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Inside ITRP - Marcos
November 8, 2011
Introduction: Over the next couple of months we’ll be sharing stories from current residents in Google’s
Internal Technology Residency Program
. Today, we start with Marcos Ramirez, who joined the ITR Program in August of 2010.
What is the IT Residency Program?
Marcos Ramirez:
The ITRP is a 2-year program that gives new grads the opportunity to learn all about how Google does IT. The program itself is broken down into a few different areas: Training and Development, Front-Line Support, and Internal Rotation. With Training and Development, all IT Residents are essentially transformed into top-notch IT generalists—obtaining proficiency in many different areas ranging from networking, mobile support, programming, and many different operating system platforms.
We get a lot of these skills through front-line support, by helping many of the other Googlers who come into the Techstops—places at Google where IT support is provided—with their technical problems. If all that wasn’t fantastic enough, IT Residents also get to go on office rotations to other Google offices around the world, as well as spend a quarter with another team at Google (where you’ll get the chance to learn all about an area you’re interested in specializing in).
How did you get to where you are today?
MR:
I've always had a passion for the more social aspect of information technology, and project management in general, which is what attracted me to the Management Information Systems (MIS) program at San Jose State University (SJSU). The MIS program there provided a good combination of business, technology, and project management related courses, and overall really helped me define what path I wanted to take with my career. Outside of school, I did a few small internships, and then a one-year co-op at IBM during my senior year.
I found out about the ITRP when Google held an ITRP information session at SJSU, where I met Cameron, who was one of the PMs who helped create the program. I was really impressed with the presentation and the program, so I applied for the ITRP through
Google's Student Jobs webpage
. Now that I'm actually here, I can honestly say that IT at Google is truly a unique experience, which I don't think I'd be able to find anywhere else. It's really given me the opportunity to take what I've learned and apply it on such an incredible scale.
What have you enjoyed most about the ITRP program?
MR:
I've really enjoyed the sense of camaraderie between everyone on the team. We are all here sharing this experience together, working in the Techstops and on many different projects, and overall there's just this sense of mutual trust. It's a great thing to know that you can depend on your team. I also love the fact that we have the opportunity to learn about so many different aspects of technology, from Linux, Mac, and Chrome OS environments, to networking, Python and technical project management.
One of the projects I've been working on recently involves deploying
Google Apps to non-profit organizations
, which has been an incredible experience in itself. Along with a few other IT Residents, I'm going out and delivering Google Apps trainings to nonprofits, and helping them make the switch over to using Gmail, Docs, and the rest of the Google Apps suite. We get to see first-hand how technology can improve the collaboration, communication, and overall efficiency of an organization.
Tell us about the Ops Rotation part of the ITRP program? Explain what that means and how you've experienced it firsthand.
MR:
The Ops Rotation is a 3-month internal rotation with another group at Google—the idea is that, as an IT Resident, you've spent the first several months solving problems in the Techstops, and hopefully gotten an idea of your specific areas of interest. The Ops Rotation is an incredible opportunity to take what you've learned (as well as what you're interested in learning), and jump into an entirely different team within Google. For my Ops rotation, I joined the Support Engineering team as a Technical Project Manager. In this role, I had the responsibility of transferring several high-level software projects between different teams, as well as doing some development work supporting their tools in on-call rotations. It was a great experience, and it really increased my technical project management skills, and knowledge of how software development works at Google.
Got any good tech tips?
MR:
Well, I’m glad you asked! Google recently launced a new campaign called ‘Good to Know’
http://www.google.com/goodtoknow/
Good to Know contains a plethora of information on how to keep yourself safe on the web, with topics covering Google’s security tools, down-to-earth explanations of those tough security terms, and a bunch of other great tips on how to manage your data.
Posted by Marcos Ramirez, Internal Technology Resident
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