By Amy Ng

Last Thursday, on April 9, NJIT alumni Thomas Fu visited the campus. Fu addressed a packed lecture hall with a Tech Talk about his current employer, a company you may know as Google. Though he left the University in 2007 after receiving his PhD in Computer Science, he returned to share his knowledge about how to find success in applying for a job at this multi-billion dollar enterprise.

With more than 100 offices in over 50 countries (14 of which are located in North America), Google has many opportunities to work for them all across the globe. Their headquarters are located in Mountain View, California, but convenient for NJIT students, their second largest office is located just 25 minutes away by PATH train in lower Manhattan.

So what makes working for Google so exciting? Millions of users visit their servers every day. Fu said, “even a single engineer can make a huge impact.” Employee benefits don’t hurt, either.

Some of the more unique services provided to employees include free massages and ice cream, shuttles and ferries to and from the office, and extended parental leave. Additionally, Google employees have access to the entire Google code base and have the opportunity to speak with company higher-ups at weekly “TGIF” meetings.

It’s not all fun and games, though. At its heart, Google is a software company. The core employees at Google are software engineers with strong computer science backgrounds. This role is broken down into three categories. First, the software engineer is responsible for creating the next generation of technology to develop new products. Second is the software engineer in test. These employees are embedded into software engineering teams, and ensure the stability of software developed. Third, the site reliability engineer is a crisis engineer. These employees are known to wake in the middle of the night to respond to sudden outages to a Google service. Though other roles are available at Google, Fu made it clear that these three types of software engineers are the real force behind the company.

Fu encouraged students and noted that everyone is welcome to join Google, as the application process is relatively simple: upload a resume and a transcript, and wait. For a full-time position, a student should expect 2-3 phone interviews and additional on-site interviews across the country. A great benefit for students is that employment can be delayed by up to a year after receiving an offer for a position, which was something that Fu took advantage of to finish his dissertation.

“I’m really glad that I attended this colloquium,” Dorothy Chau, a sophomore business and information systems major reports. “I really hope that NJIT organizes more of these talks because it’s really helpful to hear alumni speak about the great things that NJIT has prepared them for.”