Tag Archives: students

The Mentors of Google Summer of Code 2017

Every year, we pore over oodles of data to extract the most interesting and relevant statistics about the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) mentors. Mentors are the bread and butter of our program - without their hard work and dedication, there would be no GSoC. These volunteers spend 12 weeks (plus a month of community bonding) tirelessly guiding their students to create the best quality project possible and welcoming them into their communities - answering questions and providing help at all hours.

Here’s a quick snapshot of our 2017 group:
  • Total mentors: 3,439
  • Mentors assigned to an active project: 1,647
  • Mentors who have participated in GSoC over 10 years: 22
  • Percentage of new mentors: 49%
GSoC 2017 mentors are a worldly group, hailing from 69 countries on 6 continents - we’re still waiting on a mentor from Antarctica… Anyone?

Interested in the data? Check out the full list of countries.
Some interesting factoids about our mentors:
  • Average age: 39
  • Youngest: 15*
  • Oldest: 68
  • Most common first name: Michael (there are 40!)
GSoC mentors help to introduce the next generation to the world of open source software development — for that we are very grateful. To show our appreciation, we invite two mentors from each of the 201 participating organizations to attend the annual mentor summit at the Google campus in Sunnyvale, California. It’s three days of food, community building, lively debate and lots of fun.

Thank you to everyone involved in Google Summer of Code. Cheers to yet another great year!

By Mary Radomile, Google Open Source

* Say what? 15 years old!? Yep! We had 12 GSoC mentors under the age of 18. This group of enthusiastic teens started their journey in our sister program, Google Code-in, an open source coding competition for 13-17 year olds. You can read more about it at g.co/gci.

My Path to Google: Maegan Clawges, User Experience (UX) Engineer

Welcome to the seventh installment of our blog series “My Path to Google”. These are real stories from Googlers highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.

Today’s post is all about Maegan Clawges. Read on!
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Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, in the Appalachian mountains. I was exposed to a lot of local art there which inspired me to study design in college. Once in college, I realized that being able to code would increase the impact of my design work so I added a second degree in computer science.

What’s your role at Google?
I’m a UX Engineer at YouTube in the art department. We are an interdisciplinary team that works on brand and design language for all YouTube products. As a UX Engineer I work on tools for the design team, in addition to writing full-stack production code to build infrastructure for our design goals.

What inspires you to come in every day?
I am inspired every day by the people on my team — they have a wide array of skills and experience that I learn from. Working with them pushes me to do my best creative work.

Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?
I was drawn to Google because of its dedication to innovation and helping the world. The Google Doodles inspired me creatively and influenced me to start learning to code.

How did the recruitment process go for you?
I first joined Google as a software engineering intern. During college I got to know my university's Google recruiter through an event I organized for women in tech. She was super supportive throughout my internship and full-time application process. I applied to four different roles at Google because I wasn't sure where I fit as a hybrid engineer and designer, and I was impressed by how they managed my parallel application paths and how they offered me advice along the way.

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process?
I wish I had learned more in school about how to collaborate within a large company. Even at YouTube, which is smaller, I work with designers and engineers throughout the company and it’s awesome, but communicating at that scale is a skill in itself.

Can you tell us more about the resources you used to prep?
For the technical interviews, I mainly focused on practicing algorithm-based questions. I remember spending an entire weekend in front of a whiteboard before my intern interview. I also read as much as I could about Google, since I decided early on that it was the company I wanted to work for. Having that background information helped me integrate when I joined and ask better questions.

To finish, do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?

First, focus on developing skills in the areas that interest you, even if they’re interdisciplinary. Then, figure out how that skill set fits into Google's products and goals. A good mentor can help with that. Finally, get really good at telling your story, about your skill set and where you want to be in the future.

Computer Science Summer Institute: Q&A with participants Adela and Jessica

Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI), a tech program for rising college freshman, just celebrated its 10th summer. To mark this milestone, today we’re featuring Adela and Jessica, two CSSI participants. We’re proud of how this program has impacted the hundreds of students who have experienced its magic, and hope you enjoy their stories. Read on!

Adela Chavez, Los Angeles CSSI participant

Despite facing many challenges, including homelessness, Adela has never stopped chasing her dreams. While balancing a job and caring for her siblings, she also began learning about computer science and exploring coding. In the future, she hopes to be a mentor to others with similarly difficult backgrounds.

Jessica Morales-Mendoza, Seattle CSSI participant
Jessica has overcome obstacles throughout her life, as well. Coming from a low-income household of seven, she has found time to not only care for many of her siblings, but to also participate in robotics and programming at her school. Going forward, her dream is to work for the FBI’s Cyber Security Unit.



Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Adela:
I want to make an impact. I want to be the reason that someone gains the confidence to follow their dreams. I have gone through plenty of hardships in my life, whether it was having to work when I was just 15 years old to help alleviate family expenses, having to stay up all night to take care of my siblings while my mother and sister worked the graveyard shift, or even being homeless at times during my senior year. If it weren't for the people who believed in me and gave me the confidence to pursue my dreams, I don't think I would be here today.

Jessica:
I grew up in a low-income, immigrant household of seven in Los Angeles, CA. At the age of thirteen, due to a family circumstance, I had to mature and be the older sister when I was actually one of the youngest. My parents were depressed and had fallen into alcoholism, while my brother was struggling with drug addiction.

During that very difficult part of my life, I began participating in afterschool programs, including robotics and game jams hosted by my CS (computer science) teachers. I discovered that programming has a lot of purposes, from creating robots, bringing crazy ideas to life, stopping cyber crimes and more.

In the fall, I will begin attending California State University, Los Angeles. I am passionate about helping others succeed, especially those from tough financial situations or circumstances. Besides that, I am obsessed with aliens and UFOs!


What motivated you to apply to CSSI?
Adela:
For me, it was when I realized that computer science provided a way for me to escape poverty and secure a career that I was interested in. I knew that this path would allow me to create programs that could provide help for those who need it.

However, going into CSSI, I wasn’t entirely sure if computer science was for me. I knew that it had many interesting aspects, but I wanted to get more hands-on experience before making a final decision. After the incredible experiences I had at CSSI, I am now 100% ready to dedicate myself to this field.

Jessica:
I actually found out about CSSI when I was applying to Google’s Generation Scholarship. After reading the program description, I was hooked! When I first applied, I didn’t really think I had a chance of getting accepted (imposter syndrome), but I’m so glad that I went ahead and applied anyway. If I hadn’t taken a chance on it, I would’ve missed out on so much.

What do you wish you’d known before you arrived at Google for CSSI?
Adela:
That it’s okay to ask for help. Growing up, I was the first in my family to go beyond middle school and take difficult classes, so I was always forced to figure things out on my own. I wasn't used to asking for help or admitting when I didn't know what was going on.

When I came into this program and actually learned that asking for help is encouraged, I initially struggled to accept it, which might have prevented me from fully understanding what was being taught. Eventually, I realized that if I wanted to get the most out of the program, I had to start asking for help.

Jessica:
I wish I’d known how hard it would be to leave this amazing experience! The amount of tears falling from our faces when it was time to say our goodbyes demonstrated how much we had grown together. It was such a blessing to meet people with open minds and heartwarming love. We all had different stories and perspectives, but were so supportive of one another.


Can you tell us how the CSSI experience has impacted you?
Adela:
This program has truly been a life-changing experience for me. Before this program, I didn't have any confidence in myself. I didn't think I was smart enough to do computer science. I didn't think that I would be able to create applications that could help people. I didn't think that I was able to present in front of an audience. But now I know that I can do all of these things and more. As long as I work smart, use all the resources at my disposal correctly, and build up my courage, I can do whatever I set my mind to.

Jessica:
At CSSI, I learned about imposter syndrome. What is that, you may ask? The feelings that make us feel unworthy, when in reality, we are qualified. Learning about this was huge for me, as I’ve often struggled with self-doubt.

I also gained communication skills, confidence, and of course, coding experience. Although my communication skills and confidence have a lot more to grow, this experience was a start that I feel really blessed to have enjoyed.


What are you going to miss most from your CSSI experience once you leave?
Adela:
I'm going to miss feeling like a valued part of a company. Going back to my regular job will be hard—it's just not the same as Google.

Jessica:
I’m going to miss the family that was created at the beginning of this new path of my life. The people around me made me feel like I was at home and loved, which is something that I find really valuable.



PhD Research Intern Philip Haeusser: deep learning, neural networks, computer vision, oh my!

Today’s blog features Philip Haeusser, a PhD Research Intern at Google. Read on to learn about his projects, publishing at Google, coding, and his internship's impact. Enjoy!



So tell us about yourself and your PhD topic…
Hi! My name is Philip, and I’m a third-year PhD student in computer science at TU Munich, supervised by Daniel Cremers. I am working in the field of computer vision, the discipline where we teach computers to understand images and videos. To a computer, images and videos are nothing but a huge collection of meaningless numbers. If you represent them as colors, a human is immediately able to tell what’s in the picture.

In order to get a computer to achieve the same, I train neural networks — a family of models that can be interpreted as instances of a “mini visual cortex.” The goal is to map the many numbers that make up an image to something more meaningful, such as a class label like “cat.” Neural networks are amazing at this. I have worked on problems like optical flow (“what changes from one video frame to the next?”) or domain adaptation [“how can we use knowledge (labels) from one domain (e.g. handwritten images) on another domain (e.g. house numbers from Google street view)?”].

When I’m not doing research, I work on my YouTube channel “Phil’s Physics” where I present experiments and talk about science.


How did you get to work in this area?
In 2014, I was completing my Master’s in physics at the University of California in Santa Cruz. I was part of an interdisciplinary team working on retina implants for blind people. In one of our experiments, we had to deal with a lot of data that was very expensive to get — but we couldn’t use all of it because our data processing pipeline was not complex enough. So I started to read about machine learning and neural networks. I got immediately hooked and reached out to professors who were working in this area. It was a great honor to get invited to present my work to Daniel Cremers, who then offered me a PhD position at his chair.


Why did you apply for an internship at Google and how supportive was your PhD advisor?
The field of deep learning is moving very fast. Almost every week, a new paper on some new groundbreaking neural network or training trick appears. More often than not, the authors work at Google. That got me interested in the kind of work that Google is doing in this field. At a summer school, I met Olivier Bousquet, who gave an amazing talk about the Google Brain team. He told me about research internships at Google, and then I applied. My PhD advisor liked the idea, because it’s always good to get new perspectives, to connect with people and to engage in exchange, particularly in a new field like deep learning. Plus, Google has the resources to facilitate experiments that are computationally unfeasible at many universities.


What project was your internship focused on?
I had the honor to be working with Alexander Mordvintsev, one of the creators of DeepDream. The project was on a novel method of training neural networks with unlabeled data and semi-supervised learning.

We developed a new method that we called “Learning by Association.” It’s similar to the “association game,” where you’re told a word and you respond with the first thing that you associate with it. After a few “iterations,” you usually get very funny “association chains.”

We did something similar: We trained a neural network to produce representations (neural activation patterns) that allow for associations, too. Associations from labeled data to unlabeled data. Imagine an association chain from an example of the labeled batch to an example of the unlabeled batch. Then, you make a second association from unlabeled to labeled data. That would then be an “association cycle.” You can now compare the label of the example that you ended up at with the label of the example at the beginning of the cycle. The goal is to make consistent association cycles, meaning that the labels are the same. We formulated this as a cost function and showed that this technique works extremely well for training classification networks with less labeled data.


Did you publish at Google during your internship?
Yes, I wrote a paper and submitted it to CVPR, the biggest computer vision conference in the world. I even presented on this topic at the 2017 CVPR conference. And Google funded my conference trip, so this internship has not only brought me great industry experience, but also a publication that I am very proud of.


How closely connected was the work you did during your internship to your PhD topic?
My host and I were exploring many topics in the beginning and this particular one fits perfectly in my PhD. Besides, I think that even projects orthogonal to a PhD topic can help a lot, with regard to coding and project management skills.


Did you write your own code?
Tons! I am particularly grateful for the code reviews that helped me improve code quality and made me think more about style and scalability. I am also very happy that Google allowed me to open-source my code, as is common practice in the research world. This way, I can continue to work on the topic and share code with researchers all across the globe. I was able to write a follow-up paper on “Associative Domain Adaptation,” which just got accepted for ICCV.


This is your second internship at Google. What were the reasons to come back to Google Zurich?
There are so many interesting research projects at Google that only one internship is not enough :-). No, seriously, I was offered a really interesting project on the team of Sylvain Gelly. I had already met him and his colleagues last year. They are amazing people, and I couldn’t miss out on the chance to work with them.


What key skills have you gained from your time at Google?
I think my code quality improved a lot. At Google, you have the chance to learn from brilliant coders with a lot of experience. They write smart code, fast. And they help you do the same.
But I also connected with many people from different teams and backgrounds. I met amazing product managers who gave me insights into how they design successful products. I was even able to work with them on new YouTube features since I am also a YouTube creator. And last but not least, I worked on my metabolic endurance with the Tough Mudder team at Google’s internal fitness center.


What impact has this internship experience had on your PhD?
Looking at it in retrospect, my internship was an important milestone for my PhD. I didn’t apply with the expectation of it being a total game changer, but I think I returned back to university with a ton of new ideas and inspiration.


Looking back on your experiences now: Why should a PhD student apply for an internship at Google? Any advice to offer?
When you’re in the middle of your PhD, there will be this moment when you think you’re trapped and you need to see something new. Or when you realize that you would like to try an experiment that requires 1000 GPUs. Or when you think you know it all and you want to challenge yourself. Or when you think about the time after your PhD and you wonder what it would be like to write code at scale and make a huge impact. I think there are many reasons for an internship. Google is a fun place to try yourself out and maybe come home with a nice paper, new friends, new ideas, or even a job offer.

My Path to Google: Zaven Muradyan, Software Engineer

Welcome to the sixth installment of our blog series “My Path to Google”. These are real stories from Googlers highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.


Today’s post is all about Zaven Muradyan. Read on!
Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I was born in Armenia and lived there for about seven years before moving to Dallas, Texas. After several subsequent moves, I eventually ended up in the Tri-Cities area of Washington, where I went to the local community college to study computer science and graduated with an associate degree.
What’s your role at Google?
I'm a software engineer on the Google Cloud Console team, working on the frontend infrastructure. In addition to working on framework code that affects the rest of the project, I also work on tooling that improves other developers' productivity, with the ultimate goal of improving the experience for all users of Google Cloud Platform.
What inspires you to come in every day?
My colleagues! It's a joy to work on challenging and large-scale technical problems with so many talented and kind people, and I am able to learn from my coworkers every day. I also get to work with several open source projects and collaborate closely with the Angular team at Google.
When did you join Google?
I officially joined Google a little more than two years ago. I had always admired Google's product quality and engineering culture, but prior to starting the recruitment process, I had never seriously considered applying because I didn't feel like I had the formal credentials.
How did the recruitment process go for you?
It started, in a sense, when one year I decided to try participating in Google Code Jam just for fun (and I didn't even get very far in the rounds!). A little while later, I was contacted by a recruiter from Google who had seen some of my personal open source projects. To my surprise, they had originally found me because I had participated in Code Jam! I was excited and decided to do my best at going through the interview process, but was prepared for it to not work out.
I studied as much as I could, and tried to hone my design and problem solving skills. I wasn't quite sure what to expect of the interviews, but when the time came, it ended up being an enjoyable, although challenging, experience. I managed to pass the interviews and joined my current team!
What do you wish you’d known when you started the process?
Prior to going through the interviews, I had the idea that only highly educated or extremely experienced engineers had a chance at joining Google. Even after passing the interviews, I was still worried that my lack of a 4-year degree would cause problems. Having gone through the process, and now having conducted interviews myself, I can say that that is certainly not the case. Googlers are made up of people from all kinds of different backgrounds!
Do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?
Don't assume that you won't be able to succeed just because you may have a "nontraditional" background! Go ahead and apply, then prepare well for the interviews. What matters most is your ability to problem solve and design solutions to complex issues, so keep practicing and don't give up.


Can you tell us more about the resources you used to prepare your interviews?

I started by going through "Programming Interviews Exposed," which acted as a good intro to my preparation. After that, I tried learning and implementing many of the most common algorithms and data structures that I could find, while going through some example problems from sites like Topcoder and previous iterations of Code Jam. Finally, one specific resource that I found to be very helpful was HiredInTech, especially for system design.

The results are in for the 2017 Google Online Marketing Challenge!

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More than 600 professors and 12,000 students from over 65 countries competed in the 2017 Google Online Marketing Challenge (GOMC)...and the results are in!

This year we introduced a new AdWords Certification award and algorithm evaluating performance across more campaign types, delivering some of the most impressive work seen in the history of GOMC. Check out our AdWords Business, AdWords Certification, and Social Impact Winners below, and reference our GOMC Past Challenges page for a full list of the 2017 Team Results.

Congratulations to the winners and a big round of applause for all teams that participated! Thanks to all of the support from professors and the thousands of students who have helped businesses and nonprofits in their communities, we have had much to celebrate together. Over the past 10 years, more than 120,000 students and professors across almost 100 countries have participated in the Google Online Marketing Challenge, helping more than 15,000 businesses and nonprofits grow online.

Though we are taking a step back from the Google Online Marketing Challenge as we know it and exploring new opportunities to support practical skill development for students, we are continuing to provide free digital skills trainings and encourage academics to keep fostering a learning environment that connects the classroom with industry. For resources that will help you carry on project work like GOMC, a place for sharing feedback to help us continue to provide useful student development programs and a way to stay updated on our latest offerings, visit our FAQ page on the GOMC website.

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2017 Google Online Marketing Challenge Winners

AdWords Business Awards
Global Winners
  • School: James Madison University | United States
  • Professor: Theresa B. Clarke
  • Team: Michelle Mullins, George Shtern, Caroline Galiwango and Raquel Sheriff
Regional Winners
  • Region: Americas
  • School: James Madison University | United States
  • Professor: Theresa B. Clarke
  • Team: Jonathan Nicely, Ken Prevete, Jessica Drennon and Jesse Springer
  • Region: Asia & Pacific
  • School: University of Delhi | India
  • Professor: Ginmunlal Khongsai
  • Team: Prakriti Sharma, Raghav Shadija and Ankita Grewal
  • Region: Europe
  • School: Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań | Poland
  • Professor:  Wojciech Czart
  • Team: Michał Paszyn, Marek Buliński, Kamil Poturalski, Aneta Disterheft, Damian Koniuszy and Kamila Malanowicz
  • Region: Middle East & Africa
  • School: Kenyatta University | Kenya
  • Professor: Paul Mwangi Gachanja
  • Team: Peter Wangugi, Jackson Ndung'u, Selpha Kung'u and Antony Gathathu
AdWords Certification Awards
Global Winners
  • School: University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt | Germany
  • Professor: Mario Fischer
  • Team: Tobias Fröhlich, Lorenz Himmel, Sabine Zinkl, Thomas Lerch, Philipp Horsch and Maksym Vovk
Regional Winners
  • Region: Americas
  • School: James Madison University | United States
  • Professor: Theresa B. Clarke
  • Team: Nicole Carothers, Emily Vaeth, Annalise Capalbo and Brendan Reece
  • Region: Asia & Pacific
  • School: Indian Institute of Management Indore | India
  • Professor: Rajendra V. Nargundkar
  • Team: Kalaivani G, Swathika S, Chandran M, Akshaya S, Sadhana P and Mathan Kumar V
  • Region: Europe
  • School: University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt | Germany
  • Professor: Mario Fischer
  • Team: Matthias Schloßareck, Michelle Skodowski, Lena Thauer, Yen Nguyet Dang, David Mohr and Sebastian Kaufmann
  • Region: Middle East & Africa
  • School: The Federal University of Technology, Akure | Nigeria
  • Professor: Ajayi Olumuyiwa Olubode
  • Team: John Afolabi, Adebayo Olaoluwa Egbetade, Olubusayo Amowe, Israel Temilola Olaleye, Raphael Oluwaseyi Lawrence and Taiwo Joel Akinlosotu
  • Client: Stutern
AdWords Social Impact Awards
  • 1st Place
  • School: The University of Texas at Austin | United States
  • Professor: Lisa Dobias
  • Team: Kaitlin Reid, Ben Torres, Zachary Kornblau, Kendall Troup, Kristin Kish and Angela Fayad
  • Client: Thinkery
  • 2nd Place
  • School: James Madison University | United States
  • Professor: Theresa B. Clarke
  • Team: Michelle Mullins, George Shtern, Caroline Galiwango and Raquel Sheriff
  • 3rd Place
  • School: James Madison University | United States
  • Professor: Theresa B. Clarke
  • Team: Jonathan Nicely, Ken Prevete, Jessica Drennon and Jesse Springer

Code Jam Finals: Watch live on Friday, August 11

Watch this year’s Code Jam Finals livestream Friday, August 11


From April through June, tens of thousands of Code Jammers battled through programming challenges involving pancakes, French cuisine, unicorns, medical nanobots, and the scheduling difficulties faced by new parents, to name just a few. Our contestants came from all over the globe, from Saudi Arabia to Svalbard, using programming languages ranging from C++ to Go to LOLCODE.



For the first time, we included some Distributed Code Jam problems in which our system could not be trusted! For example, in one problem, contestants knew that asking a machine in our system for a certain piece of data would make that machine start behaving as if it were broken, but they did not know which piece of data would cause this to happen, and they had to figure it out via experimentation and then work around the issue. But this didn't faze our contestants, who are becoming more comfortable with distributed programming each year.



When the dust settled after our last online rounds, we had 26 Code Jam finalists and 21 Distributed Code Jam finalists. On August 10 and 11, these expert coders will compete for five-figure cash prizes in our onsite World Finals at Google's Dublin, Ireland office.



In the Finals, competitors face five or six very tough problems that often require markedly different approaches and insights. Gennady.Korotkevich of Belarus has won the last three years' Code Jams, but he will have to work hard to overcome rivals like the Philippines' kevinsogo, who beat Gennady in this year's semifinal Code Jam Round 3. And that's to say nothing of the 24 other strong contestants, who are eager to unseat the two favorites!



Google's Distributed format is relatively new and rare on the competitive programming circuit, and it tests a somewhat different skillset. South Africa's bmerry, who has won every Distributed Code Jam contest so far, will be looking to ‘three-peat’ as champion. This year, for the first time, Bruce has the unenviable extra challenge of contending with Gennady in the Distributed final round. Four other contestants qualified for both tournaments, so for the first time it is possible that someone could take both titles in the same year.



You can experience the magic of the World Finals by watching the livestream of the Code Jam contest on Friday, August 11. Our veteran Code Jam author (and Google infrastructure engineer) John Dethridge will return as a commentator, and he will be joined by Dublin-based ads site reliability engineer Rita Lu. John and Rita will talk the audience through our competitors' backgrounds and general Code Jam strategy, and they will provide a live analysis of the results as they roll in. The standings can change in the blink of an eye, and it is not uncommon to see critical submissions in the last few moments of a round!



The livestream will also feature interviews with Googlers from Code Jam — be on the lookout for an interview with this year's three Code Jam interns; they’ll share accounts of what the #GoogleInterns experience is like. We hope many of you will join the Finals excitement by tuning into the livestream, watching the scoreboard unfold at g.co/codejam, and asking live questions on social @CodeJam (we promise to answer as many as we can). We'll see you there!

My Path to Google: Anastasiya Bortnyk, Global Customer Experience team

Welcome to the fifth installment of our blog series “My Path to Google.” These are real stories from Googlers highlighting how they got to Google, what their roles are like, and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews.


Today’s post is all about Anastasiya Bortnyk . Read on!





Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Originally I am from a small town in West Ukraine called Lutsk. Early on, I knew that I wanted to run my own business some day (following the example of my father who was an entrepreneur in the IT sector), so I studied International Business at the National University of Kyiv. In addition to my coursework, I was constantly involved in student projects. I also started working part-time in Sales and Marketing for IT companies in Kiev before graduating.



What’s your role at Google?
I am an Associate Account Strategist within the Google Global Customer Experience team. Day-to-day, I help Google customers resolve any technical issues they face while advertising with our online advertising platform AdWords and help them optimize their return on investment. However, the work is not only about interaction with clients directly. We have lots of different projects to dive into. For example, I am also in charge of Customer Education and am leading Online Mobile Academy, which aims to help our clients adapt to the quickly developing mobile landscape.


I really enjoy the freedom we have here at Google. We can each spread ideas, initiate new projects or get involved in existing ones we’re interested in. This is very beneficial in terms of professional and personal development. I really value the amount of learning opportunities I get on a daily basis.



What inspires you to come in every day?
Google’s culture and diversity inspires me most of all. It’s a pleasure to work with people who are all so interesting and different. There is also a huge variety of different opportunities here which, for me, is crucial because I work best when I can constantly switch up my routine. Being able to shape the job how you see fit really makes it a lot more interesting and rewarding.



Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?
Where I come from, my peers and I always thought Google was unreachable, only for genius engineers. I dreamed about working here, but never thought about it too seriously. In my case, it was actually Google who bumped into me. I received a letter to apply for the Google Adcamp program, which was designed specifically for students interested in business and marketing. Thankfully, I was selected to attend and take part in this program. It opened my eyes to what Google was looking for; I saw the roles were reachable, and I definitely wanted to work here!



How did the recruitment process go for you?
I was contacted very shortly after the AdCamp program, and the process was smooth, yet challenging. I had rounds of interviews, each of which was different in nature. The questions weren’t easy, but they were very interesting.


I was not able to come for interviews onsite, so I did them over Google Hangouts. However, at that time I was living in the student dormitory, so I was also worried about that. I asked my roommates to give me privacy, and I even set up a cool background, but right at the end of one of the interviews, my internet failed, so I had to do half of the interview without video. It was a disaster back then, but in hindsight, it’s pretty funny :).



What do you wish you’d known when you started the process?
I wish I knew back then that Google is not only about programming and coding. There are so many opportunities for business or humanities graduates here as well. If I had known that before, it would have changed my perception much earlier.



Can you tell us more about the resources you used to prep?
I was lucky to attend AdCamp because it gave me a lot of insight into Google and how to get hired here. We had sessions telling us about the recruitment process, and we even had a mock interview. However, before interviewing, I also researched all Google blogs, read articles about interviews, and of course stories of people who had already interviewed at Google.



To finish, do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?
Find and reach out to Googlers if you know any. For me, the most valuable thing was a chance to speak to people working here before starting the process. Not only can they then refer you, but they can also share best practices, give you tips, and tell you more about the job you’ll be applying for. It’s also not a disaster if you initially get rejected. I know people who didn’t make it the first time, but persisted, remained positive, and ended up getting the job later on.


Want to follow in Anastasiya’s footsteps? Check out our Students site.

Professors from Around the World Get Their Students into HFOSS

Over the last four years instructors from around the world have gathered for the Professors’ Open Source Software Experience (POSSE) workshop to integrate open source concepts into their curriculum. At each event, professors make more progress toward providing students with hands on experience via contributions to humanitarian free and open source software (HFOSS).

This year Google was proud to not only host a workshop at our San Francisco office in April, but also to collaborate with the organizers to bring a POSSE workshop to Europe for the first time.
POSSE workshop leaders, from left to right: Clif Kussmaul (Muhlenburg College), Lori Postner (Nassau Community College), Stoney Jackson (Western New England University),  Heidi Ellis (Western New England University), Greg Hislop (Drexel University), and Darci Burdge (Nassau Community College).
The workshop in Italy was led by Dr. Gregory Hislop from Drexel University, and Drs. Heidi Ellis and Stoney Jackson from Western New England University, and brought together 20 instructors from Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Macedonia, Qatar, Spain, Swaziland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This was the most geographically diverse workshop to date!
Group photos in San Francisco, USA on April 22, 2017 (left) and Bologna, Italy on July 1, 2017 (right).
What’s next for POSSE? University instructors from institutions in the US can apply now to participate in the next workshop, November 16-18 in Raleigh, NC and join their peers in the community of instructors weaving HFOSS into their curriculum.

By Helen Hu, Google Open Source

My Path to Google: Keawe Block, Staffing Lead


Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I was born in Monterey, California, and was raised in a city called Marina, down in the Central Coast of California. My three brothers and I were all raised by a single mother. We never had much, but my mother always found a way to make sure we had enough.

I attended Long Beach City College and played sports year-round, specifically football and track and field. I didn't have the best grades, but my track coach fought hard to get me into UCLA and after my 2nd year, I was offered a partial scholarship there. I eventually lost that (very small) partial scholarship, which left me unable to afford a food card or housing in the UCLA dorms, so I had to move off campus. During this time, I bounced around from sleeping on friends’ couches, sleeping on campus, and even sleeping in my car. I then had to take out more loans to pay for school, and somehow managed to make up classes and earn my degree in History with a focus on the colonization of the Pacific Islands in 2009.

I'm now married and have two beautiful sons. When I'm not working, I love playing sports with my kids, snowboarding, and am a passionate amateur cinematographer. Also, between my brothers and I, we've established a "Creative Collective" called "Hereaux" (HERO). We're also working on establishing a non-profit that is focused on developing, mentoring, and keeping kids creative.


What’s your role at Google?
I'm currently a Channels Specialist Team Lead, focusing on diversity in tech. Our team was established five years ago, and I've been able to have the opportunity to work on/with this team since its inception. We focus on hiring underrepresented engineers in tech. One of the cool projects I'm working on is up-skilling our partners throughout Google on what my team does and how we can scale that to ensure that we're looking for talent with the right lens.

What inspires you to come in every day?
I work with an amazing team, and coming in everyday to tackle the diversity issue within tech is beyond inspiring and gratifying. I'm extremely passionate about diversity and equal opportunity for all. I grew up in very diverse areas — Marina and Seaside, and Long Beach, where I went to junior college. When I first stepped foot onto UCLA’s campus, it was the first time I felt like a minority and began my interest and work on supporting/working with underrepresented communities. At Google, we're tackling this diversity issue. We were the first to release our diversity numbers and the first to identify that we have a problem that we want to solve. So coming in everyday, knowing that my work is changing lives and changing the landscape of not only Google, but the entire tech industry, is very inspiring.

My mom has had the same job for 20+ years and has never once gotten a raise because she doesn't have a degree. If I can help people who have non-traditional backgrounds get into Google, I get a sense of accomplishment doing what I wish someone could have done for my mom years ago.

Can you tell us about your decision to enter the process?
I've never in my life thought about applying to Google. When I graduated college in 2009, I had no idea what the tech industry was about and never even considered opportunities to be available at Google. I always looked at Google like some magic entity that was impossible to work at. My resume wasn't impressive. I was unable to gain any viable experience because of sports, as well as me needing to take random jobs to support myself through school. All of this meant I wasn't appealing to companies. I finally was able to get a job with a car rental company and worked there for about two years, but I was miserable and found myself depressed.

During that time, I had a friend that worked here at Google, and he wanted to put my resume in for opportunities. Again, I knew nothing about Google and didn't think someone like me could work here. I continued to turn down his offer until one day I had a bit of a meltdown and knew I needed a change.

My decision to enter the process, even though I thought I'd never end up here, was the best decision I could've made. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Just ask Wayne Gretzky.


How did the recruitment process go for you?
I called the friend I mentioned and asked him to put my resume in. Two weeks later, I interviewed, and a week after that I accepted an offer and moved my family up to the Bay Area. The job was for a recruiting coordinator position, which is an entry level role for staffing.


What do you wish you’d known when you started the process?
I wish that I understood more about Google, the tech industry, and how staffing/recruiting works overall. I came into the interview process and into Google extremely green. Growing up where I did and enduring the struggles that I did, thinking beyond what I initially thought I could accomplish wasn't something I was used to doing. I was a product of my environment and while I aspired to be successful in life, I never took the time to invest into what I assumed was impossible.


To finish, do you have any tips you’d like to share with aspiring Googlers?

The tech industry overall, and especially Google, is changing in many ways. What we historically looked for in candidates, the "traditional backgrounds" is becoming a thing of the past. There is a large emphasis on diversity in all aspects. Demographic diversity, diversity of thought, of experience, of background, etc. We understand now more than ever, that we need to look beyond what we know will work, in order to find true talent. We're focused on ensuring that our workforce is representative of the communities that we operate in and that isn't a staffing-only goal; it’s a goal for all of Google.