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Internships and Grad Jobs Overseas

March 16th, 2011

This is a cross post from Beta, a news letter for CSE students written by CSE students

If you’re a second year cse student or above, it might be time to start thinking about what you want to do after uni. A great way to get started is with an internship. Several companies offer internships in Sydney, but I hope to convince some of you that doing an internship overseas or even taking a grad job in the US is a good idea.

First, a bit of background: If you’re a good software developer who is about to graduate from a computer science (CS) or software engineering (SE) degree, your job opportunities in Australia are quite limited compared to a student with similar talents and skills in the US. Google is probably on top of your list, and then possibly Atlassian, and if you’ve done a bit of research, a few smaller companies that you like (and that’s a big if because they sure are hard to find. Ever heard of micro-forte? OKLabs?). Your other options include doing a PhD to further delay your entrance into the real world in the hopes that conditions will be better when you’re done, or self employment which includes being an indie or freelance developer and starting your own company; anything to make a decent living without ending up at a bank or any organization that doesn’t appreciate recursion or python’s clean syntax as much as you do.

Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook are the big 4 of technology companies, and then there are some you might not have even considered, such as Amazon, Nintendo, Nvidia, and Adobe. Out of those companies, only Google hire software and CS grads in their Sydney office. If a PhD and self employment are off the table, then Google stands above the rest as the best place to work, whether as an intern while you’re doing your degree, or as a graduate when you finish. Google Sydney is a great place to work (just ask anybody currently working there); but they can’t hire everyone and for one reason or another, you may also not want to work in Google Sydney.

What you may not realize is that the big 4 tech companies (as well as many others like Amazon and Nvidia) all offer internships and grad jobs to students all over the world, including Australia. Since they’re all competing for the same pool of excellent CS students coming out of American universities, they treat their interns and employees very well, and this is reflected in their salaries and working conditions. These companies treat their interns very well. They will sort out your visas (even if you’re not an Australian citizen), fly you to the US, pay a decent salary, and subsidize a lot of your accommodation costs. A good CS or SE grad in the US can expect to get at least 75k USD as a starting salary plus benefits and bonuses, and often more. This figure was a lot better when the exchange rate was was favoring the USD, but it’s still a pretty good figure. A good CS student in the US will have done some internships at these companies and receive several offers from different companies, which make starting salaries even higher. In comparison, the same CS or SE grad in Australia will often have to work at a bank to get close to that salary, and the work conditions for software engineers will almost certainly be worse. If you’ve seen the recent cse email about starting salary statistics, the highest and many of the above-average salaries are paid to people going to work overseas.

I just returned from an internship at Microsoft, and overall it was a great experience. They had intern social events every two weeks and many of us got heavily subsidized rental cars to drive everywhere. Interns even got free gym membership like full time employees.

At Microsoft, the work environment is great for engineers. Most engineers get to work at around 9:30-10am, and leave at 5-6pm, most full time employees have their own office to minimize distractions, and an unlimited supply of free soft drinks, milk and coffee.

Google of course is famous for their free buffets, gaming rooms (and even laundry services in their Silicon Valley office), and I’m sure Apple and Facebook have their own perks as well. Mark Zuckerberg used to take interns out to lunch!

Even if your eventual goal is to have your own company, or even if you don’t want to move overseas, doing a 3 month internship in the U.S. at one of these companies is still a great experience, and unlike anything you’ll find in Australia.

Your peers might site Macquarie bank or Deloitte (two of the biggest recruiters of CSE students) as good options, but these companies are not technology companies. The best marketing student will want a job at Proctor and Gamble, not Microsoft’s marketing department. Similarly, if salary is equal, the best CS student will take a job at Google over a job at Macquarie’s IT department any day.

Of course, the focus of this article is about the benefits of working at big companies overseas. If you don’t want to move overseas, or prefer to work in smaller companies that move fast, allow you to use your favorite open source tools and decide which tools and frameworks to use that, look out for an article by me in the next few issues of Beta! I’ll be profiling some of the hidden gems of great places to work in Sydney that don’t quite have the recruiting budget of a big co to tell you about themselves.

 

Update:

I should also point out that the cost of living a fair bit lower in most places in the US is also lower than it is in Sydney, in addition, some states like Washington (where Microsoft headquarters reside) don’t have an income tax, hence you would only pay the federal income tax, which is much lower compared to the income tax in Australia.

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Gripes with Android

January 9th, 2011

As little as a month ago, if anyone asked me what phone to get, I would have told them to get an Android phone. Today, I’m not so sure. While I’m still a big Android fan, there are a few things missing or broken in Android that should have been there a long time ago.

1. Support for proxy settings for wireless networks. This wasn’t an issue until recently I started working for a company with a proxy authenticated wireless network. While there are ways to enable proxy settings on some rooted devices, they only work for simple proxy firewalls and doesn’t support authentication. While I work at a large software company with a mailing list of hundreds of self described Android enthusiasts, no one seems to have found a way to get on to the corporate wireless network consistently across devices.  This has to be the most complained about missing feature on the Android since release. My friends with iPhones and Win7 Phones do not share my pain as they both have proxy settings built in. If Android is going to take any market share away from Blackberry users, this has to be a high priority feature since many corporate wireless networks, and even many university wireless networks use proxy authentication. It’s such a basic feature for a wireless device that most people I’ve met, and myself included are surprised that it doesn’t exist when we have to use it.

2. Fragmentation of devices. This isn’t an issue with the majority of developers with CRUD apps that don’t have fancy graphics or hardware requirements, but many developers of games and widgets complain about the lack of standardization. While most Android devices are powerful enough for most developers needs, they still have to support the lowest end devices because they’re the ones whose users are going to leave one star ratings when they discover that the app doesn’t work. iPhone is the most consistent device to develop for and despite Android numbers overtaking iPhone numbers in the US, it’s still by far the most profitable. The recently launched Win7 Mobile has put some very high requirements for handset manufacturers intending to run Win7 Mobile. This will ensure that developers will be able to spend more time creating powerful high quality apps and less time worrying about device compatibility. There’s no doubt in my mind that this decision was made after seeing the problems with Android, and after seeing the device for myself and what others have thought of it, this is Microsoft’s shot at coming back into the smart phone market after the massive failure with the Kin phone.

3. Fragmentation of markets. This is not yet a huge problem, but every few weeks, I hear an announcement of some new Android market that is going to be launched promising to be better than what Google offers. In the US, phone carriers have began launching their own markets and some even won’t ship devices with the Android market built in. Amazon recently announced their developer preview of their Android market that will be much more like Apples Appstore with an approval process and quality standards for apps. Handster recently contacted many Android developers about their Market which from the looks of it might eventually support some new business models for apps. This is not strictly a bad thing, Google has said that “Android is an open platform” and people can do what ever they want with it, and no doubt there will be a lot of innovation from third parties trying different business models, and app distribution models to see what sticks, but this will hurt the users who will be overrun with choice about where to get apps. Apples innovation with the AppStore simplified how people bought software for their phone, they put everything in one place to reduce the amount of time looking for software, and put a quality standard in place to ensure that users where at least getting quality apps with a consistent design. Android seems to be doing the opposite.

4. The sorry excuse for a web interface for the android market. During Google IO 2010 in May this year, it was announced that there will be a Android Webstore like the iTunes store for the iPhone where users could browse and purchase apps and have those apps installed automatically on your phone. 7 months later, there is no word of this webstore. The closes thing we have is AppBrain, a third party app aggregator and app with a subset of the features of what the android web store should have been, including click to install on your phone.

5. Spam apps and the lack of quality requirements for Android apps. The android market is flooded with spam, junk and porn apps. Just take a look at the “Just in” section and you’ll see what I mean. The barrier to entry for publishing an app is almost non-existent. It’s completely inline with Google’s culture of giving users the power to decide what’s best, but it also detrimental to user experience.

I expect many of these features will be added or fixed over time, but it’s frustrating to see how slow things are moving. While a few months isn’t a long time, and Android certainly has improved a lot over the last few months, it’s still slower than the pace I would expect Google with the best Software Engineers in the world to go. Google’s fast moving startup days are disappearing and with so many products on the market, they’re just beginning to turn into a slow moving but very profitable tech company joining the ranks of Microsoft and IBM. I miss the days when the “don’t be evil” Google was young and quirky where everything they did was golden. And while they’re still the best company in the world, they’re losing their midas touch and as a Google fan, I’m starting to lose hope.

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My Lists Problem

August 23rd, 2009

I like lists. Lists are simple one dimensional structures. They can be ordered, or chaotic. I make lots of them, and you probably do too.

I have a list of things to do, a list of books I want to read, a list of websites in my bookmarks, a list of good ideas, a list of quotes from various famous people, and many more.

The problem is that they’re not all in one place. Some of those lists live only on my mind because it’s too inconvenient to write them down especially when chances are I’m going to lose them anyway.

I want a better way to manage my lists. Google Tasks is great for managing my todo lists, and any lists that where items are frequently added and removed, because it’s convenient to do so. But it’s messy. Each list needs it’s own category, but no sub categories, no tags, no way to order those categories. If you have lots of lists, Google Tasks just doesn’t scale to meet your needs.

I want lists to be available where ever I go, I want to be able to share my lists with other people, I want my lists to be searchable, tag-able, and scalable.

Do other people have list problems? Maybe I should try and solve it.

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This Is Why Sms Is Expensive, And Google Is Trying To Solve This Problem

August 19th, 2009

A few days ago I posed the question, “why is sms so expensive?“. In a related opinion article on the Wall Street Journal, Why AT&T Killed Google Voice, Andy Kessler explains how Google voice is bringing real competition to the market.

With Google Voice, you have one Google phone number that callers use to reach you, and you pick up whichever phone—office, home or cellular—rings. You can screen calls, listen in before answering, record calls, read transcripts of your voicemails, and do free conference calls. Domestic calls and texting are free, and international calls to Europe are two cents a minute. In other words, a unified voice system, something a real phone company should have offered years ago.

[...]

As any parent of teenagers knows, text messages are 20 cents each, or $5,000 per megabyte. After the first month and a $320 bill, we all pony up $10 a month for unlimited texting plans. Same for Internet access. With my iPhone, I pay $30 a month for unlimited data service (actually, one gigabyte per month). Is it worth that? The à la carte price for other not-so-smart phones is $5 per megabyte (one-thousandth of a gigabyte) per month. So we buy monthly plans. Margins in AT&T’s Wireless segment are an embarrassingly high 25%.

The trick in any communications and media business is to own a pipe between you and your customers so you can charge what you like. Cellphone companies don’t have wired pipes, but by owning spectrum they do have a pipe and pricing power.

Aren’t there phone competitors to knock down the price? Hardly. Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and others all joined AT&T in bidding huge amounts for wireless spectrum in FCC auctions, some $70-plus billion since the mid-1990s. That all gets passed along to you and me in the form of higher fees and friendly oligopolies that don’t much compete on price. Google Voice is the new competition.

AT&T has an exclusive deal with apple in the US, and this, Mr. Kessler leads us to believe, is part of the reason why Apple rejected the Google Voice iPhone App.

There should be more companies like Google.

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Why Your Business Name is Important for Google

July 24th, 2009

Google has trillions of web pages in it’s indices, how are your customers going to find your website out of the hundreds of competitors out there?

When you’re picking a name, run it past Google. If you see a website url or website title that matches that name, then you already have stiff competition because someone else has already established a top position for that key word. Even if the top websites that come up aren’t competing businesses, the fact that they come up first when you search for them means that you’ll have to compete with them for that key word.

Here are some tips for picking Google friendly business names:

  1. Don’t pick names or phrases with ambiguous meanings or results. “Candy Shop” is a horrible name for a business even if you’re in the confectionery industry because it’s a song by 50cents. Not only will you be competing against other confectionery companies, but you’ll be competing against 50cents and you’re almost guaranteed to loose.
  2. Pick a name that currently has no Google ads appearing in search results. Google Adwords operate on a keyword based auction system, so if you want to advertise your business with Google ads, it’s much cheaper for you to be the first ad that comes up. If there is no competition, then you’ve already won the advertising war. Furthermore, having high ranking ads is a quick way to gain page rank if people find you to be more relevant.
  3. Don’t pick names where someone else has already established a dominant search position. ‘watch it’ is a bad name because a Canadian watch company is the obvious first result that comes up.
  4. The easiest way to win is to be the only one competing. This tip speaks for itself and generalizes the three points above.

All these tips tell you to avoid competition if you can, which is especially relevant if you’re a niche business. They’re not as relevant if you’re trying to take over the top position for a key word. That’s much harder to do and much more expensive. If you’re just starting out (the picking a name stage generally counts as “starting out”), then you want to avoid that until you have the resources to do so.

You don’t need the most relevant key word to your business, because the most relevant keyword for you maybe the most relevant keyword for a lot of other people and you’ll end up sharing that “relevance” if you’re competing against them. Think of a niche name for your business, so when people search for you, that’s the first thing that comes up because no one else has tried to use that name before.

I don’t mean to pick names that are completely meaningless one word utterances like a lot of “web2.0″ companies are doing because they’re hard to remember and it’s easy for a customer to forget what services you actually provide. For that to work, you have to wow your customers to make sure the remember you and make them keep coming back. That in itself is hard enough. Instead pick a name that’s relevant to your business, so you’ll be remembered. If they can remember your name, then they will be able to search for you. The most searched term on Google in the last few month has been “facebook”. People will search your name on Google even if the URL is obvious!

To recap. Pick a business name that
1) is relevant to what you do – because you want to be remembered
2) avoids search keyword competition – why make it harder on yourself when you don’t have to?

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google: “we’re casual because it makes us productive”

July 16th, 2009

I recently attended at talk at the google plex sydney organised by the Young Leaders Network.

There was a lot of interest from the audience about their casual work environment. The googlers where quick to point out that they didn’t choose to be casual because they wanted to be different, they have a casual work environment because people are more productive when they are comfortable, and comfortable means casual for a lot of people.

Productivity drives their choice in corporate culture, not the other way around. That really is a profound yet intuitive approach. A truly google way of thinking.

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Twitter isn’t that great

June 16th, 2009

Just saw a post about google suggest for ‘work is’ showing that people hate their jobs, so I tried one for twitter.

According to google suggest:

twitter is crap 5,900,000 results
twitter is a waste of time 3,410,000 results
twitter is lame 2,590,000 results
twitter is over capacity 1,200,000 results
twitter is down 60,900,000 results
twitter israel 4,020,000 results
twitter is for losers 967,000 results
twitter issues 64,000,000 results
twitter is for twits 495,000 results
twitter is not email 35,600,000 results

All negative.

Interestingly if you search ‘work is f’, “work is fun” comes up with 363 million results, so it’s not all bad out there! Searching for ‘twitter is g’ also returns 96 million results for twitter. I wonder why google returns the most negative of the results while some of the positive ones clearly have more results.

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SIFE UNSW: the revival of frugal

January 30th, 2009

Well not quite.

Let me explain. For the past couple years, I’ve been the IT Manager of SIFEUNSW, the UNSW division of a much larger organization Students In Free Enterprise, which aims to bring young entrepreneur’s attention to non-profit charities.

One of the projects that we had in 2006-2007 was “Frugal: The magazine that made cents”, pun intended. The goal was to create an self sustaining online business magazine targeted at young people. Every week, the SIFEUNSW team working on frugal would approach people to interview, write guides to educate young people about personal finance, etc.

I only joined SIFE shortly after the end of the SIFE year (July), and did not see this project in operation, but from what I can tell, it was quite successful. Unfortunately, Andrew, the project leader for Frugal had already graduated that year and would not be participating in SIFEUNSW in the following year. Progress for the project halted as the beginning of the new SIFE year came around.

This is not uncommon for a project at SIFE. Much of the focus of SIFE is around an international competition held every year in July where hundreds of university students from various countries in the world present their projects to a panel of judges in front of an audience of fellow SIFErs, sponsors, charity workers, and successful entrepreneurs. SIFE teams spend so much time preparing for this competition, that once it ends, there is a period of relief and celebration that usually means down time for projects.

Unfortunately for Frugal, we never recovered from that down time and we were just short of making the project sustainable which would only require a few volunteers who enjoy writing, and a few regular guest posters a month, but building a team like that is easier said than done when nearly all of our human resources are business students who are busy studying and often also working.

The project has revived in the form of “Fully Frugal” which is a video version of the project with similar goals, but there has been no new content on Frugal since mid 2007.

Oh, and why is frugal ‘not quite’ reviving? I just noticed a 30% increase in traffic on website this month reversing a slow downward trend.

frugal_sife_trend

I wonder if the financial crisis is making people google for financial advice and driving up the traffic. The site is pretty well SEO optimized despite not having any new content for over a year.

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