First Day at Google Sydney!
Hi readers! As you might have read in my previous post, I was offered an internship position in Google Sydney this summer (or winter, down here). And today is my first day at work! I'm sure all of you who read this blog must be waiting for this post! So here it is!
Before I start on my story about Google, let me start with my first impressions of Australia and its people. To give you some background, I have never been to a "Western" country my whole life, so it was really quite an experience when I first arrived there. I already had some expectations of how Australians would be (the usual "Western" stereotypes: very cheerful, friendly, talks a lot, etc..). And they really are; I was picked up by the AIESEC people in the Kingsford Smith airport. They were just like those stereotypes I just mentioned lol. Not that it is a bad thing, but I was really tired from the flight, so I was not ready to speak a less-Singlish English and to reciprocate their eagerness to talk to us (as it turned out, there were 3 of us taking the same flight. It was an overnight flight and I barely slept. I watched Kungfu Panda 3 before I slept, and when I was just starting to get deep into my sleep, the stewardess announced that they are serving breakfast soon.... So I was really low on brain power and I had to try to keep up, while trying to maintain my English not to fall into the Singlish mode.
The friendliness and hospitality were not limited to the AIESEC people. I see a cashier paid for a customer who did not have enough money to pay for the groceries (just a few cents extra, but still. Will that ever happen in Singapore? I highly doubt so), some random passer-by spoke to a homeless man (first time I see a Caucasian homeless man, just like in the movies!), and many others. I'm not sure if it is just because I am new and seeing all these things making me think that it is the norm, or these are rare incidents but it just happened to take place when I was around, so do take this with a pinch of salt.
Let's cut to the chase, aka Google. One of the AIESEC people picked us up and brought us (6 of us, all interns from Singapore) to Google. It was quite a long walk; about 30 minutes, and the path was hilly at some parts of it. Fortunately it is winter (but feels like Autumn! The temp in the morning was about 20 deg C) so the walk was not too bad (at least we don't perspire like in Singapore!).
Once we arrived, we were issued a temporary access card while our permanent access cards are processed, and we were directed to a room filled with, guess what, balloons with "Welcome!" on it! And it was held aground by a packet of colourful sweets! Expected nothing less from Google, really. The orientation afterwards was rather boring, truth be told, but I guess Google is still a company that cares about protecting its secrets, and thus all the security stuff we were briefed with, interleaved with admin stuff we had to do and perks (!) we are entitled to.
The office was pretty big, spanning across three buildings (not the whole building is owned by Google, though. They are working to change that, from what I heard). The main reception was at the building called PIR, because it was located on Pirrama Road. The second building just adjacent to it is where most of the engineering teams are located, called ODI, which stands for One Darling Island, the address the building is located. I can't really remember the last building (will update tomorrow after I found out the name!).
There are some easter eggs in the building, and again, I am not expecting any less from Google. In the PIR building, there is this cluster of meeting rooms labeled in the internal maps as "Give You Up", "Let you Down", "Make you Cry", "Say Goodbye". I have not checked out the site itself to double check, but anyway, guess which pop culture it is referring to lol. I will ask my manager if it is okay to post the picture of it, because NPNT, right? Probably you realized now that I am a Googler, I have to be more careful about what I post... But I hope I can give you as much things as possible while not infringing any of the rules!
The orientation ended at 3, and because there was nothing scheduled for me for the day, I decided to explore the internal websites a bit, while settling some of the admin stuff. I was still trying to get the hang of it; not knowing what is where. Fortunately, during the orientation, they told us about the to-go website if you don't remember anything, that is, Google's search engine for its internal stuff! I wonder why isn't it Google too (it is called something else, but I'm not sure if I can disclose the name. bummer, I know, sorry. Still new with all these knowledge that I suddenly have, you see). But anyway, I was quite overwhelmed with the amount of information available that I ended up not finding the things I thought of finding out during the orientation lol.
A little more technical details: I was given a Chromebook and a Goobuntu desktop (a Google variant of Ubuntu LTS). You can request for "better" laptops like Windows or Macbooks if you have a good reason for it (eg you are developing for Windows/OS X/iOS) but I don't, so yeah. But anyway, I find Chromebook to be quite light and clean. We shall see how it performs for development works. Or probably I will be developing on Goobuntu mostly. I do not know yet. I don't even know what I will be working on, except that it is on Google Drive. Probably on the file preview on the Desktop app/browser.
So that is all the update I have for now. Sorry if it gets more boring as the post comes to an end as I was rushing it through; there is still work tomorrow, and even though we are sorta free to come later than the office hours, I guess we should not be abusing that right on the second day of work lol. Besides, we would like to have breakfast there first! Now I remembered that I forgot to write about another first impression of Australia: everything is expensive here, and I thought Singapore was bad enough! Washing machine is $4 a cycle, the same for dryers! There is no hawker-priced food, and public transport is about $2-4 a trip! So there goes taking public transport to work, we gonna walk all the way, despite the hills and distance....
Let's wrap it here for now. All the best in your endeavours! :D
Before I start on my story about Google, let me start with my first impressions of Australia and its people. To give you some background, I have never been to a "Western" country my whole life, so it was really quite an experience when I first arrived there. I already had some expectations of how Australians would be (the usual "Western" stereotypes: very cheerful, friendly, talks a lot, etc..). And they really are; I was picked up by the AIESEC people in the Kingsford Smith airport. They were just like those stereotypes I just mentioned lol. Not that it is a bad thing, but I was really tired from the flight, so I was not ready to speak a less-Singlish English and to reciprocate their eagerness to talk to us (as it turned out, there were 3 of us taking the same flight. It was an overnight flight and I barely slept. I watched Kungfu Panda 3 before I slept, and when I was just starting to get deep into my sleep, the stewardess announced that they are serving breakfast soon.... So I was really low on brain power and I had to try to keep up, while trying to maintain my English not to fall into the Singlish mode.
The friendliness and hospitality were not limited to the AIESEC people. I see a cashier paid for a customer who did not have enough money to pay for the groceries (just a few cents extra, but still. Will that ever happen in Singapore? I highly doubt so), some random passer-by spoke to a homeless man (first time I see a Caucasian homeless man, just like in the movies!), and many others. I'm not sure if it is just because I am new and seeing all these things making me think that it is the norm, or these are rare incidents but it just happened to take place when I was around, so do take this with a pinch of salt.
Let's cut to the chase, aka Google. One of the AIESEC people picked us up and brought us (6 of us, all interns from Singapore) to Google. It was quite a long walk; about 30 minutes, and the path was hilly at some parts of it. Fortunately it is winter (but feels like Autumn! The temp in the morning was about 20 deg C) so the walk was not too bad (at least we don't perspire like in Singapore!).
Once we arrived, we were issued a temporary access card while our permanent access cards are processed, and we were directed to a room filled with, guess what, balloons with "Welcome!" on it! And it was held aground by a packet of colourful sweets! Expected nothing less from Google, really. The orientation afterwards was rather boring, truth be told, but I guess Google is still a company that cares about protecting its secrets, and thus all the security stuff we were briefed with, interleaved with admin stuff we had to do and perks (!) we are entitled to.
The office was pretty big, spanning across three buildings (not the whole building is owned by Google, though. They are working to change that, from what I heard). The main reception was at the building called PIR, because it was located on Pirrama Road. The second building just adjacent to it is where most of the engineering teams are located, called ODI, which stands for One Darling Island, the address the building is located. I can't really remember the last building (will update tomorrow after I found out the name!).
There are some easter eggs in the building, and again, I am not expecting any less from Google. In the PIR building, there is this cluster of meeting rooms labeled in the internal maps as "Give You Up", "Let you Down", "Make you Cry", "Say Goodbye". I have not checked out the site itself to double check, but anyway, guess which pop culture it is referring to lol. I will ask my manager if it is okay to post the picture of it, because NPNT, right? Probably you realized now that I am a Googler, I have to be more careful about what I post... But I hope I can give you as much things as possible while not infringing any of the rules!
The orientation ended at 3, and because there was nothing scheduled for me for the day, I decided to explore the internal websites a bit, while settling some of the admin stuff. I was still trying to get the hang of it; not knowing what is where. Fortunately, during the orientation, they told us about the to-go website if you don't remember anything, that is, Google's search engine for its internal stuff! I wonder why isn't it Google too (it is called something else, but I'm not sure if I can disclose the name. bummer, I know, sorry. Still new with all these knowledge that I suddenly have, you see). But anyway, I was quite overwhelmed with the amount of information available that I ended up not finding the things I thought of finding out during the orientation lol.
A little more technical details: I was given a Chromebook and a Goobuntu desktop (a Google variant of Ubuntu LTS). You can request for "better" laptops like Windows or Macbooks if you have a good reason for it (eg you are developing for Windows/OS X/iOS) but I don't, so yeah. But anyway, I find Chromebook to be quite light and clean. We shall see how it performs for development works. Or probably I will be developing on Goobuntu mostly. I do not know yet. I don't even know what I will be working on, except that it is on Google Drive. Probably on the file preview on the Desktop app/browser.
So that is all the update I have for now. Sorry if it gets more boring as the post comes to an end as I was rushing it through; there is still work tomorrow, and even though we are sorta free to come later than the office hours, I guess we should not be abusing that right on the second day of work lol. Besides, we would like to have breakfast there first! Now I remembered that I forgot to write about another first impression of Australia: everything is expensive here, and I thought Singapore was bad enough! Washing machine is $4 a cycle, the same for dryers! There is no hawker-priced food, and public transport is about $2-4 a trip! So there goes taking public transport to work, we gonna walk all the way, despite the hills and distance....
Let's wrap it here for now. All the best in your endeavours! :D
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