Summer Internship
Like I announced on Twitter, I will be doing a summer internship at Zynga in San Francisco. A lot of people probably think that Zynga is just a silly game company that fills their Facebook news feed with requests to fertilize people’s crops, so I think I should explain my decision.
Two weeks ago, I was freaking out about a job this summer. I seriously thought I was going to be stuck flipping burgers for the summer. The research group I hoped to join didn’t have the funding to pay for another student, and I had only received one, extremely terrible job offer. If I had taken that offer, I would have come out financially in the red, which is certainly not the best way to start off a new marriage.
And then suddenly, bam, five offers from three companies and one professor, all within a week. Suddenly my worry went from not having any choices to having too many really good choices.
I decided to rank my choices by the following categories:
- Career goals
- Financial benefits
- Fun
One offer made me dreadfully bored just thinking about it, so it was easy to remove from the runnings.
The offer to work with the professor was very hard to turn down. The projects he is working on sound very cool and Mariam and I could have stayed in Madison, meaning no moving costs and headaches. But together we decided that an internship was for the best. My goal has always been to work in industry, and an internship means more industry experience and networking.
In the end it came down to two offers: one from Intel and one from Zynga. Intel certainly is a more “prestigious” name, and I have spent the last two summers there (though as part of a different team than the offer this summer). The project at Intel sounded like a lot of fun. Last Wednesday, Mariam and I talked through the relative pros and cons of Intel and Zynga, and honestly neither one seemed to really come forward as the obvious winner. At the time, I think I was leaning towards Intel, since it seemed like a safer decision.
I decided to take Thursday off from thinking about the jobs so I could approach the decision with a clear mind on Friday (the deadline for the Zynga offer).
Friday morning, I woke up. The first thing I thought about was the gray cubicle I had spent the last two summers in. Intel certainly was and would be a great learning experience, but I have already done the big tech corporation environment. Zynga is still in start-up mode, completely different from Intel. In order for me to choose what kind of company I want to work full-time for in the future, I decided it would be best for me to try something different.
Thus, Zynga. I am really excited for this summer. The internship sounds like it will be really challenging and fun, plus I get to spend my summer with Mariam in San Francisco, which is going to be pretty much awesome.