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Diary of a Summer Intern - Rio
July 19, 2012
The Tokyo summer heat brings just enough of a breeze to ring my neighbor’s wind chime on his balcony but it’s not enough to stop the unbearable humidity from transforming into sweat. The onset of summer here coincides with my halfway point as an intern at Google, and what a ride it’s been! I even had the chance to experience my first earthquake at the office!
As part of my effort to learn about what it means to be a product manager at Google, I’ve made it a point to meet 3 different people for lunch per week and ask them what they thought made a good product manager. I really like the advice Ken Tokusei, the Director for Search, gave me. He said to imagine where you want to be when your feature launches, and then to work back from there.
One might imagine that all you need to launch a feature is to make it, but there’s people to reach out to and a lot of priorities to weigh each feature against - is this going to have the most amount of impact? Is it going to take a lot of effort to launch? Who needs to review it and approve it? What sort of UI changes does this require? Does it make business sense?
Being an APM also means having a very close ear to the ground, and listening to what users are saying and reacting to. The product forums are a great way to monitor feedback and reactions. Interestingly, there are two kinds of people who react to captions on YouTube: those who have no idea they exist, and those who use them prolifically as a way to reach deaf and hearing-impaired users.
I also try to find ways to get involved in different Google events. I pulled an all-nighter to watch the
2012 Google I/O keynote
livestreamed from the Tokyo office, simultaneously translated into Japanese for 100 invitees. The
Google Glass demo
was at 3 in the morning, but no one could sleep through all that excitement and adrenaline!
One of the memorable highlights so far outside the Google office was participating in an intern offsite trip to Mount Fuji. The trip was almost canceled as a result of bad weather, but due to a series of remarkable good luck, most of us made it to the top. We even managed to
host a Google+ Hangout
from about 10,000ft up!
The Tokyo office also welcomed the other Associate Product Manager intern, Aki, who is working with the Chrome team. He’s actually also from Stanford, and we often catch breakfast together.
- Rio
Fun Google Fact:
The floor I’m on at the Google office has conference rooms named after the train stops on the Yamanote train line in the same exact order (since the rooms are essentially in a loop around the building, and the train line is also a giant loop). The Yamanote line carries almost as much passengers on its single line every day as the entire New York subway system does in the same time!
Posted by Jessica Safir, University Programs
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