Chapter One

Thank you so much for taking the time to interview with Chapter1! Let’s begin.

How did you first get involved with programming? What sort of development work are you most interested in?

I entered university as an undecided major. I was very confused and frankly, computer science hadn’t even crossed my mind at that point. In my country, and even more when I started, there’s a lot of misinformation about the major (which is actually called systems and computing engineering, and is a little different from traditional computer science) and as a result there’s not a lot of people that study it.

My first semester, I joined a small “study group” required for one of my Industrial Engineering classes, where they help first year engineering students with calculus and programming. I wasn’t taking programming yet, as I wasn’t really following any pensum, but I really enjoyed the programming exercises we were given. The older student that was in charge of us was a girl doing a double major in CS and Industrial Engineering, and after seeing how much I liked the problems, she advised me to try some programming classes and recommended the best teachers to do so. I tried them out and I loved it, but I was worried that I’d be behind given that I’d never done more than a little HTML on neopets when I was 13. I talked to my amazing first year programming teacher, and she gave me one of the best pep talks I’ve had. After that, I switched majors, and here we are.

Although I’m still not sure I’ve found my calling within CS, I can tell you I like developing more than I do consulting and that I love finding creative solutions to problems. I don’t love having a lot of constraints, as I really like exploring different possibilities and scenarios but I really enjoy developing with a set goal in mind. Although I can be disorganized, I have learnt to design and think before coding and nowadays the planning is one of the things I enjoy the most. I love painting, and I feel like seeing the software you planned out start working as you wanted is close to seeing works of art start coming to life. Making things that were initially in your head something real is am amazing experience and something I’m really happy I’m able to do.

Describe your role as a software engineering intern at Google this past summer. What did you work on?

I was part of the cloud counter abuse team at google. As an intern, I was assigned a project by my host and then we set up some long term and small term goals for it. It varies depending on your team and your host, but my project was very interesting and I feel like it was important for the team as a whole. Although I can’t tell you exactly what it is being used for, I can tell you my job was to detect unauthorized use of google logos to stop possible phishing attempts. I liked the fact that even as an intern, my host really valued my input and he trusted me with a lot of major decisions for the project. This was overwhelming at first, but after a while I became more confident and the project was completed successfully.

What is a typical day at Google? What is the work culture like?

Google’s culture is widely known for being pretty laid back. All food in all 23 cafes is free, there’s gyms, infinite pools, play rooms, laundry rooms, food trucks. Wherever you walk you find random, unnecessary things that make your day a little better. Two buildings from mine, there was a ball pit, and to the other side, a machine that would take your picture and turn you into allo stickers. I loved exploring the campus and finding fun stuff to do. Your typical day depends a lot on you and on your team, but as I was going to be there for only 3 months I tried to make full use of the benefits. I loved biking to work, as it’s not something I get to do back home very easily, and then I’d sometimes hit the gym and sometimes run through the beautiful trails along the bay. Then I’d shower, have breakfast in some cafe I hadn’t tried yet and get to the office. My host didn’t mind what time I came in or left, as long as we were meeting our goals, but I like getting in early. I’d get a cappuccino from the coffee house located in our building (this was an amazing perk. Theres not that many coffee houses in the campus!) and then I’d sit down to work. First I’d go through any emails I had, and then I focused on the doc where we kept to do’s and other important notes. From there I’d just start working on the next priority. My day involved a lot of asking other engineers questions about things that were unclear and getting up to get snacks from the micro kitchen, and taking breaks to explore the campus. I’d generally have lunch with my team, and then have dinner with other interns. We loved exploring different restaurants and trying out all the food! All in all, I spent a lot of time at the office, but a good chunk of it wasn’t working.

What were some challenges you encountered as an intern at Google?

I had a lot of technical challenges, as I wasn’t well versed in C++ and that was the language my whole project was in. Moreover, Google has a lot of internal technologies that you need to learn to be able to work smoothly. Although this was hard, I think that the biggest challenge was learning to ask for help. I was surrounded with amazing engineers that were very knowledgeable about the things I needed to learn, and they were all happy to answer questions. I was very shy at first and tried to learn everything on my own, and I definitely think this impacted me at the start. Later, though, when the project required me to change a lot of the code that a particular engineer in a neighboring team had written, I realized trying to figure stuff out on my own was a terrible idea. As any programmer can tell you, figuring out other people’s code can be a pain. I started going over to the engineer’s desk more and more and I started asking other people questions about things that I initially thought were dumb but that they told me they had struggled with at some point, too. This made my productivity incredibly better and helped me learn a lot, as most people loved explaining things in detail instead of just telling me how to do things.

Google is considered one of the best places to work in the world - did it live up to the hype? What was your favorite thing about working at Google?

It definitely did. Again, I really do believe it depends a lot on the team you are on and the people you are working with - google is a huge company and there’s bound to be bad experiences. The benefits are always there though and it’s pretty incredible. I loved the fact that it was a given that people would help you out if you needed it and that there were so many resources available to you. I think to me the biggest perk was the people. Not only were they super helpful, they were also very warm and welcoming. They invited me to board games on Fridays and they said hi every morning. My team made sure I wasn’t having lunch by myself and they loved asking me about my time in california. My host made sure that, aside from the project, I was having fun and enjoying my internship. They gave me advice and they helped me out with my project. One of the best moments was presenting my project to both my smaller team and the wider Counter Abuse Technology team. Both times people were very interested in my project, and they made a lot of questions about it. Some people approached me afterwards to let me know they liked it or to ask me more about it. It was an incredible feeling to know that my hard work was recognized by people so much more experienced than me and that even though I was “just” an intern, my work was valued and likely useful.

Would you say that this internship augmented your skills as a developer? Are you interested in pursuing similar type of work in the future?

It definitely did. Other than learning new technologies, I got to experience industry work in the us for the first time and to see what working in a big company is like. Although it involves a lot of coding, there’s so much more to it that I had never experienced before, specially in the team I was in.

One of the things I liked the most about my team is the amount of creativity that was necessary for them to do their job. Because they try to detect and stop the abuse of their products, they need to find different, imaginative ways to do it. Every day people come up with new ways to exploit the system, and every day the counter abuse team has to try and outsmart them. You wouldn’t imagine the kinds of schemes people cook up. The result is that the team dables in all sort of technologies and projects, from machine learning to visual similarity to bitcoin mining. Everyday each teammate has the chance to do something different and to learn more and more. This is something I’d love to be able to do in the future. I’m a very creative person, and having the chance to apply that in my job, and have it be such a fun and different experience every day, would be the perfect kind of work for me.

Let’s pivot a little bit because I’m super curious. How is the programming scene like in Colombia? Is a programming position regarded high as it is in the states? Would you say that computer science is a popular major among students?

The programming scene in Colombia is definitely smaller than in most developed countries. Not a lot of tech giants have technical offices in my country. However, the scene has been growing exponentially in the last few years. I feel like at first we didn’t have that culture of startups and the big development was left to big companies with big money, but lately there’s been more and more entrepreneurs innovating and using technology to do so, and more and more people have taken a liking to programming. It’s been crazy to see it happen so suddenly but im really happy about it. Some smaller companies have started opening technical offices in our cities and students are coming up with amazing applications. I was surprised to see that we have some things that I didn’t see even in the states, like Rappi, which is a delivery service with the option to buy literally anything for you, or Comida en la U, which will take your lunch to you inside of uni so you don’t have to stop working. Kiwi started with something along the lines of “get you anything you need” through a whatsapp number. They became famous for finding a couple a room for a couple hours close to university. Now they’re doing delivery services with robots in Berkeley!

I think we still have a long way to go, specially regarding the government and their regulations (uber, for example, is still ilegal, but people use it anyway). There’s still some stigma about programmers being nerds living in basements and making a living fixing computers in big firms, but I think you see this less in younger generations. Is nowhere near the same as it is in the US, but people see more value in our work now and they understand that programming is a very useful and important skill. As such, I’ve seen more and more people take CS as their major, and it makes me really happy. When I joined, there was maybe around 60 of us, but younger generations have seen as much as 120 people go into the major. We still have an enormous need for Computer Scientists in our country, but more and more people are coming to fill out the void. I hope to see that in the future we’ll have a bigger development scene in the country and maybe some of the startups here will make their names known to the world.

What are your plans upon graduation?

Oh dear, this question. I used to think I had so much time to think about it and now there’s only a semester left and I’m still unsure. I know that I want to work for a while before even thinking of graduate school, but where? On one hand, I’m very happy in Colombia and I’m a very family oriented person. The thought of leaving isn’t an easy one and unless I’m doing something I love, I probably wouldn’t do it. However, I know that opportunities abroad can be better and that this is the perfect time for me to live outside pf the country. I have applied to some places abroad and waiting on responses, as well as the conversions response from google, but because of visa issues, most of the places I applied to are big companies. If I decide to stay in Colombia, I’d like to work in startups, to help grow the local scene and maybe start my own company in the future. Even if I leave, this is something I want to do at some point, to come back and use what I’ve learned outside to empower Colombia.

Any advice or suggestions for our non-technical readers who want to get involved with software engineering?

The nice thing about software engineering is that there are SO many online resources and offline meet-ups and conferences, and that you don’t necessarily need a degree to work in this field. Take advantage of all these opportunities to get involved! Not everyone likes every aspect of software engineering, but you can try a lot of them out to see what you like best. Try to talk to people that are already in the field about their work and their experiences, its amazing how much you can learn from just talking to people. Don’t be afraid if you’re inexperienced, everyone was like you at some point. Moreover, find communities online or offline that can help you grow and learn, and find something that inspires you to learn more and more.

You can find Camila on linkedin. If you want your startup to be interviewed, please reach out to me at contact@taehongmin.com. Thanks!