Heya! I am Tanmay, a fourth-year Dual Degree student from the Department of Electrical Engineering, specializing in Communications and Signal Processing. I have recently completed my Hardware Engineering Internship at Google India. I follow cricket passionately; my interests are travelling, trekking, and going on long drives and bike rides. Through this article, I have tried to share my experience during the internship season, right from my interests, preparations up to my final project presentation at Google.
Disclaimer: I am writing a blog for the first time, so you can always criticize it and I am always open to suggestions ;)
Let’s get started! After my second year came to an end, I realized that I like core electrical engineering (especially Digital and Analog Systems), Machine Learning, Finance, and a few other profiles too! All of this seems fascinating, but when it comes to shortlisting a few profiles among them, especially for the internship season, it just gets a lot messier. Trust me, choosing a field or two and then preparing for them over and out is the best way to go about things. But if you ask me if I practised what I am preaching to you all? The answer is a big NO! I have learnt it the hard way and hence, am advising you not to make the same mistakes I made. After reading this blog, I hope you will soon agree with me.
After a few weeks of 2021’s summer had passed, I started preparing slowly (actually, very slowly!) for the upcoming internship season. At that time, I was doing an internship at a startup, now called Vellex Computing. It was an embedded systems internship and helped me a lot in finally landing an internship at Google, but it’s a different story altogether. Alongside, I was also preparing for Internship Coordinator (IC) interviews and got selected as an IC. So, this blog is also from the perspective of an IC. I couldn’t concentrate all my energy on one or two specific profiles. I thought that if I was interested in multiple profiles, I should try to keep as many options open as possible. And this was my first and biggest mistake. I started preparing for coding, probability, statistics, core EE material, ML basics, and whatnot. It was very late until I could realize that I should have prioritized fields.
The internship season had just begun, and as an IC, you could say that my days were just 12 hours and not 24. I was so short on time throughout August. I could see the academic load, IC duties, internship tests, and interviews in front of me. I panicked and started applying to some big firms which had nothing to do with my interests. A few examples are supply chain profile at HUL, the product supply profile at P&G, and a few other IAFs. This was my second big mistake. I thought I didn’t wanna lose such significant opportunities and hence applied for them. Basically, you could, in some way, say that it was because of peer pressure too. And I couldn’t qualify for the interview stage at either P&G or HUL. I can’t explain the feeling, but it hurts to face such rejections.
To make it worse, I couldn’t make it to the interviews for the core profile at APT Portfolio. Now why’s that? Simply because I was not as good at coding (Remember now? Focusing on a few things and trying to be the best at it?). This wasn’t all. The worst was yet to come. I got rejected in three profiles at Texas Instruments and one profile at Graviton in one single day after the interviews. Again, no words can describe how overwhelmed I felt. At this stage, I had these two core firms in my mind: 1. Google and 2. Qualcomm. After two days, I learnt that I had been shortlisted for an interview at Google. From that day onwards, I had sidelined my academic studies and had asked for help from the rest of the IC team for assistance in my IC duties. For a week, I invested most of my time preparing for the upcoming Google interview.
On the D-Day, my interview got delayed by 45 minutes because of technical issues. I finally got interviewed on a phone call and a live google doc. The questions were mainly based on coding and core EE stuff. But this time, I was well prepared. My round-1 interview went on for twice the allotted time (Trust me, I did not know then, that such things are good signs). The second round was similar to round-1 with the same level of difficulty. After I completed my second round, I remember the words I said to myself: ‘Even if I don’t get selected after this, it won’t matter because I have played my A game, and that is all I could do.’ But, once I got the news of the final selection, there were tears of joy in my eyes. Everything that had happened in the last 4 to 5 weeks seemed to be worth it. This is still one of my most favourite moments.
Guys, this was the journey of my selection at Google. If you aren’t bored yet and are still with me, let’s dive into my internship experience.
Starting with a piece of sad news: I had a work from home internship. As of now, I can say one thing for sure, it wasn’t that bad. One more small piece of advice which I learnt the hard way through my internship is that you should just continue to control the controllable, no matter what and how the situation is. I was earlier disappointed by the online internship announcement, but the best part is that I had no idea how it would turn out. I had really good host and co-host, though they had scared me on day one itself. They told me that there is a great chance that I won’t be able to complete the project because it involved a lot of design changes on a live project. With blessings and lots of work, the project got finally completed.
This is where I would have worked in an offline internship:
My job was mainly related to the timers module of a memory controller system (Can’t dwelve into the details because of the Confidentiality Clause). The end goal was to optimize the design to save SoC’s area and power. I was a part of ‘Google Memory Controller (GMC)’ team at gChips, Google Silicon, Google India. I was the only intern on the team and was warmly welcomed. Throughout my internship tenure, I interacted with an unexpectedly large number of employees from three different teams because of the number of design changes involved in the project. I generally love interacting with new people and learning from them. I not only share a professional bond with them now, but we also discuss career and life in general.
All of the employees I interacted with had spent at least 5 years in the industry. Few had spent around 15 years. The knowledge you get from such people is very precious, and I will always keep it very close to me. As a work from home intern, I had lots of time to learn new skills. I learnt to drive and went on long drives with my dad. I also learnt a bit of cooking. I spent a reasonable amount of time leisurely reading and watching some movies and series on OTT platforms. All in all, I never realized when my internship ended, until the invitation of my farewell meeting, of course. My host got emotional on my farewell day, and the moment was just legen… wait for it… dary!! ;) (by Barney Stinson, HIMYM)
Some clicks from the long drives :))
I have finally completed my internship with a whole new lot of memories, learnings and people. I will cherish all of it forever. Before I conclude myself, I would like to extend my gratitude to all of my friends and colleagues who supported me throughout the journey and also to my parents, who were always there for me. I am very sure that the upcoming internship season will bring lots of new learnings to you all. Always remember that your peers will also be going through similar situations and problems as you are, so try to help them out too. Whether you bag the desired internship or not, it is not going to be the end of the world. Would like to quote: "When someone puts a gun to your head, it's not just to give in or be killed, there are 146 other options." (by Harvey Specter, Suits). I wish you a very good luck and I know you all will always keep up the good work. If we happen to cross each other’s path in the institute sometime, let’s have a chat over coffee!! Always feel free to reach out to me if you wanna discuss something.
Cheerio!!