1718T2 Silicon Valley/Reflection/Day4

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REFLECTION

Day 4

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Reflections

Student Name	Google
Adeline Jong	Google is the world’s leader in search. Muhammad Mohsin shared that Google’s strategy is to be able to pull out uncommon search for as many type of demographics as possible, hence being able to take a large portion of the market as compared to their competitors like yahoo or bing. He shared an interesting project where he developed the functionality where users can search a product they want to while chatting with friends, reducing friction and therefore improving the user’s experience. Google is always exciting because they move as fast as start ups even though the company is huge worldwide.
Andrew Tay	Google’s culture encourages Googlers to embrace failures. In fact, when someone commits a mistake, unlike other companies. Google doesn’t fire them. These Googlers are told to write a post-mortem (not to point fingers), to discuss about the problem and how to prevent it from repeating.
Benedict Wee	A interesting quote I learn today is that “Google has and always will be a engineering’s first company“ where they encourage open discussion where new ideas are shared and they have to convince everyone that the idea work and when there is a clash or a problem encounter, instead of find who cause the problem, they will focus on solving the problem as they will rather do it correctly and delay it from having it out on production.
Claire Teo	Creativity has always been one of the critical success factors of a technology company, and these companies have always been trying to think of ideas to provide resources and a good environment to nurture their employees.For google, the host mentioned that they work like an entrepreneur in google - which probably means they have a lot of autonomy over their projects which could mean that these people have more space to work on their ideas, hence allowing them to be more creative in their work. Host also mentioned that people who has a legit startup idea can start it in google, and google will give you all the resources that they need, don't need to go to work for a year to focus on their startup. It may seem that Google has such a great welfare for their staff, but it also seems like Google has plans to “retain” the ideas of their employees. People they hired are talents from the industry who may have a mind blowing business idea. By developing the ideas of their employees and keep it in under the wings of Google Inc, Google has an access to the top business ideas where there is a possibility that one of them may be another technology breakthrough.
Clara Chong	(In answering his take on why Facebook attracts younger employees and how does Google ensure they can continue to stay attractive to younger employees) “I think Facebook focuses more on the social aspect of things and maybe that’s why the younger generation is more attracted to it but I don’t think Google is losing out. Google solves different problems and serves varying needs and hence, perhaps younger employees is not what we need.” - Muhammad I think this is an important point to note for companies because although most of us are fresh grads and want to work at big tech firms, perhaps we are not always what they need and more senior and experienced talent is required. At one hand, it is true that it is a growing trend for the younger people to engage socially through tech and hence that demographic is needed for tech firms focusing on social connection. On the other hand, as Google prides itself as #1 in Machine Learning, teams of senior and younger employees who are experts in the field might be a better cultural fit for Google. However, as tech changes so rapidly, Google will adapt as well and as it includes more social aspects into its technology, there might be a shift towards hiring a younger demographic.
Clarissa Poedjiono	Google is different from any other tech companies because it has a more holistic mission that can relate well to people of any generation. Also, the rumour is also true that in Google, everyone gets to have their 20% of the working time to work on other stuff they want to pursue; Google will actually fund the idea that stands out the most and give the employees a full year long to work on the project.
Derrick Lee Ming Yang	Today, I learnt about Google Ventures and the Area 120 programme. The point of contact briefly mentioned that Google supports their employees in venturing in startups by allowing the pitch winners to work full-time on their own startup with full Google facilities. I honestly think that this is a very smart move by Google because not only do they own equity of the startup, they are building relationships with their employees and retaining them rather than allowing them to become competition.
Eustace Zheng	“One of the most important factors when it comes to job sustainability is the people around you, to be at Google is a great privilege where one works with the best and are constantly challenged, the team is what keeps one yearning forward to work”
Felix Wu	Google is first a engineering/technology company then a business company. They would delay a release of a software to ensure things are correctly built. Google also focuses a lot on machine learning and is probably the best form for machine learning right now. Also, as a business student, being a product manager would probably be the most appropriate.
Student Name	Google
Goh Jia Yi Timothy	Good working environment with the freedom to choose what project to work on and even have courses to continue to improve your skills!
Goh Jin Qiang	Engineering-driven company that is constantly finding things to improve on and make it better.
Jacquelyn See	Google has a flexible working culture as it gives employees the power to decide on their work schedule, as well as the freedom to approach work that best suits their capabilities. They also encourage a startup culture within the firm, allowing employees to unleash their creativity and build something in a low risk environment.
Jamie Chew	I’ve always thought that the cultures at big tech firms, such as Facebook and Google, are similar. However, Google’s visit gave me a refreshing perspective - it was more diverse in terms of people, technicalities and culture. Personally, I felt that Facebook employees seemed to be happier and see value in their work, compared to those in Google. Of course, both companies are equally prestigious, so at the end of the day, it really depends on what we value most when finding our “dream job”. After all, the pastry chefs at Google became millionaires and I’m pretty good at making brownies.
Jared Sim	Even as an engineer, management was really receptive to my ideas and I was able to make a product from scratch in the collaborative environment here
Jeremy Bachtiar	Be proactive in learning and dont be afraid to voice out your ideas. Dont stop learning and always find opportunities to improve yourself.
Jolyn Yio	Google employees from SMU taught me alot more about what the world thinks of google versus what is really going on there, it is important to know firsthand about their systems rather than judge their competitive processes.
Jonathan Chew	“It’s more important to show your experience through portfolios and work outside of your time with studies”
Moses Fam	“We have to make sure that people coming in can utilise it” Making it usable for everyone is key.
Remy Ng	Google has so many query searches in a day that they have to scale a chart of the number of queries that they have by x5 to fit it in a piece of paper
Student Name	Google
Rizudin Bin Jalar	Take on more challenging projects to challenge yourself.
Shilpa Suresh	The experience at Google was highly informative. We learned a lot about the direction in which Google is going with especially in the machine learning space. It’s very interesting to know that they are encouraging all their engineers to learn machine learning from the ground up.This move shows that Google predicts that machine learning will come to be widely used by everyone learning computer science and may no longer be a standalone field in the foreseeable future.
Tan Jian Hua	I’ve learnt that Google is a forward thinking company that has an inclusive culture and encourages employees to learn new skills
Tan Ming Sheng	Technology are constantly changing, so does our skills set continue to grow and for us to make a better future ahead of us
Tay Wei Xuan	“Google believes that sometimes the best ideas come from us employees.”
Terence Yeo	Our host helped to make the Gboard possible. Google’s Area 120 initiative helps to cultivate the entrepreneurial spirit and helps employees embrace failures.
Wong Zhe Yin, Treasa	“Wear your failure as a badge of honor” Google encourages employees to create their own startups within Google in order to cultivate the entrepreneurial spirit within the company. The amount of work done is more important than the amount of hours spent at work in Google.
Xavier See	Google is currently the top for artificial intelligence as I do not know of other companies that are investing so much of its resources into AI. At google, we learnt about some of their new developments, such as their ebot. Google is confident about being the top of AI compared to other companies. This is advantageous for them as AI is the uprising technology of the century. Google.com/ai page shows its commitment towards developing machine learning technologies and systems.
Zhuo Yunying (Kaelyn)	The visit to an established giant start-up like Google exposes me the differences with other smaller or newer companies. One clear distinction with younger company like Facebook lies in the area of age profile of the employees and the working culture. Facebook has a younger age group of employees than Google as Facebook deals mostly with social media while Google has both matured technology solutions and other new tools at the same time. It is interesting to see how the type of software solutions determine the type of employees attracted. For working culture, I didn’t know that Google actually emphasises a lot more on good engineering practices and ensuring the products are “perfect” before the actual launch. On the other hand, Facebook focuses more on flexibility and experimentation.