You know The Internship? That movie where two ex-salesmen get internships at Google? This summer, I was one of them. Well, not the ex-salesman part. But I was an intern at Google. And while the movie got a lot of facts about Google right, it also got some of them very, very wrong.
Myth 1: Everyone works in Mountain View, CA.
False. There are distributed offices all over North America and all over the world. I worked out of the Cambridge office in Kendall Square. Having been to the Mountain View campus and the Cambridge office, I actually like the Cambridge one better!
Myth 2: The food is free.
True. Not only is it free, but it's delicious. The mornings I got to the office early enough to stand in the omelet line were significantly better than the ones when I did not. And don't even get me started on all the coffee! (Taking food home from the office is also acceptable, despite what the movie said. Plenty of people get dinner in a to-go box and eat it on their commute.)
Myth 3: Interns compete in challenges such as playing Quidditch, building apps, and manning the tech support lines.
False. Quidditch may have been played by some interns, and some interns did work on apps, but the whole challenge aspect of that movie was completely false. Each intern has a self-contained project that spans the duration of his or her internship--so you're really spending the summer writing (and debugging) lots of code. Mine involved improving the load test for the content delivery network and making its results more useful. (Oh, and converting to full-time requires good internship feedback and two additional interviews. I should hear back about my conversion status in four to six weeks. Yikes!)
Myth 4: One in six Google engineers is female.
Sadly, this is true. A report released earlier this summer revealed that 17% of the engineers at Google are women. So the team consisting of Billy, Nick, Stuart, Yo-Yo, Neha, and Lyle was fairly representative of the demographics at Google.
Myth 5: People get around the Mountain View campus via very colorful bikes.
True! Here's a picture of me riding one during orientation week: