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Young Innovators @ Google - Matt Ward
August 26, 2011
Introduction: We recently launched
Young Innovators @ Google
, 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. For today’s post, we sat down with Matt Ward, a software engineer at YouTube.
Tell us a little about yourself and how you became interested in computer science.
Matt Ward:
Before I was a YouTube dude, I was a computer science student at
Columbia University
in New York City. When I wasn’t in class (and sometimes during), I was working on freelance web projects. I got my first taste of the real (internet video) world working as a web development intern at
CollegeHumor
during the summer after my freshman year of college.
Tinkering with computers was always a passion of mine, but I was also drawn to film and television production while running my high school’s television station. I actually started college thinking I was going to be a film major but found the technical bits a lot more interesting. I ended up coming out of the computer science program as a computer graphics major.
How did you end up at YouTube?
MW:
I secured an internship at YouTube after my junior year in college, and faced a really tough decision trying to figure out if I wanted to be in the startup world or become a Googler. Just days before my internship at YouTube I helped hack together
GroupMe
at TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC. The startup scene in New York was fast-paced and exciting. I loved it. When I was faced with the decision between the startup world and Google, I asked some VCs what they thought. The overwhelming majority said I should not pass up the opportunity to work at Google. There are a couple big reasons that surfaced from those discussions and have stuck with me to this day.
The first was that going into the startup world might be a missed opportunity for me to keep learning. Startups need someone to get it done, which means you’ll probably be expected to learn, but on your own with less likelihood of mentoring. At Google I think I learn something new every day, frequently from my peers. Each little thing I learn is another point on my personal knowledge stock. I think of working at Google as an important asset for my future that provides a proven track record and extraordinary professional and personal benefits.
The other compelling reason was the scale at Google. In the startup world, building a prototype is important but many projects face problems when it is time to scale. Working at Google makes you think at scale every day. My co-worker put it well at breakfast the other day, “my code executes more times every single day than there are people in the world.” He later said half-jokingly (while doing a back of the envelope calculation), that one of his projects might increase our application’s efficiency so much that a small powerplant might be able to shut down. Now that kind of impact is hard to have at a startup.
What project did you work on as an intern and what impact did it have?
MW:
During my internship last summer, I was one of the very few people working on YouTube for Google TV. The product is now known as
YouTube Leanback
and is available on your computer or as an application on your internet connected TV. It was really awesome to work on an unreleased product, but a challenge not to talk too much about it. When I came back, the product was evolving fast and the team has expanded significantly. I also helped with the
YouTube Remote
for Leanback, and continue to lend a helping hand today.
What brought you back to YouTube to work full-time? How has your role evolved since your internship?
MW:
I think the biggest thing that brought me back was the people. I had a great personality match with everyone I was working with. I actually enjoy going to work every day to hang out with the friends I have in our office. In general, I feel like I work at a startup because of the energy everyone has. However, I know I am at a huge company with worldwide impact when I meet with people from Zurich, London and Tokyo. I really doubt there are many other places like it.
Since I’ve come back, I don’t think things have changed that much. As an intern, I really felt empowered to make the changes I wanted to and I feel the same today. I think the major difference is in how co-workers are more willing to accept my critiques now that I have more experience. Having said that, my internship was an invaluable chunk of experience.
How has YouTube encouraged you to be innovative?
MW:
I think there is a real acceptance of experimenting and trying out different ideas at Google. No one is stopping me from testing anything I think might improve the user experience. In addition to experimenting, my 20% time is spent working on the YouTube Remote for Leanback, which I think is a really innovative project. Over a year ago, I was given the freedom to hook together the pieces for it and now it is a real product.
Overall, how do you feel about your first few months at Google? What projects are you working on?
MW:
I don’t see the excitement of my job fading anytime soon. Most recently, I made our player controls darken and automatically hide while watching a YouTube video. This new design was actually created as part of a very ambitious redesign of YouTube that we call the
Cosmic Panda
. Working on our video player’s design is fun and very visible, but my current work is slightly more behind the scenes optimizations of our video player’s performance.
Anything else you’d like to include?
MW:
I was responsible for the
Nyan Cat progress bar
.
Posted by Jessica Safir, University Programs Coordinator
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