A Google SWE on Networking, Securing Jobs, and Arduinos

Hi everyone! My name is Anson Lee and I am a Grade 11 student at Agincourt Collegiate Institute. Last Saturday, I had the privilege of attending Austin Teshuba’s Think Tank on “UI/UX Design, Software Development and Product Management" as a part of the Associate National Lead program. As part of this program, aside from getting to build and host my own conference, I get to build connections with industry professionals and leaders.

Austin is a fifth year student at Western Ivey. To date, he has completed four internships: one at Deloitte, three at Google, and he will be returning to Google for their Associate Product Manager Program. As a SWE, Austin spoke about two topics he's experienced with: #1 the Job Search, and #2 Arduinos.

During the Job Search part of his lecture, he talked about networking and the three steps to securing a job. One thing I took away from his networking advice was that the best connections you find are from a natural relationship with the person, e.g. “You really loved what he/she talked about or what he/she does”, “You are curious”. In general, you want your conversations to be less transactional and more real and authentic :)

For the three steps in securing a job, Austin outlined:

1. Experience in Building

2. Securing the Interview

3. Securing the Offer

Even before you get started with securing a job, you need to figure out what you want to do, what you're passionate about, and start developing experience and knowledge in those areas. Then you need to summarize relevant things you've done in a skimmable resume. Lastly, once you've applied, and if you received an interview, you should dress appropriately, research the company, and use the STAR method to answer situational questions.

One of my biggest takeaways from this section of the lecture, is that job hunting isn't fun by any means, but it is a chance for you to have self-reflection and to get more comfortable with rejection and taking chances.

I also had the chance to learn about Arduinos with Austin. An Arduino is a computer that is mostly based off of peripherals/modules (Peripherals: a device we connect to a computer to provide input or output). By connecting different peripherals to a bread board and programming it to perform certain actions at certain events, we can program many simple computers, including a Programmable Light, Toaster, and Thermostat, and so on.

In conclusion, "UI/UX Design, Software Development and Product Management" session with Austin was very technical and informative. I learned a lot more about how you go from taking your interests and using them to find a potential job, to networking better, to what a bread board is in Arduino! This session was super interesting and I would like to thank Austin and Illuminate Universe for giving me this opportunity to attend this session.

Moving forward in the future, I will remember to do more self-reflection to trying and identify the jobs and career I want before applying directly to them, and to make use of my Arduino knowledge in case anyone wants to talks about tech and coding stuff with me!