My experience at Google India as an SWE Intern

I was privileged enough to intern at Google India for the summers of 2022 and 2023. In this blog, I’ve tried to pen down my experiences, ranging from some technical details to the key learnings I had.

I received the first offer in August 2021, and since I’m graduating in 2024, I was provided with another internship opportunity after the completion of my internship in summer 2022.

Google Kyoto Building: Bengaluru, India

So, after memorising the city road names of Bengaluru and scanning the streets to get a PG, I was ready to embark on my internship journey at Google India. ✨

The Technicalities

The summer of 2022
During the 2022 summer, I was part of an internal team at Google that handles infrastructural predictions. In layman’s terms, my team’s work revolved around providing a platform for the product engineers to estimate the computational resources their product would require so that Google could plan for the hardware accordingly.

This platform was modelled in tree-like hierarchies. My project was to allow users to compare the current state of the hierarchy with a previous state and derive a set of instructions that would lead to the past state. It's pretty much like introducing versioning to the system.

The summer of 2023
This time, I was assigned to another team. I was a part of the “BigQuery India” team. Though the product empowers data analysts, my project had no major work on Big Data or Data Analysis. 🤭

My project was to introduce progress indication to one of the processes in BigQuery. The scope required brainstorming on every aspect of the feature, right from determining the metric of progress to propagating it to the client.

Both of these projects dealt with multiple aspects of Software Engineering. From building an algorithm to understanding the communication designs of microservices, it was a steep learning curve for me. Thankfully, I was paired with amazing Host and Co-host, who always guided me and provided me with feedback along the way.

“Work From Office”

The office experience has to be unforgettable! Working in such a great ambience was definitely a dream come true moment for me. 🥺

I won’t enumerate on the office benefits. Go check out a few office tours. It’s a whole lot better than that! The whole blog will not be enough to accommodate it. But I will not miss out on mentioning the mighty Google Food.

Apart from the obvious, the office experience fueled in so much energy in me. The colours, vibe, amenities and people are sure to incorporate a great work environment. The office experience also provides some insights into working with the higher sections of the team, such as client expectations and production bugs. The team lunch conversations were extremely informative, where I got a chance to interact with very experienced team members!

Though I had worked in a remote setup during my 2022 internship, I still find it difficult to choose between “Work from Office” and “Work from Home”. While one wins at the accessibility factor, the other provides a better work-life balance.

Still, “Google Food” vetos every argument. 🧡

Takeaways

Internships are not merely evaluated on the completion of one’s project but also on the way the intern carries out the project and adapts to the team’s work culture. Sharing some of my key learnings (non-technical) from the experience. Hope it helps!

1. Observe the Details: This has to be one of the best pieces of advice I’ve received. Be an engineer that will get distinguished from the crowd. Observe tiny details, even the ones outside the scope of the project, if they affect your system in any way. Don’t just become a code-writing machine. Instead, focus on becoming a good engineer.
2. Team Collaboration: Being an intern can be overwhelming, looking at the experience/intelligence in your team. Instead of letting the imposter syndrome kick in, ditch it immediately! My team had ICPC World finalists 🔥. Instead of getting overwhelmed by it, I utilized the opportunity I had to learn and collaborate with the best minds in the domain. Presenting and collaborating on my algorithm with them has to be one of the best pair programming sessions I have had.
3. Take Ownership: The internship is about learning, brainstorming and executing your ideas for the organization. The mentor will always have your back, but it’s you who has to drive the whole feature/project-building process. Take the initiative to remove blockers. Set up meetings with the stakeholders to understand more about the problem statement. Keep on informing your mentor about the progress and observations. Always remember, the mentors are there to guide you, not to pave a step-by-step tutorial on how to complete the task.
4. The Presentation: The presentation is one of the most critical parts of the internship. Be prepared for the same, and don’t push it for the last day. Get it thoroughly checked by your team, and practice a lot! The audience of the presentation is generally senior and experienced individuals, so their opinions matter a lot.

That’s it from my end. The lessons I’ve learned during these two internships were not merely technical. Google definitely lived up to the hype. For the first time ever, I got to experience the “Googley” aspect of the people in the workplace. Be it the cab conversations or the post-lunch walk, every person at Google never failed to inspire me. You can totally feel the warmth in their conduct. 🌼

I will forever be grateful for both the opportunity and the experience Google provided me. 🌻 Thank you for spending your time reading my experience.