7 ms·

My Internship Experiences at Pixar, Google, and Two Sigma

138 points by ericjang 11y ago

austinhutch 11y ago
This is a cool post, but I hope it doesn't get him blackballed by any of the mentioned companies.
- Cookingboy 11y ago
  I highly doubt it will happen. He is very objective about the pros and cons, in fact if I were running the internship program at those places I'd take these as valuable feedback. And he put all of them under a positive light anyway (probably well deserved too).
Cookingboy 11y ago
Very objective write up Eric. I'm an Xoogler with good friends working/worked at Two-Sigma, and it's pretty much what you described. Good luck on whatever you decide to do, don't stress out too much on your first job choice, there are no wrong decisions here.
scrumper 11y ago
The writer seems mature and should go far. If he wants advice from someone in finance, I'd steer him towards Pixar. The math might be harder and the prestige may be greater at the hedge fund, but making beautiful things is inherently satisfying. Sweating to make a big number get a bit bigger isn't good for the soul in the long term.
- jkyle 11y ago
  > Sweating to make a big number get a bit bigger isn't good for the soul in the long term. Depends on how beautiful you find the numbers you're using to get there. edit To clarify, there are personalities that derive quite a bit of pleasure from the puzzle without much regard for the picture it makes in the end.
  - scrumper 11y ago
    For sure. But I thought he seemed pretty struck by the power of the art Pixar was making, talking about tearing up in the cinema. He made a few other comments about meaningfulness too - like not wanting to be eating stuff from Slice while cranking away on some obscure thing. But as others say it's totally his decision. He's clearly smart and fortunate; I'm happy for him.
- santaclaus 11y ago
  > The math might be harder and the prestige may be greater at the hedge fund Ehhhh, Black–Scholes vs. Navier-Stokes. Six of one, half a dozen of another...
  - mathattack 11y ago
    Yes - remarkably, options are priced using the mathematical physics of heat diffusion. (& GPUs are used to speed up the calculations)
  - kzhahou 11y ago
    This guy integrates!
- programmer_1452 11y ago
  > Sweating to make a big number get a bit bigger isn't good for the soul in the long term. I've been working as a programmer for the last 5-6 years, and I strongly disagree. Pixar, Google and Two Sigma, and many similar companies in these industries, are ultimately absolutely pointless and empty. Entertainment (distraction), ads (mind pollution), and arbitrage (stealing) is essentially what they do. Working for any of them will become mind-numbingly boring and damaging to the soul very soon. There are only two things that keep me motivated; (1) hard problems, and (2) money. (1) are hard to come by, most of my time I spend dealing with stupid problems caused by stupid people. (2) is why I work on pointless problems, the more I earn the sooner I can retire to do something actually useful. Therefore, I think that working for a hedge fund in a money-generating role can do wonders to one's motivation; the better you are, the more you earn. Not many roles, in general and in software development, offer such direct payoff.
  - rwallace 11y ago
    Be that as it may, it's worth noting Google does other things as well. You could always try to get a job there working on self-driving cars (saving lives) or solar energy (saving the world).
    - kyrra 11y ago
      There is also Google's charitable arm Google.org[0][1]. [0] https://www.google.org/ https://www.google.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google.org
    - jpatokal 11y ago
      Obligatory nit: those are now things that Alphabet does, not Google.
      - CardenB 11y ago
        Google is the brand still. Plus, it's Google[X], which is a subsidiary of alphabet. So nitpick that if you want to nitpick. It still wouldn't be called Alphabet. Also you still apply to Google for the job.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  >but making beautiful things is inherently satisfying. I like, perhaps love Pixar, but I'm not sure if I'd call, what are essentially kids movies, "beautiful things." Especially when a lot of the art design is fairly formulaic (see the Pixar face: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/inside-out/disney-pixar-characters-same-face/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/inside-out/disney-pixar-char...) Story-wise there are maybe four kid movie plots that get recycled as well. I could see a very smart and creative person feeling hamstrung in such an environment. Especially considering as kids movies they cannot explore adult topics and will always be fairly limited in scope. I also dislike that idea that automation, code, math, finance, etc can't be beautiful on its own. I'd love it if we could sell young people on the beauty of these things. Getting things like this right can be incredibly satisfying. I know its a hard sell, but most thing worthwhile are. Honestly, the worlds need less impassioned animators and comic book artists and rock stars. It needs more people able to solve hard problems, sometimes in fairly unsexy ways to an audience that may not even understand what the problem was or how difficult it was to solve. Entertainment shouldn't be a brain drain from other fields.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    I'm not sure how I would classify Toy Story 3 under any recycled "kids movie" plots. The ending (the real ending, not the climax, as described in the article) is one of the most poignant moments in film I can recall. Similarly, Wall-E does a good job illustrating the human need for companionship. And the need for purpose within our lives. And at the very shallowest and most obvious level, over-consumption. Pixar often makes very "smart" animated movies, and they generally work at quite a few levels, in my opinion. > Especially considering as kids movies they cannot explore adult topics and will always be fairly limited in scope. I disagree. I've seen many masterful "childrens" movies that have done masterful jobs at exploring adult concepts, as long as by "adult" you don't just mean sexuality. While childrens' movies may be constrained on some axis, they are often freer on others. Additionally, there is the chance to speak to people that wouldn't normally go to a movie about some of these adult messages, or to reach them when they aren't expecting it and are less cynical. Who goes to see an animated film about a family of super heroes to see a touching rendition of mid-life crisis?
- yellowstuff 11y ago
  > Sweating to make a big number get a bit bigger isn't good for the soul in the long term. Speak for yourself. I've worked in finance for more than 10 years and like my job. Most of the time I work on interesting problems with smart people under good work conditions, and get paid well to do it. It helps that I work in an area of finance I feel does have positive social value, although doing work I am good at and find interesting is more of a motivation.
  - PopeOfNope 11y ago
    Do you feel comfortable discussing your work a bit more? It's not often I see the words "finance" and "positive social value" used in the same sentence.
    - ericjang 11y ago
      One example: TS and many hedge funds manage portfolios for large charities, university endowments, and pension funds, among other clients. This means more money for clients who do good for the world.
      - beagle3 11y ago
        Does TS actually do that? Aren't they doing proprietary trading (exclusively or almost so)?
        jchendy 11y ago
        "Our clients are real people and include some of the world’s largest public and corporate pension plans, sovereign wealth funds, research institutions, educational endowments, healthcare systems and foundations." http://www.twosigma.com/impact http://www.twosigma.com/impact
    - yellowstuff 11y ago
      I think that well functioning financial markets have huge social value. Let's contrast the mortgage market in 2007 (finance gone wrong) with the stock market when it functions normally. This description is idealized and somewhat self-serving, but I think it is a useful model. In 2007 key players (mortgage originators, banks, ratings agencies, governmental agencies and investors) only had incentives for mortgage prices to go up. It was hard to bet on prices going down, and even when you could it was hard to get enough information to realize how overpriced mortgages were. This poorly functioning market resulted in disaster. The stock market has much more information available, and it is usually easy to bet against prices that are too high. The collective intelligence of many smart people determines stock prices using money, a powerful incentive to get things right. This results in a liquid, well-functioning market with many positive social effects. Google exists today in part because an angel investor knew that if the company succeeded there were well-functioning public markets to sell into. While it's popular to say that the stock market influences company behavior negatively, and causes "short-termism", I believe the opposite: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/24/the-short-termism-myth http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/24/the-short-termi... The market often imposes discipline on managers who would otherwise run companies for their own benefit at the expense of everyone else. You can tell a similar story for the social benefits of lending money, and the importance of doing it well. The world has seen a vast improvement in wealth, health, education, and safety in the last 100 years, and I think a large contributor is a financial system that has enabled and rewarded socially useful enterprises. As I said, this is an oversimplification, and a lot of smart people completely disagree. I don't deny that there are jobs in finance that seem to me to be pure rent-seeking, with negative social value. However, I think that overall the system works well, and that the work I do makes it run a tiny bit better.
gavazzy 11y ago
Mirror (down at 4:54EST 8/17/2015) http://pastebin.com/8t0BquQg http://pastebin.com/8t0BquQg
- thenobsta 11y ago
  ^^^ This is why I love HN. Thanks!
justizin 11y ago
Website over quota. :/
jfb 11y ago
This made me laugh: > What I did in my spare time Browse the intranet for juicy info Browse the intranet for juicy info Browse the intranet for juicy info
chrisbroadfoot 11y ago
> At Google and Two Sigma, interns are kept in an "intern container" As an employee of Google who has hosted numerous interns, I can say this is not true. Interns have broad access to information at Google.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ericjang 11y ago
Hi all, author here. thx for the upvotes. Webpage is back up.
- e40 11y ago
  "If you care most about raising a family, work life balance (i.e. work the least hours) and job security, you really can't go wrong with Google." This is such at odds with everything I've heard and read about Google, I'd like to know if there's a typo in that sentence, and if not, how to you square the wider perception with your perception?
  - idunning 11y ago
    I also interned there, and my team was working 50ish hour weeks on a relatively flexible schedule (e.g. come in 7am-11am, leave 3pm-7pm). Search-related team. I know some teams might be working far more, but that wasn't common as far as I could tell.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - jpatokal 11y ago
    Unlike (say) Amazon, Google does not require you to work long hours, and in many teams it's actively discouraged. Now of course you get some competitive types who like to burn the midnight oil in a mostly misguided effort to get promoted, but these are the exception rather than the rule, and Google's promotion processes are explicitly geared to attempt to reward initiative and results, not hours worked. Disclaimer: I work at Google, pretty much 9 to 5. But it's a huge company and I'm sure you can find pathological microcultures somewhere.
  - ericjang 11y ago
    All I had to compare Google to were my limited experiences in the other two. I thought Google was the most laid-back of the three. No doubt you've heard about dinner cafes opening late to keep employees at their desks, but the reality is that a lot of people's productivity slows down from 5-6 anyway (that was ping pong hour for me). Go! cafe is open all day, and lots of people grab a sandwich before skedaddling at 5pm sharp. Maybe there's more pressure at some teams to put in more hours. I have no data on that. I think overall vacation benefits, hours, and pa/maternity leave are slightly better, but I'm not certain.
mehrdada 11y ago
> you'll see lots of edges going from Goldman, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook to Two Sigma. There are very few edges going the other way. Perhaps one reason for it that they don't advertise is the ridiculous non-competes that their employees have signed and it's limited their future career options. I have first hand experience with this. They had the audacity to ask me sign a 18-month IP assignment (basically with FROR), a 1-year non-compete, and a fucking 5-year non-solicit (much stricter than the non-solicit in a Google's contract) clause. They want slaves, not employees. Of course I threw up on that contract, especially considering their history of bringing criminal lawsuits against their former employees. Avoid.
- ninetax 11y ago
  Sorry, what is FROF?
  - mehrdada 11y ago
    (Misspelled, corrected.) "First right of refusal". I'm not sure if it is the right phrase in the context of IP assignment, but it was a good analogy to what they asked: basically they'd say whatever you'd invent in the next 18-months after your employment, you have to show us first and we decide if it is related to our business and therefore ours.
    - ahlatimer 11y ago
      It's generally "Right of First Refusal" or ROFR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_first_refusal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_first_refusal
- kyushiro 11y ago
  I went from TS to Google and personally know quite a few: - They only enforce non-compete if you actually go to a competitor (like rentech, KCG, Citadel). You also get paid your normal salary during those time (just to chill around). One of my friends is using that to travel all over the place. If you go to other tech company like FB or Google then you can start the next day (which I did) - I only have 2 years non-solicit so may be that's a recent change. It doesn't affect you that much though (you can't refer people you know from TS or give them recommendation, that's it). - If you actually follow the law suits, those people actually tried to upload model to external servers. If you try to do that with Google's HIP code I'm pretty sure they would do the same to you. I picked TS offer over Google offer before and now that I'm on the other side I regretted nothing. Both are great place to work.
RealityVoid 11y ago
I am amazed at how awesome the projects page of his website is. I see so many successful people on here, I just... wow..
- CardenB 11y ago
  I had a similar reaction. It's incredible. He definitely deserves his success. Someone like this working on iOS Play Books is the biggest downside to working at Google.
rajacombinator 11y ago
The author was definitely most passionate about Pixar. But he'll probably decide based on prestige and go with Two Sigma. For most programmers, Google is probably the best of the three for future career opportunities.
otisfunkmeyer 11y ago
i use ios play books! your work is not in vain!
Rainymood 11y ago
How do you even manage to land such internships? It baffles me. How can somebody after their first year of CS bachelor's education get an internship with Pixar, and then with Google in the second year, and then with (bloody) TWO SIGMA in the third year? Stuff like that is just ... incomprehensible here in Europe (Netherlands). Crazy!
- ericjang 11y ago
  It helps to be a student studying at an elite american university - pedigree opens a lot of doors, for better or worse. Also, I had a shit ton of luck with interviews and recommendations.
jacques_chester 11y ago
> you'll see lots of edges going from Goldman, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook to Two Sigma. There are very few edges going the other way. Is this surprising? Big tech companies employ orders of magnitude more technologists. In many small tech companies you'd expect to find a similar pattern.

138 points by ericjang 11y ago

austinhutch 11y ago

This is a cool post, but I hope it doesn't get him blackballed by any of the mentioned companies.

Cookingboy 11y ago
I highly doubt it will happen. He is very objective about the pros and cons, in fact if I were running the internship program at those places I'd take these as valuable feedback. And he put all of them under a positive light anyway (probably well deserved too).

Cookingboy 11y ago

Very objective write up Eric. I'm an Xoogler with good friends working/worked at Two-Sigma, and it's pretty much what you described. Good luck on whatever you decide to do, don't stress out too much on your first job choice, there are no wrong decisions here.

scrumper 11y ago

The writer seems mature and should go far. If he wants advice from someone in finance, I'd steer him towards Pixar. The math might be harder and the prestige may be greater at the hedge fund, but making beautiful things is inherently satisfying. Sweating to make a big number get a bit bigger isn't good for the soul in the long term.

jkyle 11y ago
> Sweating to make a big number get a bit bigger isn't good for the soul in the long term. Depends on how beautiful you find the numbers you're using to get there. edit To clarify, there are personalities that derive quite a bit of pleasure from the puzzle without much regard for the picture it makes in the end.
- scrumper 11y ago
  For sure. But I thought he seemed pretty struck by the power of the art Pixar was making, talking about tearing up in the cinema. He made a few other comments about meaningfulness too - like not wanting to be eating stuff from Slice while cranking away on some obscure thing. But as others say it's totally his decision. He's clearly smart and fortunate; I'm happy for him.
santaclaus 11y ago
> The math might be harder and the prestige may be greater at the hedge fund Ehhhh, Black–Scholes vs. Navier-Stokes. Six of one, half a dozen of another...
- mathattack 11y ago
  Yes - remarkably, options are priced using the mathematical physics of heat diffusion. (& GPUs are used to speed up the calculations)
- kzhahou 11y ago
  This guy integrates!
programmer_1452 11y ago
> Sweating to make a big number get a bit bigger isn't good for the soul in the long term. I've been working as a programmer for the last 5-6 years, and I strongly disagree. Pixar, Google and Two Sigma, and many similar companies in these industries, are ultimately absolutely pointless and empty. Entertainment (distraction), ads (mind pollution), and arbitrage (stealing) is essentially what they do. Working for any of them will become mind-numbingly boring and damaging to the soul very soon. There are only two things that keep me motivated; (1) hard problems, and (2) money. (1) are hard to come by, most of my time I spend dealing with stupid problems caused by stupid people. (2) is why I work on pointless problems, the more I earn the sooner I can retire to do something actually useful. Therefore, I think that working for a hedge fund in a money-generating role can do wonders to one's motivation; the better you are, the more you earn. Not many roles, in general and in software development, offer such direct payoff.
- rwallace 11y ago
  Be that as it may, it's worth noting Google does other things as well. You could always try to get a job there working on self-driving cars (saving lives) or solar energy (saving the world).
  - kyrra 11y ago
    There is also Google's charitable arm Google.org[0][1]. [0] https://www.google.org/ https://www.google.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google.org
  - jpatokal 11y ago
    Obligatory nit: those are now things that Alphabet does, not Google.
    - CardenB 11y ago
      Google is the brand still. Plus, it's Google[X], which is a subsidiary of alphabet. So nitpick that if you want to nitpick. It still wouldn't be called Alphabet. Also you still apply to Google for the job.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
>but making beautiful things is inherently satisfying. I like, perhaps love Pixar, but I'm not sure if I'd call, what are essentially kids movies, "beautiful things." Especially when a lot of the art design is fairly formulaic (see the Pixar face: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/inside-out/disney-pixar-characters-same-face/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/inside-out/disney-pixar-char...) Story-wise there are maybe four kid movie plots that get recycled as well. I could see a very smart and creative person feeling hamstrung in such an environment. Especially considering as kids movies they cannot explore adult topics and will always be fairly limited in scope. I also dislike that idea that automation, code, math, finance, etc can't be beautiful on its own. I'd love it if we could sell young people on the beauty of these things. Getting things like this right can be incredibly satisfying. I know its a hard sell, but most thing worthwhile are. Honestly, the worlds need less impassioned animators and comic book artists and rock stars. It needs more people able to solve hard problems, sometimes in fairly unsexy ways to an audience that may not even understand what the problem was or how difficult it was to solve. Entertainment shouldn't be a brain drain from other fields.
- kbenson 11y ago
  I'm not sure how I would classify Toy Story 3 under any recycled "kids movie" plots. The ending (the real ending, not the climax, as described in the article) is one of the most poignant moments in film I can recall. Similarly, Wall-E does a good job illustrating the human need for companionship. And the need for purpose within our lives. And at the very shallowest and most obvious level, over-consumption. Pixar often makes very "smart" animated movies, and they generally work at quite a few levels, in my opinion. > Especially considering as kids movies they cannot explore adult topics and will always be fairly limited in scope. I disagree. I've seen many masterful "childrens" movies that have done masterful jobs at exploring adult concepts, as long as by "adult" you don't just mean sexuality. While childrens' movies may be constrained on some axis, they are often freer on others. Additionally, there is the chance to speak to people that wouldn't normally go to a movie about some of these adult messages, or to reach them when they aren't expecting it and are less cynical. Who goes to see an animated film about a family of super heroes to see a touching rendition of mid-life crisis?
yellowstuff 11y ago
> Sweating to make a big number get a bit bigger isn't good for the soul in the long term. Speak for yourself. I've worked in finance for more than 10 years and like my job. Most of the time I work on interesting problems with smart people under good work conditions, and get paid well to do it. It helps that I work in an area of finance I feel does have positive social value, although doing work I am good at and find interesting is more of a motivation.
- PopeOfNope 11y ago
  Do you feel comfortable discussing your work a bit more? It's not often I see the words "finance" and "positive social value" used in the same sentence.
  - ericjang 11y ago
    One example: TS and many hedge funds manage portfolios for large charities, university endowments, and pension funds, among other clients. This means more money for clients who do good for the world.
    - beagle3 11y ago
      Does TS actually do that? Aren't they doing proprietary trading (exclusively or almost so)?
      - jchendy 11y ago
        "Our clients are real people and include some of the world’s largest public and corporate pension plans, sovereign wealth funds, research institutions, educational endowments, healthcare systems and foundations." http://www.twosigma.com/impact http://www.twosigma.com/impact
  - yellowstuff 11y ago
    I think that well functioning financial markets have huge social value. Let's contrast the mortgage market in 2007 (finance gone wrong) with the stock market when it functions normally. This description is idealized and somewhat self-serving, but I think it is a useful model. In 2007 key players (mortgage originators, banks, ratings agencies, governmental agencies and investors) only had incentives for mortgage prices to go up. It was hard to bet on prices going down, and even when you could it was hard to get enough information to realize how overpriced mortgages were. This poorly functioning market resulted in disaster. The stock market has much more information available, and it is usually easy to bet against prices that are too high. The collective intelligence of many smart people determines stock prices using money, a powerful incentive to get things right. This results in a liquid, well-functioning market with many positive social effects. Google exists today in part because an angel investor knew that if the company succeeded there were well-functioning public markets to sell into. While it's popular to say that the stock market influences company behavior negatively, and causes "short-termism", I believe the opposite: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/24/the-short-termism-myth http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/24/the-short-termi... The market often imposes discipline on managers who would otherwise run companies for their own benefit at the expense of everyone else. You can tell a similar story for the social benefits of lending money, and the importance of doing it well. The world has seen a vast improvement in wealth, health, education, and safety in the last 100 years, and I think a large contributor is a financial system that has enabled and rewarded socially useful enterprises. As I said, this is an oversimplification, and a lot of smart people completely disagree. I don't deny that there are jobs in finance that seem to me to be pure rent-seeking, with negative social value. However, I think that overall the system works well, and that the work I do makes it run a tiny bit better.

gavazzy 11y ago

Mirror (down at 4:54EST 8/17/2015) http://pastebin.com/8t0BquQg http://pastebin.com/8t0BquQg

thenobsta 11y ago
^^^ This is why I love HN. Thanks!

justizin 11y ago

Website over quota. :/

jfb 11y ago

This made me laugh: > What I did in my spare time Browse the intranet for juicy info Browse the intranet for juicy info Browse the intranet for juicy info

chrisbroadfoot 11y ago

> At Google and Two Sigma, interns are kept in an "intern container" As an employee of Google who has hosted numerous interns, I can say this is not true. Interns have broad access to information at Google.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ericjang 11y ago

Hi all, author here. thx for the upvotes. Webpage is back up.

e40 11y ago
"If you care most about raising a family, work life balance (i.e. work the least hours) and job security, you really can't go wrong with Google." This is such at odds with everything I've heard and read about Google, I'd like to know if there's a typo in that sentence, and if not, how to you square the wider perception with your perception?
- idunning 11y ago
  I also interned there, and my team was working 50ish hour weeks on a relatively flexible schedule (e.g. come in 7am-11am, leave 3pm-7pm). Search-related team. I know some teams might be working far more, but that wasn't common as far as I could tell.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- jpatokal 11y ago
  Unlike (say) Amazon, Google does not require you to work long hours, and in many teams it's actively discouraged. Now of course you get some competitive types who like to burn the midnight oil in a mostly misguided effort to get promoted, but these are the exception rather than the rule, and Google's promotion processes are explicitly geared to attempt to reward initiative and results, not hours worked. Disclaimer: I work at Google, pretty much 9 to 5. But it's a huge company and I'm sure you can find pathological microcultures somewhere.
- ericjang 11y ago
  All I had to compare Google to were my limited experiences in the other two. I thought Google was the most laid-back of the three. No doubt you've heard about dinner cafes opening late to keep employees at their desks, but the reality is that a lot of people's productivity slows down from 5-6 anyway (that was ping pong hour for me). Go! cafe is open all day, and lots of people grab a sandwich before skedaddling at 5pm sharp. Maybe there's more pressure at some teams to put in more hours. I have no data on that. I think overall vacation benefits, hours, and pa/maternity leave are slightly better, but I'm not certain.

mehrdada 11y ago

> you'll see lots of edges going from Goldman, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook to Two Sigma. There are very few edges going the other way. Perhaps one reason for it that they don't advertise is the ridiculous non-competes that their employees have signed and it's limited their future career options. I have first hand experience with this. They had the audacity to ask me sign a 18-month IP assignment (basically with FROR), a 1-year non-compete, and a fucking 5-year non-solicit (much stricter than the non-solicit in a Google's contract) clause. They want slaves, not employees. Of course I threw up on that contract, especially considering their history of bringing criminal lawsuits against their former employees. Avoid.

ninetax 11y ago
Sorry, what is FROF?
- mehrdada 11y ago
  (Misspelled, corrected.) "First right of refusal". I'm not sure if it is the right phrase in the context of IP assignment, but it was a good analogy to what they asked: basically they'd say whatever you'd invent in the next 18-months after your employment, you have to show us first and we decide if it is related to our business and therefore ours.
  - ahlatimer 11y ago
    It's generally "Right of First Refusal" or ROFR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_first_refusal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_first_refusal
kyushiro 11y ago
I went from TS to Google and personally know quite a few: - They only enforce non-compete if you actually go to a competitor (like rentech, KCG, Citadel). You also get paid your normal salary during those time (just to chill around). One of my friends is using that to travel all over the place. If you go to other tech company like FB or Google then you can start the next day (which I did) - I only have 2 years non-solicit so may be that's a recent change. It doesn't affect you that much though (you can't refer people you know from TS or give them recommendation, that's it). - If you actually follow the law suits, those people actually tried to upload model to external servers. If you try to do that with Google's HIP code I'm pretty sure they would do the same to you. I picked TS offer over Google offer before and now that I'm on the other side I regretted nothing. Both are great place to work.

RealityVoid 11y ago

I am amazed at how awesome the projects page of his website is. I see so many successful people on here, I just... wow..

CardenB 11y ago
I had a similar reaction. It's incredible. He definitely deserves his success. Someone like this working on iOS Play Books is the biggest downside to working at Google.

rajacombinator 11y ago

The author was definitely most passionate about Pixar. But he'll probably decide based on prestige and go with Two Sigma. For most programmers, Google is probably the best of the three for future career opportunities.

otisfunkmeyer 11y ago

i use ios play books! your work is not in vain!

Rainymood 11y ago

How do you even manage to land such internships? It baffles me. How can somebody after their first year of CS bachelor's education get an internship with Pixar, and then with Google in the second year, and then with (bloody) TWO SIGMA in the third year? Stuff like that is just ... incomprehensible here in Europe (Netherlands). Crazy!

ericjang 11y ago
It helps to be a student studying at an elite american university - pedigree opens a lot of doors, for better or worse. Also, I had a shit ton of luck with interviews and recommendations.

jacques_chester 11y ago

> you'll see lots of edges going from Goldman, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook to Two Sigma. There are very few edges going the other way. Is this surprising? Big tech companies employ orders of magnitude more technologists. In many small tech companies you'd expect to find a similar pattern.