The series:

1. An intern's views - How I got here
2. An intern's views - A month's end at Google
3. An intern's views - How far have I come?
4. An intern's views - End of diary

Before I start, I would like to point out that I'm writing this from Hong Kong, sitting in front of Disneyland, waiting for it to open. Life is good.

I'm not really sure what to write about. I've mostly written about my experience as a Google Intern. I've written about the work I've done. I've written about how I got here. Last few weeks have been all about wrapping up. And since its pretty boring to write about wrap up, I've instead converted this post into an FAQ about the full experience. Some of these may be specific to IITK and my situation, so feel free to skip them.

Q. Google came to IITK. Why didn't you wait for it in campus placements?

This one goes first because I was asked this again and again by people, and not even with this tone. The tone was usually "You could've waited for Google, you would've definitely gotten it.".

So basically, most people assumed that the reason I didn't wait for Google was because I was afraid that I wouldn't get Google, and I wouldn't have any intern. I didn't wait for Google because it was Google India, and Google India doesn't have any good teams working on systems. While Google India would still be preferable over LinkedIn (which I sat and got in campus internship placements), sitting for Google India would've made me ineligible to sit for Google U.S., which was my target. Also, as a side benefit, Google U.S. pays a lot more, which is always preferable ;)

Q. Everything considered, why do you think Google is the better place to intern?

It's culture. Finance companies will always pay more, even for tech jobs. And I understand that many people would prefer that. But for me, I don't want to wake up on time everyday to go to office. I don't want to stick to some dress code, I want to go to office in shorts, like I do in college. I don't want to be restricted to my own department when working. I want to learn what other people are doing, without the company firing me for talking to people on a project that isn't mine.

Google has an open codebase. In the sense that all code that drives Google and its' projects, is in a single repository, that everyone has access to. Which means that, even as an intern I had tremendous amount of knowledge one click away. While working, I often read other papers (design documents) of things Google was working on, and I was never disappointed. Google is fascinating from the inside.