Hung Truong: The Blog!

Microsoft Internship Response + Apple Phone Interview Get!

I heard back from the Microsoft person. Apparently they think I have “great potential,” yet they don’t want to continue with the interview process. Which is just the kind of corporate doublespeak I’d expect from a place like Microsoft. I think it’s unfair to judge a company as large as Microsoft by pigeonholing it into a “good” or “bad” category. But let’s just say things are not looking good for the company. First they seem to be losing the Yahoo takeover, then they reject me. Don’t worry, there’s some sarcasm in there! A little.

In other news, I just got an email from Apple for an internship in their iPhone software group. Cool! I think that would be the best fit as any with me + Apple since I’m not too into the low level details of OS coding. But doing iPhone software would be really cool! The listing on the website didn’t mention any kind of internship in iPhone, so I’m glad I took a chance and talked to the Apple booth when I went to the engineering career fair last week.

I still haven’t heard back from Zazzle but it’s still early in the internship game. Actually, I haven’t heard back from many companies. I’m not really sweating it or anything though. I’ll find something to do during the Summer, even if it’s not with a company.

There IS Free Lunch!

So one of the things that has surprised me about grad school in comparison to my undergrad is the large amounts of free food being offered every day. I think it has to do with the fact that UNM was a pretty small school and Michigan is a behemoth of schools. I’m always getting emails just from my own school within the U (School of Information) about events with pizza and pop (soda!) included.

There’s almost always free food for me to eat on Thursdays. Fridays are good too. I actually end up spending quite a bit of time planning where my next free meal will come from. For example, there’s a Teach For America thing going on tomorrow at the Union that will have food from Zingerman’s. Thursday there’s a company info session and Friday there’s a panel/session, both of which will offer free food. That’s already like, $20 in food savings for me (if I had eaten out at some place near campus, which would be the most likely scenario)!

At one point I pondered whether I could run an experment: to eat only free food for the entire semester! I decided that I would probably end up starving or getting really weak while begging for food.

I found a site called “Hungry Hungry Coeds” that lists free food events at some select campuses. Luckily it seems that the creators of the site went to Michigan, or at least the main contributor goes here. I’ll be checking it routinely to see if I can maximize my free food intake. Maybe I should also keep a log of all the free food I eat per week. Could end up being another blog…

Internship Status Update: Microsoft (Microhoo?) and Zazzle

Since the last time I wrote about internships, I’ve applied to quite a few places. The two places I’ve heard back from so far are Microsoft (I talked with some people at the Engineering Career Fair) and Zazzle (they replied to my email like, 45 minutes after I sent my resume and cover letter!).

Both companies I “interviewed” with (I got some short informational interviews) were looking for PM types. The PM here is either product or project management. I think they’re pretty similar and the actual job really depends on the context of which company it’s at.

I think the PM stuff differs quite a bit from standard software engineering in that you’re expected to think about the product as a whole rather than the implementation details alone. So that involves stuff like considering the design, the user, how decisions affect both, and tradeoffs that each solution results in. It’s pretty interesting stuff that requires a lot of thought. I’m sort of training myself to think a bit more critically about things than I have in the past.

Anyway, hopefully some more companies will contact me too. I’m still waiting to hear back from Zazzle and Microsoft (which might include Yahoo, who knows? But that possible merger probably won’t happen for a while). Hopefully I can get a better idea of what these jobs entail, and make a decision on what I want to end up doing after I graduate.

Office Snapshots: A Blog With Snapshots… of Offices…

While looking at places to intern during the Summer, I came across this blog called Office Snapshots. You would think a blog that had nothing but pictures of tech company offices wouldn’t work, but oh, how it does!

The author gets pictures of offices through Flickr, or sometimes by actually visiting the offices himself. Then there’s a funny weird writeup about the company and their office. The blogger doesn’t take himself too seriously with quotes like this:

McAfee has been keeping our computers safe from spam, viruses, spyware, phishing, and the like since the 80s. They’re like the sheriffs of the web. Except they have less shoot-outs and more Internet (a lot more).

Overall, it’s a good read. There’s something really enjoyable at seeing how cool other people’s offices are versus your own. I mean, my office doesn’t even have windows, though I do get my own burgundy line of office equipment. Maybe I should send pictures to Office Snapshots to see if they’ll get posted…

They Might Be Giants Podcast: 31A!

For those of you keeping track, I sorta like TMBG again. They’ve gained back my trust with their newest album and powerful live show.

Anyway, today is a new podcast day! TMBG was pretty much doing podcasts before they existed (even before iPods existed!) via their dial a song service. So this is sort of an extension of that. Except the sound quality is much, much better.

Of special note are some new versions of old songs! According to the TMBG wiki, the songs were recorded at XM Studio, whatever that means. It’s pretty neat hearing new versions of Shadow Government, Withered Hope, and Mr. Me! The turtle sounds thing is pretty funny too, mentioning the Fibonacci Sequence. There’s also some songs about numbers that are no doubt directed towards turning children into fans of TMBG at an early age. Clever…

Anyway, I kind of want to split the podcast up into the individual songs and listen to them over and over and over. It’s that good!