Skylines, Sushi, and … Spas? Retelling my SWE Internship Journey: Part 2
Skylines, Sushi, and… Spas?
After making it through to final rounds with Palantir, Intuit, Microsoft, Fin, and Facebook, in that order, I suddenly had to think about a new question: Where do I actually want to work?
I think I stumbled upon this incredibly important question particularly late simply because I didn’t think that I’d be in the position to even start asking this question, or at least not this quickly.
I had all these interviews within one and a half weeks: from September 28th (Palantir) to October 6th (Facebook).
So bringing it back to the dinner table:
What is different about the google-microsoft-facebook-apple-amazon-other-tech-companies-named-off-the-top-of-my-moms-head companies? I’ll try to highlights the pieces that I picked up as I walk through my general interview processes, but primarily my final round experiences with each.
Continue reading in Part 2.
Palantir
I had been interested in Palantir since Freshman. They were the cool “bad boys” on the block — their work powering covert operations in national defense and needing to stay under wraps. I went to a discussion with Joe Lonsdale hosted by some Brown department that year, and was fascinated by his success story through an avenue very different from the consumer product unicorns that most college students rave about these days. Wouldn’t I want be coordinating disaster relief, facilitating resources for troops, and deploying my technology to save the common people, unknowing of the villains targeting their city? Cross off spending a summer implementing the next Like button, I wanted to be a superhero.
This year I had the opportunity to take a closer look into if Palantir was all that I had chalked it up to be.
I was targeting the Forward Deployed Engineer role because it seemed like the perfect role for me given the set of interests I’ve developed while at Brown: leverage my technical predilection, but still work directly with the people I want to impact and enable people who aren’t at the heart of tech privilege but need a tech transformation most like government, and those in less fortunate circumstances.
After a few chats with the recruiter and one technical phone screen, I was flying to New York City!
I was pumped to be progressing so quickly at the beginning of the semester, and was excited to learn more about what being a part of Palantir really meant. I had my own assumptions and read what I could, but as I moved to my final round, the dense, foggy shroud that attracted me my Freshman year, was still just as dense, still just as foggy.
My Onsite Interview:
My goals coming into the day were to:
- Kill my technical questions first and foremost.
- Present myself as an awesome person.
- Educate myself on Palantir. Learn about the people of Palantir: who are they? What would I learn from them? Would I want to work with them? What would a day of an internship look like? What’s our “fit”? (I know question is vague, touchy-feely, and impossible to capture in a day, but that’s what people have to work with.)
- Spend all the money they allocated to me (Food! In NYC!)
As I got to Palantir’s office (this was a struggle because there was construction all around their particular block), I made sure I was super high energy, super pumped to show how cool and fun and engaging I could be as I humbly blew away their technical expectations.
The 5(?) other candidates arrived all around the same 10-minute block that I had, so I had a great group size to feel out and wow with my charisma. After we all signed our NDAs and brought us to the waiting room, I went out on a limb.
“Have you heard about the Palantir horror stories?” Empty looks and awkward silence.
Hahaha… fuck.
A few minutes after chatting around and trying to get over our nerves together, an employee welcomed us into the actual work areas. We got taken to individual whiteboarding rooms and we gave each other good lucks.
My first interview was with a relatively junior FDE (I think < 1 year), he had awesome hair, and was super chill. He smiled and laughed along with all my awkward jokes.
He seemed genuinely appreciative of my time and wanted to see who I was.
I scribbled in my post-interview reflections monologue — “Legit good dude.” I definitely could see myself enjoying working with him.
[PICTURE]
After my first interview, though, things seemed to take a turn for the worse. I walked out of my interview room to stretch and walk around during the downtime. As soon as I tried to take any steps away from my room, I was quickly ushered back to stay there if I didn’t need to go to the restroom.
I had two more interviews, my decomp question, and then another coding question but actually writing code that compiled on a computer. I had pretty mixed feelings about the interviewers — but might’ve been a little colored by not doing to hot on questions that were pretty out of left field.
Afterwards, they brought all the candidates as we finished up to a conference room. We were supposed to get the Palantir 101, an overview of Palantir, its products, and ask questions to an engineer. The awkward thing was that nobody came to present.
For the next hour the rest of the candidates and I took turns coming up with theories as to what they were testing us on as we were left alone in a conference room and two plates of Costco sandwich wraps.
Finally someone came through and told us to hang tight as they were trying to get someone in the Washington D.C. office to call in. What? We waited an hour just to get an off-hand, unprepared remote presentation?
The presentation itself was a high level overview of how wide reaching Palantir’s work is, what verticals they were working in, and a flavor of the main Palantir products and how they simplify really complex flows of data integration.
Then I was done! I skipped the crappy sandwich wraps (really disappointed they didn’t take us to eat in their cafeteria — which actually looked pretty good), and ran straight to Chelsea Market.
I wrote down some reflections as feedback after I was back that I think summarize how I felt about the Palantir onsite experience (in New York).
Palantir Reflections
In general, I felt that Palantir and the employees were too stuck on being mysterious or not disclosing particular information about their work specifics. This is reasonable under the fact that a lot of information is private, but I wish that given my signing of an NDA, we were provided a more open and in depth presentation of Palantir.
People didn’t really reach out to say hi or share what they were doing/excited for — I’m sure for confidentiality reasons — but I thought that’s why we signed an NDA! Maybe that’s something the recruiting team can consider for the future.
Even during my interviews, I felt that some of my interviewers considered interviews as taking away from their work, and didn’t try to engage and support me with the same interest that I would hope for in a teammate.
I don’t just want to hear someone pitching Palantir 101 (though this was disappointingly the closest I got to the details I was looking for). Those specifics and story details are what really provide a good idea of why someone would want to be at Palantir (maxims, mission statements, vague recountings of pleasant experiences are nice, but what really shows me what it means to be an employee is to hear specific anecdotes of a work day and experience the actual work in some manner).
There was no office tour or product demo. I left the onsite still not really knowing the tools that Palantir creates or what someone really might be doing day to day working at Palantir.
I felt that while I was there, we were left as the last priority, just shoved into last minute organized presentations (101) or interviews. There was no structure behind providing us a clear look into what it meant to be a Palantirian, culture-wise and work-wise.
However there were redeeming pieces! ****** and ******** were two of the most positive influences on my time at Palantir. They opened conversations with a smile and seemed excited to be a part of the opportunities ahead at Palantir, and also were able to share that feeling of excitement with me.
Strangely enough though, (even as I didn’t get an offer), I’m still interested in working at Palantir. I did get a sense that, particularly as a forward deployed engineer, you’re really thrown into the thick of things and given incredible responsibility, even as an intern. You will work with a small group of people to tailor a solution for a specific customer, and with so few people, every member is expected to contribute significantly.
I want to be a part of a high paced, high pressure, high responsibility environment while I’m still hungry to grow, hungry to work on problems that contribute to society at large, and hungry to advance vertically. Even though I still don’t know what Palantir engineers do, I, for some strange reason, believe that Palantir is a place where I can be a part of all of that, and a whole lot more.
OK. Whew. Going through all of that just to describe my first interview was a LOT, so I’m probably going to end up distilling the next ones to my most important reflections, and omit some of the “walk me through your day” type comments. Maybe I should have done that from the start…
Intuit
The first interesting thing to note about Intuit’s interview process is that they do their initial screenings through a 3rd party service, Karat.io. This is something that I’m still trying to reach a conclusion on: does that show that they’re unwilling to put in resources to have actual employees be involved with the first steps of the interview process, or does this mean they’re committed to providing a better overall interview screening by having people completely dedicated to interviewing conduct the interview?
I’m not too sure, but it was definitely a foreign experience for me. I couldn’t ask questions at the end about the company and the work. Recruiting sure is a tricky practice to do well. There are definitely trade offs that work in both directions.
After passing the Karat screening, I moved straight a remote final round. This was my first real contact with anyone from intuit, so I really focused on getting a good gage for the people there.
The interview was conducted by two engineers, one more senior, and one in his first job a year or two out of college. For the entire interview, they were incredibly warm, supportive, and encouraging. They felt like people who enjoyed where they were, and what they do. That includes coming to meet me, even over video call — and I think that really made an impact on me.
I think that there are times where even just in a brief a time as the hour and a half interview that I had for my final round, you can get an incredible representation of the spirit and atmosphere of the organization they represent. The impression I got was that the people at Intuit are more than just nice, they are whole. They are supported by their peers, they are engaged with the engineering work they work with and the teams they problem solve with. This surprised me as they took such an impersonal approach to their phone screening.
I can definitely see Intuit as a place where you will be end your day content. With warm team members, mentors, and ultimately friends who are rooting for you to succeed.
After I got my offer, I found the same attitude and culture reflected in the way they acknowledged and appreciate my time and questions.
The piece that I felt that was missing was a sense of urgency to improve, to innovate, to redefine their industry as they had when TurboTax was first made mainstream.
Thanks for appreciating me, Intuit!
Microsoft
I have incredible admiration for Microsoft as a tech and software pioneer, but I don’t feel particularly connected to Microsoft, its products, and don’t have a good grasp of its mission. I see Microsoft sort of as this huge organization that is successful and exists, because it established its presence in multiple arenas (OS, “office” applications) from the start. I don’t feel anything for Microsoft Word or Excel or Outlook, and I’ve long moved on past Windows (Powershell, yuck!).
I think this really manifested throughout my onsite experience.
To start off the day on an unexpected note, I heard from the recruiter welcoming us that I was interviewing for and with a specific group, the Windows Devices Group (Xbox, Surface, and now Hololens).
What?
I don’t know if this is true of all intern interviews, but I was arbitrarily assigned to interview with a particular Windows group based on the day I decided to interview for. Based on a few conversations I had with some other intern candidates, they were just as confused and surprised.
As I went through my four rounds of interviews, I just never really connected with my interviewers. In particular, I never really felt like my interviewers genuinely connected with Microsoft, except for those working on Xbox.
When I asked about how they connected with their work and Microsoft’s goals and visions (which I still haven’t exactly identified), I would hear something along the lines of having their work being extremely wide reaching; they were able to shape the experience of an enormous amount of people who interact with their products and platforms.
This is absolutely an incredible set of characteristics for any organization that I’d want to work at, but at the same time, those were the characteristics that I’m minimally expecting at the places that I’d want to work at.
For most of the people I talked to, there wasn’t much more past than these surface level generalities.
The engineers working on Xbox, though, as gamers, I found were exceptionally excited to be working on the platform they themselves loved. Now I think that is an incredible position to be in — directly shaping the next series of changes for a piece of one’s enjoyment. I could really understand, from the specific game design-esque interview questions, to how they spoke about creating AIs to buy items and run specific routes to test game releases, they worked everyday to its fullest, evolving Xbox as their place to create even more fun.
When I was offered a spot with the Xbox team for the summer, I was (and still am) incredibly appreciative, but I’m just not a gamer, and much less passionate about Xbox.
Fin
You’ve read this far — congrats — to me for getting you to stick around. Fin Exploration Company (Fin) is a San Francisco based startup, so I’ll discuss some of my reflections after going through the recruiting process in the startup space.
Some background on Fin is a San Francisco based startup that makes Fin, their eponymous digital personal assistant synergized with real people behind the scenes.
“Everyone needs an assistant.” https://www.fin.com/
They are tackling the personal assistant space by using some really interesting technologies to maintain a representation of who you are, your preferences, history, etc. to coordinate and expedite their operations agents to take care of your tasks how you would want them taken care of.
I got introduced to Fin through some of their recruiting activities on the East Coast.
The interviews at Fin were really interesting, and definitely caught my attention in terms of what they value in people, and what sorts of inputs they believe represent those.
Starting from the first technical phone screen, I was asked to debug some buggy code that some date/time package in Python. This was a refreshing break from the regular grind of classic data structures and algorithms type problems.
Similarly for the onsite, my first interview was a long one-and-a-half hour session where I was given an existing codebase for a moderately sized webapp alongside a few tasks they wanted me to accomplish, identifying and fixing buggy behavior, and then modifying the application to provide new functionality.
What I really got from my first phone screen and now this extensive first interview is that Fin really values real coding and application building experience. How do you form hypotheses, navigate based on those hypotheses through a codebase, and test them through the application? I think as a startup, they want to see people who can jump right into things and start producing, and also have a history and knack for creating.
My final interview was a system design question, which further reinforced the notion that they wanted people who created full experiences and products, and had the chops to understand how everything fit together.
As a startup, there’s a huge need for people to be equipped to take on any work, to be role fillers. There’s no luxury to lock into the one slice of the pie, but at the same time after some significant time at a place like Fin, you’ll have had your hands on every nook and cranny.
What excites me about Fin is they’re tackling a fascinating set of technical problems, and are ambitious enough to say that they can accomplish them successfully. If I worked at a startup like Fin, all the work I’m given will matter. I just don’t know if it’s work that I’d want to be doing.
As it stands right now, I really enjoyed chatting with the people at Fin, from the co-founders (how often do you get to speak to the cofounders when you go interview?!) and hearing about how they envision reaching a future where everyone is on Fin, but I simply don’t connect with the product itself.
I do eventually want to be at a place where I am in a pioneering a new future, where I can have incredible ownership and responsibility for integral pieces of that technology, where I can keep moving fast, but it’s not with Fin.
At the end of the day, I think that working at a place with prestige and attention grabbing power will help me get my foot in the door when I do find the product and vision that I want to help realize.
Facebook! It happened! I was interviewing at Facebook! I think the day before my interview was my seven year anniversary on Facebook. That’s a long time.
Facebook has amazed me as it continues to grow as more than just the online social media platform to share the best parts of your life with your friends. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m dependent on Facebook. Facebook has created a central hub for events and activities — practically everything I do on campus I find through Facebook, a platform for everyday communication, and still is the place that helps me stay up to date with my friends and communities even as they travel the world.
With an incredible product and platform, a heavily praised engineering culture, and top notch pay and perks, what more could you want? As what Facebook calls itself, a “strengths-driven organization”, you basically choose your own team when you go to work at Facebook full time. So who wouldn’t want to work for Facebook? Are Facebook employees just sipping on too much of their own Kool-Aid? That’s what I set out to find out.
The first thing that I have mixed feelings about from my onsite interview was that there was one single interview. In a lot of ways I felt — Woohoo! Less interviews! But at the same time, there was only one interview to show if I was the right person for the job. In addition, I felt like Facebook wasn’t committed to putting in as many resources to reduce variance and determine if I was a qualified candidate. Maybe that’s not so bad though as the real evaluation is your performance during the actual internship program. Facebook could just not give me a full time offer, after all.
During my first interview, I felt that my interviewer was a bit cold during the coding pieces itself, often being very curt and just jumping straight to asking me one question after another, but he warmed up when we finally got to having our wrap up conversation.
I asked him how he connected with Facebook’s vision to enable people to build communities and bring the world closer together.
What I heard was the most humble and appreciative story of what his communities were and what they meant to him. As someone who grew up much less privileged in South America, all he had were his communities. He made it to the United States, to his current place in one of the most impactful tech institutions in the past decade, held up on the shoulders of those people. Now he’s determined to serve even in a small way for people like him around the world. It’s definitely hard, to break down someone’s personality and story in a 45 minute interview, but sometimes I feel it’s incredible easy. I could see that he wouldn’t be there, interviewing me, on that Friday, if not for how much he cared about and respected what Facebook represents, its leadership, and its products.
After interviewing, I walked out to the waiting lobby. As I was walking past the receptionists desk and as I glanced over with a smile, I was surprised to be greeted back.
“You’ll love working here. I love working here.” She said with a warm smile.
Wow. One thing is for the engineers to enjoy basking in the engineering first, hacker life, tech day in and day out atmosphere that is Facebook and Silicon Valley, but it’s really something else if the person who is assigned to ferry people in and out of their offices can enjoy and appreciate what they have to do.
The rest of the day was full of a college-visit-esque experience, filled with tours, talks from the recruiting and internship team, panels from recent new grads, and lastly an Oculus demo. They were really going all out.
The conversations I had with the intern program coordinator showed me that even for HR, the people at Facebook were there not as tech “sell outs”, but were there to grow, to build their people management skills, all while being a part of an organization they’re excited to be a part of.
At the end of the day, I believe that, at least in Menlo Park, people don’t just appreciate what it is they work, they count their blessings. The people of Facebook don’t just live with their privilege, they push themselves all the more to make something of it.
So why would wouldn’t you work at Facebook? Here are some of my remaining thoughts:
- You don’t appreciate the products and the platform. Consumer products and social media aren’t for everyone.
- You want to be taking larger strides towards creating something completely new and revolutionary. At this point, no matter how much it wants to be, Facebook is no longer a startup.
- You don’t appreciate the young-oriented, college-esque atmosphere and culture.
For me, now that I’ve gotten the offer, I’m convinced that as a Facebook SWE intern, I’ll be working on work that is something that I’m interested in and also is challenging, creating value for a platform that I’m personally invested in, and be with people who appreciate the vision as much as I do.
For my final SWE recruiting close out and my biggest takeaways, continue onto Part 3!
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