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Young Innovators @ Google - Andrew Oates
August 11, 2011
Introduction:
Young Innovators @ Google
is a new blog series highlighting the great work of Googlers who, not too long ago, were students like you. In their short careers, these engineers and product managers have had an impact on Google and our products. This week, BOLD intern Melissa Arguinzoni sat down with software engineer Andrew Oates. Andrew graduated from Brown University in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and again in 2010 with a master’s degree in computer science.
Melissa Arguinzoni: Tell us about your path to Google and your current role at the company.
Andrew Oates:
The summer between my junior and senior year I interned at Pixar. The following summer, after dropping my resume off at a career fair and having a few phone interviews, I got an offer to intern at Google. During the summer of 2009, after I got my bachelor’s degree from Brown, I interned at Google on the Make The Web Faster team. When I completed my masters in September 2010, I joined Google full-time as a software engineer on the same team.
MA: Why were you interested in being a software engineer?
AO:
Since I was little, I liked programming. I started programming on my mom’s computer when she first got one, when I was in middle school. In high school, I worked at a computer camp where I taught programming. When I got to college, I was originally going to study electrical engineering, but I still took computer science classes. I actually enjoyed doing the homework for my CS classes, which was new to me. I figured if I liked doing the homework then it would probably be a good field for me, so I started majoring in computer science.
MA: What was your first project at Google and what impact did it have?
AO:
My internship at Google was a little unusual; I wasn’t working on any Google properties and I didn’t write any Google code. Someone had an idea for how to make websites load faster and I was basically doing research to see if it would work. My job was to figure out a way to measure how big of an impact speeding up websites like this would have. From the research I did, we saw that it would have a substantial impact. The project has changed since then, but some of the ideas have made their way to use in the Chrome browser.
When I started full-time under the same manager, I worked on the Page Speed team, developing an open source tool to help webmasters make their sites faster. At the time, it was just a Firefox extension for the browser and my project was working on Page Speed Online, which was a web-based way making sites faster. You would go to the website, punch in a URL and it would come back and
tell you what could be improved on the page to make it load/work faster
. I did all the back end and most of the front end work and we launched in March 2011. Since then, I have made an
API version
as well, and my team is looking for new ways to integrate Page Speed in Google products.
[Editor’s Note: Page Speed Browser Extensions are now available on both Chrome and Firefox
browsers
.]
MA: How has your role evolved since you started?
AO:
While my internship was mostly research-based, my full-time role is working on a public-facing product. It involves working with a lot more of Google's technologies and code base, as well as with other teams and developers. Watching
Page Speed Online
go through production and public launch was different from what I’d done before.
MA: What do you like most about your job? Are there personal rewards from the work you do?
AO:
For a lot of people, a job is just a job. For me, this is something I would want to do with my life even if I wasn’t getting paid for it, which is a great situation to be in. I get to do something I love, work on interesting problems and work with really smart people.
MA: Overall, how do you feel about your time here at Google, and what do you see yourself doing next?
AO:
So far, my time here has been great. I am hoping to work more with other teams to have
Page Speed integrated in more places
. We're working with several clients, internally and externally, to integrate our product with their tools and development practices. My focus in the coming quarters is going to be getting Page Speed results into more projects and venues, and working with internal teams to add our analysis to their development cycles.
MA: What advice do you have for young people who are considering an engineering career?
AO:
Take opportunities when you can get them and don’t be lazy. One of the things employers look for in hiring candidates is someone who really enjoys and brings passion to the job because those are the sort of individuals who everyone wants to work with. If you can find something you really enjoy doing and you’re good at it, everything else will fall in place. For Google specifically, study your algorithms textbook, work on personal projects and get used to talking about them to other people—all of these will help with your interviews.
MA: How does a person progress in your field? How has Google helped with that progression?
AO:
At Google, if you can prove yourself you will advance. You can’t coast by with just a degree from a good school or from past accomplishments. Instead, you have to keep working and taking initiative and continue to tackle hard and interesting projects. If you have a personal interest in a project, take the initiative and do it. That’s how you’ll get noticed and that is how you will advance. Google is a great environment for self-motivated and creative people. I saw something I was interested in fixing and I went ahead and fixed it. In some places, that may be frowned upon, but here reaching out and taking initiative is rewarded.
Posted by Melissa Arguinzoni, BOLD Intern
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