come in every day?
Projects and people are the two words that would describe why I like working at Google.

Within Search, I work on a code base that is massive in scale (~19 years in the making) and continually evolving. The improvements made can affect the lives of billions of our users. Google gives software engineers autonomy of execution and the opportunity to work on meaningful projects. Engineers are empowered to develop ownership over portions of code, spec out design docs, and plan how they execute to accomplish their goals. For example, my team has been working on improving a part of the html rendering system, so that we can decrease CPU cost for rendering and reduce latency for our end users.

Teams here at Google are collaborative and organized around solving problems. My manager and several other members of the team have been extremely supportive, particularly as I was starting out. Whether it was debugging issues together, volunteering to help out with portions of a project I was leading, or explaining the history behind our code base, I have been helped greatly by my peers. My team members are friendly, knowledgeable of the system, and have a passion for coding. All of which makes the team a great environment to work in.

Lastly, I enjoy performing various outreach programs in my 20% time. I have been working with a university specialist to perform Google recruiting back at my Alma Mater. I've been able to go back three times thus far! I enjoy getting a chance to meet students and share my experiences (I'd be happy to chat if you are a student reading this post :). As an alumni of CSSI, I have enjoyed TA-ing the program and meeting the next generation of CSSI-ers (you may see me if you attend the Mountain View session). As a former intern, I have volunteered with the intern program by mentoring a few interns last summer. I enjoy forming personal connections and am glad that Google has provided a space for me to pursue these opportunities.

Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?
For most of my life, computer science wasn't on my radar. My dad worked in a security and information management role, so I was well-versed in computers from an early age. However, I enjoyed writing, debating, and public speaking. All throughout high school, my plan was to major in business in college and then go on to law school. During my senior year, I needed a fine arts requirement. I could not take music theory at the time since I didn't know how to read music. However, the Christian private school I was attending counted Computer Science as a fine arts. I took the course and fell in love with the subject. After I got accepted to Yale, I decided to switch my major to Computer Science.

During the summer before college started, I participated in CSSI in Mountain View. It was my first time visiting California and my first exposure to life at Google. Throughout the three-week program, I learned about python and web development. For the last week, I worked on a team to build a calendar web app and presented it to a group of Google engineers.

The program was extremely influential in my career path in three ways. First, it gave me a better sense of how vast Computer Science is. It can be applied to numerous disciplines, from economics to political science to traditional consumer apps. Seeing what Computer Science could be like helped keep me motivated through classes I didn't like as much. Second, it sparked in me a desire to work at Google. Seeing all the free food and engineers made me want to come back next summer for an internship. Third, it gave me greater confidence that I wanted to pursue Computer Science as a major. Because of this, I decided to take several CS courses my freshman year. CSSI gave me greater confidence that I could handle these courses well.

I hope these stories encourage those reading this post who are new to Computer Science, nervous about entering college, or possibly intimidated by peers who have more experience. In my case, the vast majority of my CS experience came in college. Now is the perfect time for you to begin! Focus on doing your best and working hard to develop the foundation and core skills. Opportunities will come in time.

How did the recruitment process go for you?
Through CSSI, I was encouraged to apply for the Engineering Practicum program for my freshman summer. I got into the program and worked under Engineering Productivity for AdSpam. I received a return offer for sophomore summer to work as a general SWE intern in the Access and Energy Division. For my junior summer, I interned at a different company. I re-joined Google full time after my senior year.

In my case, much of the recruiting process for my full-time position occurred during the internships. Since I worked at Google for two summers, I was able to show my ability to work as a Google engineer. CSSI was extremely helpful in building connections at Google and gaining an idea of what skills I should cultivate in school.

I will share this fun story about how I joined my current team. During the internship of my freshman summer, I attended a Bible study at Google (Google has many different extracurricular activities similar to college). Two of the Googlers who attended were going to be working in a new division at Google. One of the guys told me that he would be interested in having me as an intern if I ever came back. When I returned sophomore summer for my second internship, I joined their team and worked under Access and Energy. After I left, my intern host left the team and came to work under Search Infrastructure. When I applied for a full time position, I initially elected to return to my former team under Access and Energy. My former intern host reached out to me and asked whether I wanted to join him in Search. I agreed and have been working under Search since I came on full time. Although I didn't realize it at the time, my path to Google Search began during my freshman summer!

I like this story because it highlights a lot of what I love about the people here at Google. They look out for each other and are eager to provide opportunities for growth, especially to those who are young and starting out their careers.

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process?
Through CSSI and internships, I was fortunate to have been coached through the process early on. Hence, I didn't have too many major bumps in the recruiting process. However, I can talk about lessons I learned more broadly about interviewing/recruiting.

A friend of mine said it best: Prepare for the interviews as if you were preparing for the SAT. Study. Practice. Study. Then, practice again. Keep working through problems until you are familiar with the general questions that may be asked and have an idea of good strategies for tackling problems. When solving the problems, practice writing solutions on a whiteboard (chalkboards were my favorite alternative). Make sure you plan out your solution before coding. Spend some time explaining your solution, thinking of edge cases, and then write the code. Make sure to test the solution afterwards. Most of all, don't forget to talk to the interviewer! Speak out loud so the interviewer knows what you are thinking and how you are approaching the problem.

Getting people to refer you can help tremendously. Google gets a lot of applicants, so getting a referral helps set your application apart (but you don’t need a referral). If you know someone who can speak to your skills, have them refer you. Also, don't be shy about contacting recruiters to ask about the status of your application.

Side projects are helpful, particularly if you can publish your code on GitHub. It helps to have working examples to show how well you can code. However, don't be too concerned if you don't have time for side projects or hackathons. As I loved to say in school, classes were my hackathons; I spent most of my programming efforts on courses. If you can choose challenging courses that have extensive projects and can get internship experience over the summer, that can help you develop the skills you need.

Lastly, apply early. The recruiting season starts in August/September (depending on region).

Can you tell us about the resources you used to prepare for your interview or role?
Cracking the Coding Interview and the Programming Interview Exposed are two good books for interviewing. In applying to various places, I've seen some of the questions in those books asked.

I also want to stress the importance of classes. They are extremely valuable in teaching you how to code and in learning the fundamentals of Computer Science. Don't skimp on those. I will use an analogy. When you first start off your college career, you are attempting to build a house. Your introductory and intermediate courses are the foundation of that house. You want to make sure that you master the fundamentals and have a strong foundation. If not, your house will be shaky when you build upon it later. Make sure you have the time not just to complete your assignments, but to do well in them. Make sure you understand the concepts in class. Most of all, read your books. Yes, read the textbooks. Don't listen to anyone who would tell you otherwise. Doing the readings was extremely helpful for me in mastering the material that was taught. This is particularly true for history courses, but that would be for another blog post... :)

After you have mastered the fundamentals, consider taking harder courses like Operating Systems, Computer Networks, Compilers, or Databases. Even if you don't plan on working in these areas long-term, it is good to have a breadth of knowledge and to understand systems that you use. If you can handle the math, theoretical courses are a good way to further expand your knowledge.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?

Apply to CSSI. It is an amazing program!
Master the fundamentals. Ensure you have enough time to excel in your CS courses.
Seek support and guidance. Talk with your advisers. Forge relationships with professors.
Apply early and get referrals if you can.

I'll end with two pieces of encouragement:

First, there may be many of you about to head off to college far away from home. For myself, I traveled from Georgia to Connecticut and then to California. I was very homesick in the midst of adjusting to new environments, regions, and cultures. As time went on, I became more settled, knew what I was doing and where all the buildings were, and began to build deeper friendships with people. After four years of college, I was sad to say goodbye and leave a place I had come to call home. Know that it will take time for you to get adjusted to college. Be encouraged even during times when things may be difficult.

Lastly, take time to enjoy the journey. Don't be in such a rush to land a job that you miss the incredible opportunity you have in front of you. College is an excellent time to learn new things and meet new people. Yes, work hard. But, also have time to enjoy the resources available at your college and get to know your fellow classmates. Don't worry: Those four years will pass by quickly and you'll be an alumni like me wondering where the time went. While you are there, make the most of it.

Best of luck and enjoy the journey! Perhaps, we'll get a chance to meet one day at Google.

Interested in CSSI? Head to the CSSI site to learn more and apply today!

Meet a Googler: Peta-Gay Clarke, Community Manager, Code Next

2018-02-16T10:15:00.002-08:00

This week we partnered with Accelerate with Google, a platform that levels the playing field for people with unequal access to technology and economic opportunity, to share how Peta began working at Google and what continues to inspire her everyday.

Photo credit: Olayinka Ajakaiye

How long have you been at Google?
2 years and 6 months

How did you find yourself working at Google?
I was working at Columbia University as their Deputy Director of IT for the Journalism School when I got a call from a few friends at Google about a Community Manager role within the Google Diversity division. I had been volunteering as a co-lead for the New York Chapter of Black Girls Code and had built relationships with many Googlers (Google employees) who often volunteered with us. As I learned more about the Community Manager role, I was really intrigued and decided to interview and eventually join the EDII team (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, & Integrity).

So what exactly is your role?
The Code Next mission is to build social capital in Black and Latino neighborhoods by developing culturally engaging and community-centric tech innovation experiences in an effort to cultivate a new generation of transformational Black and Latino computer scientists. In my role, I manage all the relationships internally and externally as well as the operations to bring this mission to fruition.

What do you like most about working at Google?
There's a saying “If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room.” Every room I've stepped into at Google has left me with more knowledge and a new way of thinking. I love that! Everyday I get to work with some of the smartest and most talented people in the world.

What inspires you about your work?
The youth! For a long time I've been super passionate about getting more young people of color into the tech field. It's rewarding to watch these kids learn, grow, and develop into tech leaders.

How does Google's culture support your mission?
Googlers are very supportive of this work. Right now, we have 40 Googlers who have signed up to mentor 40 of our Code Next kids for a year and 100+ Googlers who continue to volunteer their time with our program.

What energizes you?
So much...

(1) My family — I am single parent, so I owe all of my success to my family’s unwavering love and support.

(2) Technology for social good — The use of technology to improve outcomes for marginalized groups.

(3) Books — I am one of those people that buys more books than I could ever read. I used to feel guilty until my friend shared this article with me.

My Path to Google: KaMar Galloway, Program Manager

2018-02-08T12:58:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the 19th installment of our blog series “My Path to Google.” These are real stories from Googlers, interns, and alumni highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.

Today’s post is all about KaMar Galloway. Read on!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I grew up in the U.S. Virgin Islands (St. Croix, to be exact) and was very much into music as a kid. My dad owns Galloway's Record Shop on the island, so I listened to a ton of reggae, soca, and dancehall music in the house. My switch from music to technology came in high school when I took my first computer science class. Fast forward four years and one victory lap year of studying computer science at NC State, and now I am at Google working as a Program Manager.

What’s your role at Google?

My title is Program Manager, but I tell everyone that I am an informal computer science teacher. At Google, I, along with several other amazing people, created the Google CS First program that teaches students how to tell their own stories and design their own games through code. The coolest project to date has to be my involvement in the Google collaboration project with Chance the Rapper.

What inspires you to come in every day?

Randomly running into people that know my team's work is super inspiring. There's been situations where I've walked into a classroom and students have recognized me from my appearances in CS First videos. It's so cool to see them make the connection that real people who look like me are actively designing and creating with technology.

Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?

I was interested in Google because of the professional but casual culture that the company embodies. Google is constantly in the top 3 companies to work for every year. I also taught computer science to middle-school boys while in college, so I felt equipped to apply for a role as a Computer Science Teaching Fellow.

How did the recruitment process go for you?

Days before graduating, a good friend shared with me an application to a Computer Science Teaching Fellowship (now known as CSSI). I had no clue what it was all about, but I decided to apply since I didn't have any offers on the table. I don't know how confident I was that I’d get the role, but I was extremely confident in what I knew and how my unique experiences helped me learn how to code.

Can you tell us about the resources you used to prepare for your interview or role?

I reviewed all of the CS-based lessons I taught to my middle-school boys and organized them by the impact they had on my students. This prepared me to speak on specific situations and key learnings during the interview process.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?

Identify the thing that uniquely makes you the person you are today and bring that to the table each and every day.

Interested in CSSI? Head to the CSSI site to learn more and apply today!

My Path to Google: Alessandra Rao, Associate Product Marketing Manager

2018-02-01T08:32:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the 18th installment of our blog series “My Path to Google.” These are real stories from Googlers, interns, and alumni highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.

Today’s post is all about Alessandra Rao. Read on!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I was born and raised in New York City where I lived for most of my life. I went to a specialized high school, Fiorello H. LaGuardia School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, where I majored in visual arts.

I always knew I wanted a career in marketing because it combined my passions: art, business, and occasional traveling. High school gave me a solid art foundation, so I chose to go to CUNY Baruch College to pursue a BBA in Marketing Management. During college, my love for traveling grew even more. I had the fortune of studying abroad in Barcelona and Paris thanks to a scholarship from Macaulay Honors College.

In my last two years of college, I co-founded a creative agency called White Cube Media that produces product videos for corporations. I loved using my creativity and business skills to help other companies succeed.

What’s your role at Google?

I’m an Associate Product Marketing Manager (APMM) on the App Developer Acquisitions team. I launch scaled campaigns to help app developers promote their app using Universal App Campaigns (UAC), a Google advertising product that uses machine learning. My team and I have built new emails, landing pages, and banner ads in 27 countries so far. We call our team ‘the little startup’ within Google because our scaled program is brand new. The marketing guidelines aren’t always black and white, but that’s where the fun lies!

What inspires you to come in every day?

What inspires me to come in every day is knowing that my work affects Google's advertising growth. I'm inspired by the feeling of running a startup within a huge international company. We have the typical challenges that startups face: We need to be smart about resources, build our online presence, and work with the product team to improve the user experience. It’s fun to tell a story with the data and use that knowledge to influence the creative and product teams.

I’m part of the APMM program, a tight-knit community of Associate Product Marketing Managers from different teams within Google The program offers so many unique opportunities. For example, I had the chance to take a marketing class where we learned from Google directors. In December, I went on a trip to Houston with four other APMMs to learn about the role of technology during Hurricane Harvey. In April, I'll be on my way to the annual APMM trip in Asia-Pacific (APAC) to learn about the local markets.

Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?

One day, I decided to go to a public YouTube event in NYC. I chatted with the woman behind me, and after swapping contact info, we began exchanging emails. She was so kind and inspiring.

It turns out, she works at Google and was one of the event organizers! We kept in touch for years, and she gave me great career advice. Eventually, I asked for her advice on my resume and expressed my interest in Google. "I think you should apply for the APMM program," she told me. I applied online and was contacted by a recruiter one week later. At that point, I had just graduated college.

How did the recruitment process go for you?

The recruitment process was smooth, but long. It started out with some screening questions and phone interviews. I was invited to a Google Hangout interview while I was on vacation in Miami. I set up my computer on the balcony of my hotel room. The background was the calm blue Miami ocean!

I was thrilled to get the email invite to the on-site interviews. Google flew me out to Mountain View. The night before my interview, I went to the APMM networking party and I was so nervous that I couldn't eat or drink! I remember meeting a fellow candidate who was just as nervous as I was. He was trying to figure out how to get back to the hotel, and I offered him a ride. We’ve been friends ever since!

A few weeks after the interviews, my life changed forever. It was 5pm on a cool October day when I received the much-anticipated phone call: "Alessandra, we'd like to offer you a position as an APMM at Google." I had a huge smile on my face for a long, long time.

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process?

I wish I'd known that waiting one month for interview results doesn't mean a bad thing! To the recruiters and hiring team, a week goes by in a flash. For someone like me who was awaiting life-changing results, each week felt like a year. Luckily, my recruiter kept me in the loop for each step in the process.

Can you tell us about the resources you used to prepare for your interview or role?

I read a lot of ad tech news from big online publishers. I also read Growth Hacker Marketing and How Google Works. I practiced making compelling arguments backed by numbers. When solving a problem, I’d write out each step and all assumptions to help me think out loud.

The best hands-on resource that I had to prepare for my role was starting my own business. I learned how to be resourceful and quickly adapt to customer needs. I wore many hats: account manager, designer, budget master, and more. Dealing with ambiguity was probably the greatest skill I acquired while running my business: There was rarely ever a 'right' way to do something, so I had to write the playbook on my own. A happy client was my greatest reward.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?

Create your own opportunities when things don't go as planned. You will be rejected in life many, many times, but it's only a failure if you don't learn from it. My advice is to use your talents to help others. For example, help a local business get online with Google My Business. Help a local school or nonprofit get set up with G Suite for Education. Start a socially responsible blog and track the metrics with Google Analytics. Start a YouTube Channel that teaches people how to build an app. Helping others not only creates a sense of purpose, but it is a great addition to your resume with metrics to back it up.

We have something here called Googleyness. It's not always clearly defined, but for me, it centers around making social impact, being well-rounded, and seeking personal growth opportunities. Googleyness is what makes Google's culture so special.

Meet the winners of Google's Pay It Forward Challenge!

2018-01-23T09:20:00.000-08:00

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, Google hosted its third annual Pay it Forward Challenge as a way to recognize students and professionals who are demonstrating a commitment to expanding access and opportunities to the Latinx community and beyond. We’re excited to share the work of our four winners!

Adan Gonzalez

Adan Gonzalez grew up in South Oak Cliff—a predominantly Mexican-American, low-income community in inner-city Dallas. Despite going to a school with high dropout and violence rates, Adan worked hard to prove to his parents that their sacrifices and hard work were worth it, and ultimately obtained a B.A. from Georgetown University and a M.Ed from Harvard.

In 2012, motivated by his family and by his community, Adan founded Puede Network, which helps transform students into scholars, and scholars into community leaders. Their Higher Education on Wheels campaign connect parents, teachers, and students to resources such as scholarships and financial aid. Puede also holds conferences with C-Suite executives to provide comprehensive college services, volunteer opportunities, and mentorship to underprivileged students in Dallas public schools.

Since 2012, Puede Network has grown beyond community events and now engages more than 100,000 students and parents in 15 states through presentations, blogs, and radio shows.

How can you help?

If you are interested in getting involved with Puede Network, you can express your interest here.

Brianna Silva

Brianna Silva is a proud Mexican-American and an active advocate for Hispanic students at her high school and within her community. During her freshman year she noticed that the ELL (English Language Learners) students in her class all sat in the back of the classroom, confused and forgotten.

In turn, Brianna began to meet with the school administration to address the issues affecting Hispanic students at her high school. As the president of the Minority Student Achievement Network at her school, she assists in planning student-teacher forums and continues to empower ELL and Hispanic students, speaking to her local civil rights committee about the unique obstacles that Latino scholars might face.

Recognizing the dire need for financial support for college, Brianna also founded The Hope Scholarship, a fund dedicated to financially assist low-income Hispanic students with their dream to attend college. Brianna hopes to continue working passionately to empower Latino students in college and beyond. Her next goal is to host a Hispanic Student Conference where students from all over the country can come together to address issues that Latino students might face.

How can you help?

If anyone is interested in collaborating with Brianna or assisting her with her projects and goals, you can reach out via email at givebackwithbrianna@gmail.com.

Brittany Amano

Brittany Amano is a sophomore at Duke University and the founder of The Future Isn’t Hungry. As someone who experienced food insecurity throughout her childhood, Brittany believes it is important to not think of hunger as something that only happens in developing countries—it might be happening in the town next to yours.

Many students rely on the free meals they receive when school is in session, but have to go home to an empty fridge on Friday night. The Future Isn’t Hungry provides healthy food bags to impoverished youth for their weekends. Every bag contains a weekend’s worth of food for 2 ½ people (containing fruits, vegetables, grains, and protein sources that can be too expensive for low-income families to afford), as well as healthy recipes using low-cost food items to help children learn how to prepare wholesome, balanced meals.

The idea for The Future Isn’t Hungry began when Brittany hosted her first food drive as a fourth grader. Since then, the initiative has been able to provide over 770,000 meals and raise over $4.6 million worth in food.

How can you help?
Get involved! Get some friends together to join the fight against childhood food insecurity — start your own healthy food bag initiative and use the #FutureisntHungry hashtag to share your work.

Brittany encourages you to submit your own big idea to LEAD360!

Katiuska Pimentel

Katiuska Pimentel migrated to the United States at a young age and struggled with economic and social stability, as her undocumented status made finding a job difficult. Despite the hardships she faced, her family taught her that education is a tool to achieve opportunities and social change. Since high school, Katiuska has been an active leader for the immigrant community. She supported state and local pro-immigrant policies and she advocated to expand the access of undocumented students to higher education. She also worked on the #health4all movement — expanding health rights to undocumented minors.

Katiuska is currently a community organizer at SIREN (Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network), where she works closely with community members on immigration advocacy and reform. She delivers "Know your rights" presentations, teaching community members how to execute their constitutional rights if they are in contact with immigration authorities.

As someone who has experienced major injustices, Katiuska wants to fight for the rights of the many people who, like her, come from underserved backgrounds. In the future, she hopes to continue advocating for undocumented, underserved communities as an immigration lawyer.

How can you help?

Katiuska would appreciate donations to SIREN, so that the organization can expand its deportation defense services.

Thanks to all our winners! Keep up with us on social to hear more about our initiatives.

Hash Code 2018 registration is now live — are you up for the challenge?

2018-01-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

Are you up for a coding challenge? Team up to solve an engineering problem from Google — registration for Hash Code 2018 is now open at g.co/hashcode!

Last year’s Final Round competitors celebrating a job well done

Hash Code is our flagship team programming competition for students and professionals in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The 2018 contest will kick off with an Online Qualification Round on Thursday, March 1st. During this virtual round, teams can participate from wherever they’d like, but we’d recommend joining a Hash Code hub (more info below). Top scoring teams from the Online Qualification Round will be invited to Google Dublin in April to go head-to-head for the title of Hash Code 2018 Champion.

Last year, more than 26,000 developers from 100+ countries participated in Hash Code. In the end, it was AIM Tech from Russia who took home the coveted Hash Code trophy during the Final Round at Google Paris.

First place team, AIM Tech, celebrates onstage at the Final Round after being announced the winners of Hash Code 2017

Want to take part in Hash Code? Here’s what you need to know:

The problems are modeled after Google engineering challenges

We want participants to experience what software engineering is like at Google, so we model Hash Code problems after challenges faced by Google engineering teams. Past problems have included optimizing video serving on YouTube, routing Streetview cars through a busy city, and optimizing the layout of a Google data center.

And just like software engineering at Google, there is no one correct solution to Hash Code problems. Instead, each round of the competition is designed as a battle of heuristics: participants work together to develop approximate solutions and then launch and iterate to progressively improve their score. Ingrid von Glehn, a Software Engineer at Google London, adds: “We design the problems to be challenging, but not intimidating. It’s important to us that everyone has fun while taking part.”

Participants work in teams

To compete in Hash Code, you need to form a team of 2 to 4 people. This means it’s not just about what you know individually, but about how you and your team can work together to find better approaches and approximations as you advance through the problem.

Damien, a Software Engineer at Google Zurich, has been a part of Hash Code since the beginning, first as a competitor and now as a volunteer. He advises participants to form well-rounded teams in order to succeed at Hash Code. “Combining different insights and skills can be the key to climbing the scoreboard,” Damien says. “The more diverse your team is, the better off you'll be!”

Want to compete, but don’t have a team yet? Don’t worry! Once you’ve registered for the competition, you can use our Facebook Event and Google+ community to find a great mix of members for your team.

Hubs add extra fun to the Online Qualification Round

Hubs are meetups where teams in the same area can come together to compete in the Online Qualification Round. Hubs add extra excitement to the competition and are a great opportunity for you to connect with other developers in your community.

So far, more than 250 hubs have been registered by universities, Google Developer Groups, coworking spaces, and other organizations across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Don’t see a hub registered near you? It’s not too late to sign up to host a hub in your local area - find out more here!

Ready to accept the challenge? Sign up today!

Registration will stay open until February 26, 2018.

Teams hard at work tackling our wireless router placement problem during 2017’s Final Round in Paris.

Showing Students they Can: Apply for CSSI 2018!

2018-01-08T08:31:00.002-08:00

Applications for the 2018 Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI) and the Generation Google Scholarship (both available to students in the US or Canada) open on January 9th. Learn more about both programs below and apply!

What

The Computer Science Summer Institute is a three-week introduction to computer science (CS) for graduating high school seniors who’ve displayed excellent leadership and have a passion for technology. Students will spend three weeks at a Google office, where they’ll learn programming fundamentals directly from Google engineers. In their final week, groups of students will design and develop their very own application (with mentorship from Google engineers).

The Generation Google Scholarship helps aspiring computer scientists from underrepresented groups excel in technology and become leaders in the field. Selected students will receive 10,000 USD (for those studying in the US) or 5,000 CAD (for those studying in Canada) for the 2018-2019 school year. As part of the scholarship, current high school seniors who are entering their first year of university in Fall 2018 will be required to attend CSSI in the summer of 2018.

Where & When

We offer two types of sessions at CSSI: commuter and residential. At our residential sites, students will live in a dorm for the duration of the three weeks. The residential site is reserved for students who do not have a local Google office nearby. At the residential sites, housing, meals, and transportation will be provided and costs will be covered by Google. Residential sites for 2018 include:

Seattle, WA: July 8th - July 28th

Pittsburgh, PA: July 8th - July 28th

Cambridge, MA: July 8th - July 28th

Kirkland, WA: July 15th - August 4th

At the commuter sites, students will be provided a travel stipend and expected to commute to/from the respective Google office for each day of CSSI. Lunch will be provided and covered by Google each day. Students within a specified mileage distance from the respective day-camp offices will automatically be considered for those sites. Commuter sites for 2018 include:

Atlanta, GA: July 9th - July 27th

Austin, TX: July 16th - August 3rd

Chicago, IL: July 9th - July 27th

Los Angeles, CA: July 16th - August 3rd

Mountain View, CA: July 16th - August 3rd

New York City, NY: July 9th - July 27th

There will also be two Saturday activities planned at both the residential and commuter sites that will be covered by Google. This is an excellent opportunity to explore (or further explore if you’re in a commuter site!) the city and to get to know your fellow participants better.

Who

We are looking for students eager to spend a few weeks immersed in life at Google — tackling interesting technical problems, working collaboratively, and having fun. The program is committed to addressing diversity in the field of computer science and is open to all qualified high school seniors who intend to major in computer science at a four year university in the US (excluding territories) or Canada.

Why

Google is committed to increasing the enrollment and retention of students in the field of computer science. CSSI offers an intensive, interactive, and fun experience that seeks to inspire the tech leaders and innovators of tomorrow. We want students to leave empowered, heading into their first year of college armed with technical skills and a unique learning experience that can only be found at Google. We aim to expose selected students to key programming concepts while enabling them to tackle the challenging problems in CS by creating a safe, comfortable environment to learn, play, break, and build.

Apply

Visit our Google for Education website for more information and to apply. The application deadline is March 2, 2018. Final decisions will be announced in early May.

Questions?

Give us a shout at cssi@google.com or generationgoogle@google.com.

My Path to Google: Jordan LaCroix, Software Engineer

2018-01-03T05:00:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the 17th installment of our blog series “My Path to Google.” These are real stories from Googlers, interns, and alumni highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.

Today’s post is all about Jordan LaCroix. Read on!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I grew up in the south end of New Bedford, Massachusetts, also called “The Whaling City.” I went to Bristol Community College downtown, and then to the next town over to finish up my bachelors in Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

When I’m not at work, I’m outside the house—backpacking, mountaineering, biking, kayaking, rock climbing, walking the dog, or anything that gives me a reason to get some sunshine.

What’s your role at Google?
I'm a Software Engineer on DoubleClick Bid Manager. Before you see an ad, there's bidding that goes on between a bunch of other ads that want to be seen. We automate that bidding process for advertisers, so they get the best bang for their buck! It takes a lot of manpower to fuel the process, and I love all the coordinating and collaboration.

What inspires you to come in every day?
I always joke and say it’s the free food, but it's really a place I'm proud to work at! I really believe Google will make for a better future.

Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?
I was ready to throw on my Google onesie long before applying. I went to a no-name school, had no internships, and I thought it wouldn't work out, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to apply.

How did the recruitment process go for you?
I applied on the careers page thinking I wouldn’t hear back. Then I went through the interviews thinking I wouldn't hear back. The day came when I DID hear back, and I recall Jarrod (my recruiter) saying in a sad voice "Jordan, remember I said you should be okay at this point...(dramatic pause), well I'm sorry, but...(a longer dramatic pause) you have nothing to worry about! Congrats."

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process?
It takes time — just relax!

Can you tell us more about the resources you used to prep?
There's a good subreddit (‘cscareerquestions’) which has loads of prep material.

To finish, do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?
When you get here, remember that the food isn't going anywhere!

Want to learn more about the Engineering Residency? Watch our video, or head over to g.co/EngResidency. Ready to apply to the residency? We're currently accepting applications at https://goo.gl/rhBmj1.

My Path to Google: Ashley Shields, Inside Sales Representative

2017-12-28T17:15:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the 16th installment of our blog series “My Path to Google.” These are real stories from Googlers, interns, and alumni highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.

Today’s post is all about Ashley Shields. Read on!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I grew up in San Diego, California, and I’ve called Austin, Texas, my home for the past four years. I attended Northern Arizona University and studied Business with an emphasis in Hotel and Restaurant Management. After graduation (before coming over to Google), I was on the sales team that opened the largest JW Marriott in North America.
I love staying active in my free time. Austin is a great place to be active, as it has endless trails and a bounty of entertainment. I’m an avid tennis player and participate in local fitness competitions in Austin. I’m also a huge fan of stand-up comedy and concerts. Austin has a ton of unique venues for both, which makes it the ideal city to live in.
Fun facts: I love going to the dentist. I once bought Nick Jonas dinner. I have been featured on two billboards.

What’s your role at Google?
I am currently an Inside Sales Representative for the Google Cloud team covering the Central Florida region. I help identify business needs within a company, and work with our team to create custom IT solutions using the Google Cloud Platform—I’m very passionate about helping customers develop ideas that will grow their businesses and save them money to reinvest in their company and spur customer growth.
My team is based in the Austin office, but I work virtually with my Central Florida teammates (based out of Florida and Atlanta). We use our collaboration toolset, G Suite, to ensure a great customer experience as if we are all sitting together in one office!
Being here is great because Google allows their employees to work on a lot of cool projects; one that I’m passionate about is the culture committee for our Cloud Team in Austin. My favorite project was the Google Gives week, where different types of charities are highlighted every day for a week—it’s an awesome way to give back to such an incredible city. We even raised $4,000 in one day to support a local Austin charity!
Another great project I was able to work on was event planning for the Google Cloud team. I loved being able to work cross-functionally with the marketing team to put on local Cloud events, helping educate current and future customers on the power of Google Cloud. It’s an amazing feeling to see my ideas come to life, as I was able to create and execute events to drive new and current customer business.

What inspires you to come in every day?
There are two important aspects of Google that inspire me to come to work everyday: 1) the people, and 2) the passion. As you can imagine, the people at Google are some of the most brilliant I’ve worked with, and partnering with these individuals every day is a dream! The ideas and teamwork produced in the office are incredible.
Because people are happy to be working here, you are able to thrive off of the positive energy of others. Every day brings something different and exciting, whether it’s a morning meeting, a trip to the micro kitchen or a coffee break at the cafe, you really never tire of the environment. I also get to work with people from all around the world, and I think we really come together when we work towards the common goal of “organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful.”
Right now, I am working on a training program for the new Enterprise Customer Development (ECD) role. The Googlers in this role will be focused on growing and expanding the enterprise business of Google Cloud. Field Sales reps, like myself, will partner with ECDs to research business leads, open up new opportunities for the Google Cloud platform, schedule client meetings, and identify prospects for potential Cloud engagement. Having this brand new role on our team is really exciting, and I’m glad I get to be a part of building out the training curriculum.

Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?
Google always seemed to be the most incredible place to work — I remember reading articles on Google’s innovative approach to all the different businesses they were looking to enhance. Needless to say I was a bit intimidated when applying because I was so new to the workforce (I only had about a year of experience post graduation).

How did the recruitment process go for you?
The recruitment process was smooth!
My path to Google was a little unique, as I was referred into the company by a former coworker. When I first started with Google, I worked as a contractor for Google Fiber in the early stages as we were beginning to build out the Fiber business. After a year of being a contractor, I was lucky enough to be converted into a full-time position, leading the inside sales team for the Atlanta region.

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process?
My advice to anyone going through the recruitment process is be patient and don’t overthink. Google has come up with a great workflow for hiring the best candidates. The recruiters are working with various teams and candidates, so if they don’t get back to you the second after you send a follow-up email, don’t stress. Once you’ve completed the interview process, just relax and be proud of your accomplishment thus far.
One key thing that I didn’t know at first was that Google is always changing — we have to; that’s what makes us the best at what we do.

Can you tell us about the resources you used to prepare for your interview or role?
Since I was already in previous sales roles, product knowledge and technical preparation was where I focused for my new role on Cloud. Current market research was key—Gartner was a great resource to learn about how the market and our customers viewed Google Cloud, as well as the competition within the Cloud world. For this new Enterprise Customer Development role, technical knowledge of Cloud isn’t required (but is recommended!).
YouTube was also a great resource, from NEXT presentations to quick videos on teams learning “how do I spin up a VM in the cloud.”
My advice for someone new coming to technical sales is to be confident. You’ve most likely been selling your whole life, you just might not be aware of it. The technical aspect of the sales position will come with exposure to different solutions and use cases.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?
Always bring your best self to the workplace: be present, be engaging, and have fun! If you get a job at Google, they hired you because you displayed great ability to make a difference. This means the possibilities for growth, education, and impact are endless. Be proud of all the accomplishments that brought you to becoming a Googler, and continue to make an impact with all the opportunities that will come your way.

Interested in the Enterprise Customer Development role? Apply now!

My Path to Google: Hee Jung Ryu, Senior Software Engineer, Google Research

2017-12-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the 15th installment of our blog series “My Path to Google.” These are real stories from Googlers, interns, and alumni highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.

Today’s post is all about Hee Jung Ryu. Read on!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I grew up in South Korea, in a district called Ilsan at the Northeast corner of Seoul. I also lived in a town called Vienna, Virginia, in the U.S. for one year when I was thirteen years old, basically to learn English.

I started college at Hanyang University in Seoul, South Korea, but transferred to Cornell University in the U.S. in my sophomore year. I graduated from Cornell with a Bachelor’s specializing in artificial intelligence and Master’s degrees in computer science focused on computer vision and distributed computing, with minors in mechanical engineering concentrating in robotics. I also worked at a robotics lab—albeit briefly—as an undergrad.

I think of myself as a collector of new experiences: scuba diving and surfing (despite my fear of deep water), skydiving, airplane piloting, ziplining, snowboarding, and more! New experiences get me excited and keep me awed and humble, because I realize that there is so much in this world that I want to learn about.

What’s your role at Google?

My official title at work is senior software engineer, and I’m on the Google Research team. I research artificial intelligence (A.I.), specifically at the intersection of Deep Learning and Computer Vision. I also explore the topic of “fairness” in machine learning.

What inspires you to come in every day?

My past five-and-a-half years at Google flew by so quickly because every day at work has been full of exciting projects and conversations. For me, the best part of working at Google is the respect and freedom given to engineers and research scientists. We are always empowered to choose or create our own projects. For example, in my role, I’ve been able to research the topic of building more inclusive machine learning systems (see my research Improving Smiling Detection with Gender and Race Diversity). What could be more exciting than working on something that you are passionate about?

I’ve also had the opportunity to turn one of my ideas, an electronic screen protector, into a reality, which I presented at the 2017 NIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems) conference. In addition, Google has provided me with an abundance of resources, from hardware and software to access to experts in various fields, waiting to kindly share their passion and knowledge with me because I’m part of their Google family.

Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?

More than anything, the following experience led me to choose Google over other companies and offers: A female lead recruiter from Google came to Cornell’s campus during a fall recruitment season. She had such an energy and charisma, which inspired me and convinced me that Google was the place for me.

How did the recruitment process go for you?

Through Cornell’s on-campus recruiting process, I applied for a job at Google and got an on-campus interview. At the same time, a Googler reached out to me through LinkedIn, offering to refer me to Google, which I agreed to, as well.

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process?

I would have discussed more of my extracurricular activities and interests during the interview process in order to emphasize my passion for pursuing new ideas and experiences.

Can you tell us more about the resources you used to prep?

I reviewed my university course materials on data structures and algorithms and also interviewed with other companies before doing the interview with Google, so I could practice and get more experience interviewing.

What tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?

Don’t be afraid to teach yourself something new. I think that being able to teach yourself about a new field quickly can help you succeed in the fast-paced, constantly changing world of technology, especially when you are at the forefront of a research subject, like A.I.. There’s rarely someone else who can teach you what you want to know because we’re all exploring and discovering new aspects of the technology at the same time. So you have to be the one to trailblaze and truly grow by teaching yourself and others along the way.

To learn more about Google Research, https://research.google.com/. Ready to explore roles at Google Research? Go to https://research.google.com/workatgoogle.html

My Path to Google: Julius Adebayo, Google AI Resident

2017-12-12T13:18:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the 14th installment of our blog series “My Path to Google.” These are real stories from Googlers, interns, and alumni highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.

Today’s post is all about Julius Adebayo. Read on!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I grew up in Nigeria, and came to the US for college. I studied mechanical engineering in undergrad, but started to drift towards machine learning (ML) around my last year. Afterwards, I ended up pursuing a master’s degree in computer science, focused on machine learning, and another in technology policy. In general, I am interested in research that tries to provide guarantees that deployment of machine learning in the real-world will be safe and reliable. My focus has been in studying bias, interpretability, and privacy/security all within an ML context. I also enjoy thinking about the intersection of machine learning and policy, especially how current advancements will affect daily life down the line. Outside of school and work, I enjoy listening to Jazz and Nigerian music in all its glory. I like playing soccer, and watching the NBA. Lately, I have become more interested in trying to spread machine learning knowledge to places in West Africa where machine learning expertise is not abundant.

What’s your role at Google?

I am one of the current residents in the Google AI Residency Program. The goal is to collaborate with researchers and engineers on the Google Brain team to do deep learning research. Deep learning research is new to me, and I am actually coming to it as a skeptic. There is a famous quote attributed to Von Neumann that says, "With four parameters I can fit an elephant. Give me five and I can make it wiggle its tail." The point of that quote is you typically want models that don't have too many parameters because you could make such models do anything. However, deep learning models tend to violate that requirement. Since being here, I have come to appreciate working with neural networks. There is a vibrant community here that is actively working to address several problems with the current models, especially in regards to security, potential bias, and stability of machine learning models. The work I am doing now is focused on assessing the performance of neural network explanation methods. (This link is closely related.)

What inspires you to come in every day?

The Google Brain team has several researchers and engineers who are working on really interesting projects. Talking to other residents and researchers, I find that I leave every conversation having learned something new. The breadth and depth of research on the team is incredible and it is quite fun to be in an environment like that.

Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?

I found out about the residency program through a friend. As someone working at a startup doing ML, it was impossible to not hear about deep learning on a daily basis. I figured the residency would be a way to try and get to the cutting edge of work in this area as fast as possible. The Google Brain team has several researchers doing really interesting work. I remember reading some papers from ICLR, and noticed that a few of the papers I enjoyed reading came from researchers on the team.

How did the recruitment process go for you?

The recruitment process was quite smooth. I felt like I was aware of what was required at each stage, and I found the recruiters to be accommodating to my requests or questions. I was also given an opportunity to talk to a few researchers on the team.

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process?

Google can be overwhelming, especially given the concentration of expertise on the team. I would be more open to asking questions and reaching out to people doing interesting work.

Can you tell us about the resources you used to prepare for your interview or role?

The residency interview had a coding and research portion.

I had gone through software engineering interviews before, so my preparation there was using the whiteboard type experience I already had in that context. For the research angle, I went through a few deep learning papers that I found interesting, and tried to understand them. A few of the papers were discussed extensively in some of my interviews. I also spent some time reviewing past research I had done, so I could explain it well to others.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?

Apply for the Residency Program now at g.co/airesidency/apply!

Bring Computer Science to Your Community: Volunteer with Google igniteCS

2017-11-20T06:30:00.000-08:00

Google’s igniteCS student volunteer program is kicking off another year of computer science (CS) volunteering! For the past three years, university students around the US with a passion for computer science have gone into local K12 schools, spreading the excitement to the next generation about where computer science can take them. We’ve seen over 2,000 students share their love for computer science and this year, we’re excited to welcome the next cohort from states like Florida, Ohio, and New Mexico. We’d love for you to join the Google student volunteer community too! You can register on the website and we’ll send you everything you need to get started.

Piero Castillo, a third year CS major at the University of Central Florida, and a member of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), has been volunteering through the student volunteers program at a local high school for the past year.

He developed a love for CS early into his college career and believes “CS is always relevant…technology is part of everything.” Sharing his knowledge and passion with younger students has created a lasting impact on Piero and the students he worked with. At the end of last school year, a high school student who was motivated by his experience with the igniteCS volunteers said that he “never realized how much CS could accomplish and wanted to keep learning.”

Piero Castillo, CS major at the University of Central Florida

Over at the University of Cincinnati, Mansi Patel, a leader on her school’s ACM Council on Women in Computing (ACM-W), began volunteering with Google’s CS student volunteer program when she realized there were issues engaging undergraduate women in the CS major.

She wanted to get students involved starting in high school, showing the girls that going to college and majoring in CS were real options for them. Mansi has seen “a huge difference in the students [she’s] taught” and continues to lead the way in bringing CS to the next generation.

Mansi Patel, igniteCS volunteer at the University of Cincinnati

We invite you to join this community of over 2,000 college volunteers to bring computer science to your community. Registered university students have access to lesson plans, materials, and support from Google to implement volunteer programming. Just gather a group of students at your college and register on the website. We’ll send you lesson plans and a free kit of materials to get started.

Happy volunteering!

_____

To register for igniteCS, visit the website or email igniteCS@google.com for more information.

My Path to Google: Derek Pierce, Staffing Services Associate

2017-11-17T06:00:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the thirteenth installment of our blog series “My Path to Google.” These are real stories from Googlers, interns, and alumni highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.

Today’s post is all about Derek Pierce. Read on!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I'm from the suburbs of Philadelphia (specifically Doylestown, for anyone familiar). I attended James Madison University (JMU) in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and received degrees in Quantitative Finance and Mathematics. When I'm not working, I love to keep active, and I also enjoy a good brunch! I’ve recently gotten back into surfing, and I’m looking forward to the upcoming snowboarding season.

What’s your role at Google?

I am a Staffing Services Associate (SSA) on the College Staffing Services Team. I primarily engage with software engineers who are about to graduate from an undergraduate, masters, or PhD program. I also specialize in scheduling research scientist candidates and internal Googlers. I like working on the specialty candidates the most because they come from extremely diverse backgrounds and are usually being brought on to develop the next Google product.

Currently, I’m working on a project to grow our interviewer pool by gathering more complete information about our interviewers, so we can properly match their expertise with our candidates.

What inspires you to come in every day?

It’s very exciting to be with a company that’s motivated to make an impact on a global scale every single day. I feel very fortunate to be here and want to play my part in finding the next generation of Googlers.

Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?

I was interested in working for Google ever since I was a sophomore in high school. I kept hearing that Google was the paradise version of work, where you could change the world for the better and have fun doing it. I applied for every program that I thought I was qualified for, and was very determined to work here one day. I was ultimately given an interview during my senior year of college, and although I had a different background than most people entering the staffing industry, I was optimistic about my chances.

How did the recruitment process go for you?

I first applied to be a Data Scientist through an alumni of JMU and was redirected to interview for the Staffing Services Associate position. I instantly took them up on the offer to interview. After passing through the phone interview stage, I remember flying out the next day to interview onsite, then flying back just in time to take my fall semester finals.

Can you tell us about the resources you used to prepare for your interview or role?

I used the provided resources from the recruiter, as well as anything I could find on the internet, specifically YouTube. I reviewed the "How We Hire" page and the job posting about 20 times before the interview.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?

Talk to anyone you know who has been through the process. Use resources such as YouTube, and brainstorm possible questions based on the job posting.

See yourself at Google as a Staffing Services Associate? Apply now!

Bring Google Hash Code to your university: Register your hub today

2017-11-06T07:00:00.000-08:00

Hash Code is back for its 5th year of challenging students and professionals in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa to solve a Google engineering problem. Registration to compete opens in early January, but hub registration is open now at g.co/hashcode. Bring developers at your university together to compete — register your Hash Code 2018 hub today!

More than 26,000 participants teamed up to optimize how videos are served online for the Hash Code 2017 Online Qualification Round. Excitement and tensions were high across the region, especially at the 467 Hash Code hubs organized by university clubs, developer meetup groups, and participants.

Hubs bring teams in the same local area together for the Online Qualification Round. While teams can compete from wherever they’d like, participating from a Hash Code hub adds a bit of extra fun to the competition — as evidenced by last year’s hub photos!

To give you more insight into Hash Code, we caught up with Dominika and Adam, who organized a hub in Kraków, Poland last year, to find out more about their experience:

Why did you choose to organize a hub?

We chose to organize a hub because we felt that providing an opportunity for people to come together and work on a challenging problem is the best way to let them develop their skills and themselves.

What was the process of setting up your hub?

There was the normal event stuff, like booking a room, getting approvals from our university, and ensuring Wifi was set up. We also started promoting the event a few weeks earlier to be sure we had as many participants as possible. The real fun started just before the competition when we decorated the room with balloons and posters — luckily a few participants came early so they decided to join us and help!

What's your favorite part about hosting a hub?

Meeting new people! That’s definitely the best part. You can feel the passion and excitement in the room.

The Online Qualification Round for Hash Code 2018 will take place on March 1, 2018. If you think you’d like to organize a hub at your university, you can sign up today. If you can’t host a hub but would like to compete in Hash Code 2018, fill in this form and we’ll email you as soon as registration opens early next year.

My Path to Google: Melissa Holguin, Software Engineer, YouTube Music

2017-11-02T09:21:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the twelfth installment of our blog series “My Path to Google.” These are real stories from Googlers, interns, and alumni highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.

Today’s post is all about Melissa Holguin. Read on!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I grew up in Doral, Florida, which is a suburb of Miami. I went to college at the University of Central Florida and studied a full circle of engineering majors. I started in Computer Science (CS), then switched to Electrical Engineering, switched again to Computer Engineering, and finally ended up returning to CS my junior year of college, adding on a Music minor to go along with my CS degree. Outside of work, I like archery, bowling, video games, and binging on TV shows. Every once in a while, I get inspired and do some music producing.

What’s your role at Google?

I'm a Software Engineer on the YouTube Music Analytics team. I love that I get to be on a team that mixes music and technology. I just recently started on this team, but it looks like I'll be working on improving charts for music artists and tracks.

What inspires you to come in every day?

Even after a year of working at Google, it still feels surreal sometimes that I get to work with the most brilliant minds — it inspires me to work hard every day and makes me feel that my creativity will be put to good use.

Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?

I had always thought of Google as the top dog of technology companies. It was definitely on my list of dream jobs, but I always thought it would be a long time before I'd be qualified to work there. I was thrilled to find out that someone thought I was ready just as I was finishing up my degree in CS.

How did the recruitment process go for you?

I was contacted by a recruiter that found my profile on Linkedin. I was extremely surprised, since I still had two semesters to finish before graduation, and I wasn't planning on applying anywhere until I was in my final semester. The recruiter first reached out in September and I didn't get my final decision until January, so I was definitely anxious in the time between because it was such a huge deal for me.

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process?

I wish I would've known about the Engineering Residency program beforehand. It ended up being the perfect fit for me!

Can you tell us more about the resources you used to prep?

I mainly used this website called InterviewBit, which was really good for practicing coding questions from all different categories. I spent around five hours a day solving problems for a week leading up to my first technical interview.

To finish, do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?

Keep an open mind and don't pass on an opportunity based on specifics alone. In large companies like Google, there is so much room for growth and change. You never know what kind of opportunities will open up in the future, so your knowledge and experience will be a useful thing to have.

Want to learn more about the Engineering Residency? Watch our video, or head over to g.co/EngResidency. Ready to apply to the residency? We're currently accepting applications at https://goo.gl/rhBmj1.

My Path to Google: Olumuyiwa Adenaike, Software Engineer

2017-10-27T09:02:00.002-07:00

Welcome to the eleventh installment of our blog series “My Path to Google.” These are real stories from Googlers, interns, and alumni highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.

Today’s post is all about Olumuyiwa Adenaike. Read on!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, Africa's largest city. Growing up, I was always intrigued by science and math, and this inspired me to move to the US right after high school to major in computer science at DePaul University in Chicago. Outside of work, I like to stay active as much as I can by playing soccer, basketball, and lifting weights. I also enjoy cooking new dishes from time to time.

What’s your role at Google?

I am a Software Engineer (SWE) on the Google Now quality team, which ensures that we are serving users with content they are interested in. A cool project that I am currently working on uses Machine Learning to predict what content to show the user depending on their interaction with the app.

What inspires you to come in every day?

I am inspired every day by the product I work on. Knowing that millions of people all over the world use and depend on what I help build makes me always eager to work and learn new things. I am also inspired by my team members who share my eagerness, as well as their deep technical knowledge and expertise. I appreciate the opportunity to learn from them every day.

Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?

I was interested in Google because of the principles the company stands for, such as fairness and equity, freedom of speech and information, and charity. Also, I knew the best minds were at Google, and in order for me to move forward in my career, joining Google was the best choice.

How did the recruitment process go for you?

I was contacted by a Google recruiter during my senior year in college. I went through the process while I was studying for finals, so I was anxious the entire time. The hiring process was smooth, and although I had a lot of interviews, I was happy with the outcome at the end.

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process?

I wish I had spent more time on personal projects and also on larger collaborative projects throughout my college years. I feel that would have helped me learn to get my points and ideas across better in the interviews.

Can you tell us more about the resources you used to prep?

I spent a lot of time practicing algorithm-based questions for the technical interviews. I also did research about the position and met with other software engineers at Google to get advice on navigating the process. In addition, I had a practice interview with a Google engineer, which really helped me have a better idea of what to expect.

To finish, do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?

Spend a good amount of time honing your skills and refining your craft. It is important that you believe in yourself and your abilities, as they will speak for you during the interview process and in your day-to-day work. Also, don't be discouraged if you don't make it; there are many people at Google who got hired after several tries.