Hung Truong: The Blog!

Apple Internship Phone Interview + Verdict!

I had my Apple phone interview on Friday. It went well, except for all of the questions I couldn't answer! orz.

About five seconds into the interview, I realized that the description given to me and the actual content of the internship would be quite different. The position was described as “iPhone QA Engineer,” which listed duties like “functional testing of iPhone applications” and “design and implementation of test plans and test cases, risk analysis, & integration testing across the system.”

The description that my interviewer gave was that I'd be working on an internal iPhone web application for tracking test results and other stuff. Definitely not as interesting as I thought it would be. It's probably still kind of cool, but not as cool as doing actual QA on the iPhone.

By the time the interview had finished, I knew it would be a bad fit and that I would get an email with the same sentiments. Sure enough, about two hours after the interview had ended I got an email from the recruiter saying there wasn't a fit. He said he'd send it to a few other departments in Apple as well. Cool guy.

I'm not too upset about this particular rejection, other than the fact that I feel it was incorrectly described, which cost me a bit of time in my preparation. It was still a good experience, and I got to ask a few questions about the company culture at Apple.

In other non-news, I actually got a successful internship offer, so to speak. But it's not quite official yet so I can't write about it until it is.

Overheard in Stats Class

Student: So, log(x)… that's like, x², right?

Me: *headdesk*

Facebook Social Ads Really Work!!!

I mean, they work if you're a captain who knows how to catch big fish with their boats. Oh wait, I'm not! But thanks for the ad anyway… Also, I love the typo: “This app if for?” IF FOR? Seriously? You must've gotten your MBA at Harvard!

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…