[新聞] The Idol-ized Yahoo Intern Summer
eWeek 專訪曾經在Yahoo! Summer Intern 並且最後拿到
Full time offer的 College New Hire
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2169409,00.asp
The Idol-ized Yahoo Intern Summer
By Deborah Perelman
August 10, 2007
Water balloon fights, game tickets and for one talented singer, a free iPhone.
Such is the life of a Yahoo summer intern.
Oh, to be young and a summer intern at Yahoo, where an easily competitive
atmosphere is dampened by good management, where Fridays are reserved for
community service, where executives have their doors—and ears—open at all
times for new ideas.
ADVERTISEMENT Chen Yang, a Yahoo intern during the summer of 2006, can tell
you all about it.
"I was working in the linguistic libraries, which supports internal usage of
search. I was writing C++ test work whose framework could be used by the QA
guys, to test for performance and efficiency," said Yang.
For Yang, working at Yahoo wasn't just about learning more about the company,
but about getting to know the American workplace itself. Yang lived in Taiwan
until his senior year of college, when he transferred to Stony Brook University
in New York, and had never held a job in the United States before his internship.
He interned at Yahoo while working on his Master's degree in computer science
from New York University.
"You got a chance to see how the whole thing worked here. I didn't really have
any working experience in the U.S. before Yahoo, but here I got to see how they
envisioned the Internet. Without this, I would have only known these guys through
their blogs," Yang said.
At the end of the summer, Yang received an offer to work full time after he
graduated. He currently works as a Technical Yahoo in the company's search
marketing division. Having interned at the company, he is happy to have a
greater knowledge of the Sunnyvale, Calif., company and its workings than
he would have without it. He still sees his old manager regularly.
"My manager was very nice to me, so much more than a manager. We always talked
about what was going on, and he always followed up with me. He helped me figure
out the whole process, not just the internship," said Yang.
His manager was able to create an atmosphere in which interns were excited to
work hard, but not in a cutthroat competition with one another, a sentiment
expressed by interns in other highly sought-after internships.
"I didn't feel pressure, but that was really thanks to my manager. I really
felt that people were really listening to my ideas," he said.
Yang's favorite part of his summer was the program itself, which was filled
with opportunities to meet executives and learn more about the company. "The internship was not just a chance to see Yahoo's environment, but to see the whole industry," he said.
Knowing that their summer internship culture is often described as "foosball
and free lunch," Yahoo makes a point to ensure that their interns work on real-
world projects as well. Students are also encouraged to volunteer on Fridays
throughout the summer.
Still, like many interns with highly-coveted positions, Yang said that the
internship experience—with its hippity hop races, belly dancers, baseball
games and water balloon fights—was a bit more glamorous than the everyday
employee experience, something he knows from seeing both sides. "It was really
better than full-time," he mused.
"We had a great program. We have a lot of speeches from different executives
during the whole program, and you were free to join talks about research.
Plus, there were free game tickets," he said.
Nevertheless, Yang was quick to note that the interns this summer are having
an even cooler activity than his class did: Yahoo Intern American Idol.
"We have an intern here on my team and it turns out the winner gets an iPhone.
I want to take part in it so badly, but they say it's only for current interns,"
said Yang. "It's just as well, I guess. I'm a terrible singer."
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