7 min read
WARNING Possibly the longest post since "What a Day" but it's got some funny moments WARNING
I don't remember much of yesterday besides the fact that I was in one rotten mood. I had a meeting with my manager hoping to get some tips on how to improve my internship performance and let him know what I got done this week. Instead it turned into a code review in which the code I sent in (that I thought was all set since I tested it and it worked as expected) wasn't right. I left feeling upset and embarrassed and made a note to fix it.
Between that and various other small things throughout the afternoon, I started to feel worse as they piled up. I felt like I was digging my own grave in terms of converting to full-time. Every meeting and round of comments on code reviews felt like they were accumulating evidence that I actually don't know what I'm doing. I sat in my office until 12:30 AM feeling pretty awful and even worse because I wasn't supposed to have any reason to be unhappy working here.
Waking up this morning I had no motivation to go anywhere but home. Still, I left the same time as usual with one miserable look on my face as I weaved through all the people on my morning commute. I'm convinced half the people in NYC don't actually live here and are just visiting.
My expression didn't change much as I made my way up to 5BB for my green smoothie and then to my office. I didn't even see my mentor but somehow he knew something was off because literally the instant I sat down at my desk and logged in I got a ping from him. I explained that I'd rather be home and specified after that home meant back in Connecticut, away from the city. He suggested getting lunch to talk about it so we decided after my 12-1 PM meeting. (I don't know who planned our weekly team meetings for lunchtime, but that's the way it is.)
Not long after he had an idea and asked if I like sushi. That was a pretty good question because the answer is absolutely. He suggested he introduce me to 2 other interns and that we go to a sushi place nearby as his treat or just the two of us if I wasn't in the mood for extra company. I decided why not even though I was still in a bad mood.
My smoked salmon appetizer
The place was literally right across from Google. I could see our sign from where I sat. We ordered a ton of different sushi for the main course after having our appetizers which included these strange salty beanpod things, miso soup, and shrimp dumplings.
I've never seen so much sushi all at one time
We had a wide variety on the platter: lobster, eel, salmon, tuna, there was even 6 with avocado and peanut butter which I wasn't adventurous enough to try.
After a long string of interesting and bizarre topics ranging from male coworkers dragging each other into pole dancing classes to whether it's ethical to let a train of babies fall of a cliff or throw a person on the track to stop the train, eventually the interns started asking me what I do outside of work. "Well, nothing really, I don't have time." I explained I'm in the office so late that the instant I get out of work I have to immediately go back to my apartment to shower and sleep. They asked if I'd go to a (regular) dance class with them tonight but I said that was kind of short notice and I didn't have a change of clothes.
Eventually I explained that at one point I practiced jujutsu (yes, that's how Wa Shin Ryu spells it) so maybe I'd be more inclined to do that if anything for physical exercise outside of work. Apparently Google does offer jujutsu classes Fridays at 9, I've just never heard about them. The two interns had never done it but thought it sounded exciting and offered to go to classes with me.
Later we got to talking about code line counts for the internship and to my surprise (since I'm trudging through learning Go AND C++) I was way over the norm. One intern said her first internship here resulted in about 300 lines of code. The other was shocked at hearing anything over 1,000. As of 10 days ago, my line count was just over 2,000 (it's somewhere around 3,000 now). I know that's a poor metric since line counts for equivalent logic between languages vary, but I'm still somehow above what's expected.
Then I got the good old "burnout talk" and I explained I was only meeting expectations and working hard to do better. Meeting expectations is the second-lowest performance rating out of 5 levels, so in my mind that's a D on the A to F grading scale. My mentor told me that's actually the gold standard and that the top 3 levels are only used for employees who are undergoing consideration for promotion.
Just as one intern was starting to ask if we were ready to head back, ice cream was unexpectedly brought out. After dessert we ended up making plans to watch LOTR at Drive-In on Monday since two of us hadn't ever seen it, me being one of them.
By the time I got back and sat down at my desk it was 3:30. I had not gotten anything done besides reverting a single-line changelist. Just after 4 I saw a notification from a teammate in the team chat and had an instant gut feeling for some reason that it wasn't good. Someone's CL somehow broke all the tests in the team directory. I instantly assumed it was my fault. Turns out I was right! I still don't understand how I pulled that off. I felt embarrassed as I approved my first CL... one to rollback one of mine.
My meeting with my mentor got pushed to an hour earlier so after that personal debacle, I went up to the 15th floor once again in a bad mood. After explaining what happened, I was told he once did something similar and that it wasn't a big deal. Still, I felt awful and that this is just another piece of evidence that I'm not ready for full-time. Yet for some reason, dead-serious after telling the humorous build-breaking story, he said that I was probably in the 99th percentile of interns based on performance.
My mental reaction after hearing that.
Don't give me that eye-roll, imagine the smartest person you've ever met and imagine over 3,000 people at least that smart all in the same building and that's where I work.
I don't believe this to be accurate considering he's never seen a line of code I've written although he did talk to my manager. I'm pretty sure though that my relative performance was never brought up. Not only that, but a good number of these interns are either returning or have worked at other tech giants before coming here or go to the top computer science universities. Yet somehow he said he bets that I'll be here as a full-timer (not like I'm competing for one of only a set amount of openings, but still...).
Regardless, he's not one of the Googlers to have any say in whether or not I get hired, which is unfortunate considering he's the only one I can say for sure is happy about how I'm doing so far. I want to believe him but everything else seems to suggest I'm only doing okay at best, which is leading to cognitive dissonance.
After the meeting, I was a little late to the one directly afterwards with my team. Of course one of the major topics was my build-breaking blunder but I was relieved that nobody was upset or mad at me. Had this been my previous internship I imagine I'd be scolded for a solid half an hour. So there's good news.
Still, it was a bit frustrating trying to make up for all the hours I lost today in meetings and at lunch. I actually ended up leaving around 1 AM tonight. Regardless of how much code I've already done, there's still a long way to go.