What I've learned from getting and doing this internship, is that everything in life is about searching and learning strategies of what others have done, hard work is important, but it is not nearly as important as learning to do things the right way and finding and taking shortcuts. Nothing is too hard to be done, in fact, once you get in the circle, understand what others have done, mostly a few key points and tricks, everything can be unbelievably easy. I am a PhD student from a very small and ranked 200+ university in the US. I think every year, our entire department with over 2500 students, only have 1 or 2 students get to intern or work at the top companies, most graduates just work at local small companies around our school. Interning or even getting a job at Facebook is something that is very far away for me, for everyone around me. None of us would even think about it. One day, I was watching random youtube videos online, and saw one kid's video explaining how he got an internship at Google, from that one video, I started watching hundreds of videos, reading hundreds of posts online about getting an internship at these top companies. And to my surprise, it doesn't seem that hard at all. You still need to work hard (really not that hard), but towards the exact direction. With the information I learned from these videos and posts, I found that the most important thing in life is making sure every drop of your work is meaningful towards your goal, if you don't have a clear goal and a clear plan, most of your hard work is for nothing. Having a goal is easy, anything you wanna accomplish is a goal. Having a clear plan is also easy, just search for what others did. There's so much I wanna continue sharing, but I think these are the points I want you to take from my post, and these points will set you on the right path for whatever success you are seeking in life. 1. Be confident to seek for more, anything is possible, nothing is that hard, this is not sweet bullshit, this is the truth. You are only bad because you are not searching for the good. 2. Instead of thinking about "*** sounds hard." Google "How to ***", you'd be surprised how unbelievably easy things actually are. 3. Only work on things that are directly related and towards your goal, everything else is a waste of time and energy. 4. ALWAYS keep your eyes and ears open, join important chat groups, follow important discussions. 5. Don't try to figure out things on your own, the answers are always out there, find it and use it. Laziness is a virtue. Just think about things that you used to think that were impossible, but now when you look back, they all seem stupidly easy right? You just wish you knew the tricks and the right way, you would have saved so much trouble and headache. BTW, this internship was my first internship in my life, being in college for 10 years, always afraid of internships and working in the industry, I got a greatly exceed expectation rating from my internship, got the highest offer for PhD students. 160K base, 400K RSU, 100K Sign-on bonus. I look back now, it really was easy, because I collected enough information only by just watching youtube videos and posts, and I knew exactly what I needed to do. It's all tricks and strategies. #engineering #software #swe #internship
Congrats! I agree with your hindsight 100%.
Congrats.
Damn nice! Did you have much trouble getting internship interviews with poor ranked college?
None, bigger companies actually don't care much about school compare to smaller companies.
Nice. I have been thinking about a phd, but not sure yet. Don't have a great gpa so probably will be lower tier school.
Op would you be able to refer me?
Nope, already finished my internship, no longer have access to the internal referral tools. But just get online and ask random people nicely, they will most likely give you a referral. Because referral does not hurt them at all, in fact, if you get hired, they get a referral bonus, don't be afraid to ask.
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