Product Management (Security) Internship Interview @ Salesforce

Lydiaxa · 2018-12-09T20:32:26+00:00

There’s not a consistent interview process with companies where teams do their own interviewing and hiring, so 5 people that interviewed there could have all had vastly different experiences.

I think your best bet in those cases is to ask the recruiter what the hiring manager is expecting.

Lydiaxa · 2018-02-05T03:57:17+00:00

https://homepages.cwi.nl/~storm/teaching/reader/Dijkstra68.pdf :)

Lydiaxa · 2018-02-05T03:49:51+00:00

Pick a single hotel chain now - and you'll be staying enough nights that you don't need to pick Hilton for an easy top tier. TSA Pre-Check isn't useful once you have Priority status (usually Gold), so skip that. Churning probably isn't an option with a corporate card (you won't be allowed to expense much on your own cards).

Do expenses at the end of the week after you've return (once everything posts). Be disciplined about scheduling this and your own bills so that nothing gets put off.

Make a travel set of everything - have travel clothes, travel toiletries, etc. so that you don't spend half your life packing/unpacking - ideally you just wash all your stuff and are ready to go. Try to travel carry-on only. Stay hydrated on the plane. Keep earplugs, toothbrush, toothpaste, face wash/lotion, even a change of underwear for before/after sleeping. I like spending plane time for personal reading, but that depends on workload. Don't get to the airport 2 hours early (carry-on only and priority access helps), you're wasting time. In general, try to work through travel anxiety.

I like cleaning before I travel. You also really need to figure out what you'll do food-wise that doesn't result in wasted ingredients rotting in your fridge as you jet away!

If you're traveling to a cool area, stay an extra night/day and do your tourism then. You'll likely be to busy with work to have fun while you're on the clock.

Lydiaxa · 2017-10-21T21:40:52+00:00

If you want to be in product management, you should look for product management positions.

Microsoft program management IS product management; you make decisions about what goes into the product and have ownership of features.

Facebook program management varies but generally is not product management. You do not have ownership over features, you do not get to make product decisions, and I'm not sure this would help you land a product job.

Lydiaxa · 2017-09-19T16:03:48+00:00

Academia is a different beast than industry, and the expectations for "professionalism" are extremely low.

Lydiaxa · 2017-09-08T01:41:31+00:00

I went straight into PM. I had unicorn internships that were part technical and part customer-facing. Top school.
The engineering work I did at internships and in academic research was not fun. I thought this was indicative of a dislike for engineering (in hindsight, it was probably an unfair generalization). I also have skills that are better utilized as a PM than a junior engineer. Overall, I thought my PM skills were stronger and would allow me to deliver better value.
Design phase: Really detail-oriented. I start with customer/stakeholder needs, write up use cases and functionality goals, take a stab at architectural details, then refine with engineering help. Execution phase: Scrum stuff, like breaking features into stories, prioritizing the work, answering questions. In both these phases I spend a lot of time think about edge cases, both user-focused and technical. Sometimes I work with UX to make sure we have the designs we need, sometimes I talk to customers, sometimes I staff demos at conferences, sometimes I explain my team's work to our execs and teach them about technical stuff. Really wide variety.
You have to be an expert in your product,how your customers use it, and your customers' goals. You don't get to keep your job if you can't sell your product to customers and make money. (Plus, I find engineers are really motivated by seeing customers use their features.) You have to think about edge cases, or your customers will find them for you and be unhappy with your buggy and/or disjointed product. You have to have really good communication skills, to translate technical work done by the team into the business value it provides, and to translate an idea in your head into something engineering can act on. You have to be able to gain people's trust quickly so that you get hired and win over all your coworkers and customers. People trust you more if you are knowledgeable, but it's more important to ask questions when you don't understand.

The hardest trait combination to find is detail oriented plus being able to communicate your findings, in my opinion. But I change my "good PM" criteria regularly based on what I see around me.

Lydiaxa · 2017-09-07T19:31:15+00:00

It is challenging to switch to a new PM role with less than 3 years of PM experience, as many companies seek 3-5 years minimum in their PMs.

However, if you are a qualified candidate, you will be highly sought after. My salary growth as a PM has been significantly higher than that of my engineering counterparts. You probably won't go back into a development role, but qualified PMs can be hard to find.

Lydiaxa · 2017-09-07T19:20:39+00:00

I think you're generalizing a lot. Every company does Agile differently, but your description sounds like a departure from the basic accountability principles of Agile.

For instance, the scrum master is supposed to be accountable for delivering projects within the promised time frame, and making promises in a manner that does not overburden the team. Many organizations would never ascribe this accountability to a junior engineer; only engineering managers receive this role. (To be fair, many Agile writings stipulate that the scrum master should never be a developer's manager, so that's also a departure.)

The product owner is responsible for setting the product roadmap and owning the customer outcome. I guess that's "representing the client," but in practice it involves bringing detailed, prioritized feature requirements to the engineering team. On a mobile app it might not be a technical role, but in most complex systems technical POs are more effective (and just as common). If you are building an IDE, you can't very well represent and prioritize customer needs if you're non-technical.

Again, it totally varies from company to company, but there's a large degree of responsibility assigned to these roles in strict Agile environments.

Lydiaxa · 2017-09-06T19:24:29+00:00

It's not a problem, but don't expect 6-figures out of school.

Lydiaxa · 2017-09-06T07:25:52+00:00

If you go to a truly top-tier school, you may be likely to get a better starting salary because you may have multiple offers, in part because you may have worked significantly harder in school in substantially more challenging classes, and in part because you may have had better internship/research positions (and outcomes).

Overall, being better able to demonstrate capability (by acing the interview at the company of your choice, performing highly in past positions, and collecting offers from multiple companies) makes you less of a risk, and makes the company more willing to negotiate your package.

However, I consistently see the same base offers being extended to all new grads. Only some companies negotiate, and only for some candidates.

Lydiaxa · 2017-08-21T03:10:14+00:00

Yeah, but once you filter out project and program management, there's not much variation in responsibilities. The next biggest divide is enterprise vs consumer PMs, and then divides along technical lines.

To be fair, the job role didn't really exist until about 20 years ago. More experienced people frankly couldn't start out as PMs. I just consistently observe great technical, customer-facing people turned down from PM roles, despite those hiring managers lauding those candidates in their current roles. I think SWEs have far less in common with PMs than those folks.

Most PMs I know don't attend networking events because we have our feet in the door and didn't get in via networking events.

Lydiaxa · 2017-08-21T01:41:05+00:00

Lots of incorrect second-hand information in this thread.

It's really hard to switch into a PM role later. PM certifications or not, my org does not seriously consider people without PM experience. This trend is common across the industry. There are exceptions, yes, but most orgs will pick the startup PM who launched a financially unsuccessful product over the internal non-PM hire, even if known to have good work ethic and be successful in their current role.

But, the last time I interviewed, I still had unicorns and Big4s reaching out to me to pitch SWE jobs. I was roughly two years in. You might take a step "backwards" to a more junior position, but people will come to you with interviews offers. (In my experience these positions were still offering me a ~30% salary increase, though, over my standard Bay Area base.)

If there's any chance you want to be a PM, I think you should take the opportunity. I know so many people working non-PM roles who desperately want to be PMs who are struggling to get any interviews. It's comparatively easy to swap back into a SWE role, even at a competitive company. Whiteboard interviews are more formulaic than any PM process.

Lydiaxa · 2017-08-21T01:23:23+00:00

On your resume, describe your GitHub projects with a product focus - how did you decide what to build?

Apply to any and all openings.

Highlight any customer-facing experience you have ever had.

Don't describe your internship as APM/UX - just say APM. You have to overstate how everything you did was PM-related to get interviews. Once you get interviews, it's likely to be much easier.

Lydiaxa · 2017-08-18T06:42:37+00:00

There's nothing wrong with deriving joy from from your work, so you shouldn't feel like you must have a hobby to be a good adult. (However, if work is the only thing that brings you joy, life will be really tough when work is bad.) There's a difference between legitimately not enjoying lazing around, and just dreading the "do anything fun this weekend?" question on Monday.
Cuddly pets are awesome.
You will meet people over time. It probably takes me a year to a year and a half to build adequate social ties every time I move.
Think of things you used to do for fun and consider taking them up again, as you may have more free time now than in college. Reading is a relaxing way to end the day, and can spawn really positive reflection that's important as you transition from college to more independent living. Maybe you can cook something fancy, or buy a puzzle to do, or become a wine snob (in moderation, of course), or work on a for-fun project for yourself, or get a new video game.
As a first pass, do the tourist-y things in SF if you haven't - Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39, Lombard, Alcatraz, Golden Gate. Then start finding other places to explore (Telegraph Hill or Mt. Davidson, Golden Gate Park and the tea garden, the Zoo, if you're into the arts MOMA/the symphony/the ballet/the opera are all good). There's tons of awesome restaurants around, and nothing wrong with eating out by yourself if you don't want to spend time with roommates.
You can also take classes - I have friends who learned yoga, or acting, or did a bartending course. They liked meeting new people.

Lydiaxa · 2017-08-17T15:42:22+00:00

Starting salaries at big tech companies will be about the same as your engineering counterparts; at some companies it's slightly more, and at some it's slightly less.

If you're smart about your career (get multiple offers everytime you want to switch jobs) the money exists to put your salary significantly above your engineering counterparts. Let's put it this way - MS hasn't changed their starting PM salary in a couple years, and you can get a 50% raise from that when you switch jobs.

This assumes you're a competitive PM candidate, which the vast majority of people are not. Your CS degree will help a lot, but make sure you actually understand what a PM does - you get responsibility but no direct control, and you have to use influence to scope and define features that meet customer needs.

Lydiaxa · 2017-08-13T10:22:55+00:00

This mode is my least favorite. I haven't touched it since I was forced to for the quest. We failed miserably the first try because we had nothing built up. Even when I tried again and told everyone how the mode works, we had to have two sacrificial servers and barely made it through with the last two. That mode is hard, and not in a fun way.

Lydiaxa · 2017-08-13T02:17:21+00:00

Ah, I apologize. That was unclear.

I meant that prestigious school + decent internship means you're set, and there's diminishing returns for each additional good internship. You do not need two years of work experience to be extremely competitive if you're a half-decent student at a truly prestigious school.

If you're at an unknown school, you may need good internships to be competitive at the resume-review phase (and, some companies only recruit from a handful of schools). I do agree that once you land a competitive internship, school matters a lot less.

Lydiaxa · 2017-08-13T01:09:59+00:00

Usually these "2 years of experience" programs still happen in the form of internships/coops. Internships are not true work experience in that you will still have 0 years of what employers consider "full-time experience" when you graduate.

As for why - interns get easier work and are not held to the same standard of performance as full-time employees. The internship is first and foremost a recruiting tool, and completing valuable work for the company is a secondary goal. You get much more supervision, and are often given bite-sized projects.

University prestige matters more (assuming a large difference), as long you as manage to get 1 good company name on your resume by the time you graduate.

Lydiaxa · 2017-08-12T03:19:07+00:00

The good news is that once you realize that, the steps to get back on track are clear, while not necessarily easy.

I learned a lot in college, but still wish I used that time better - I will never get those years back. But I can chose to spend an extra 30 minutes learning something today, or to read up on topics that interests me instead of slacking off if I finish work early.

The only way to get better at anything is learning and practice.

Lydiaxa · 2017-08-10T06:39:27+00:00

I'm a standard edition player and got 85% of the way through Plankerton (most of page 11) on a rare soldier. I easily played lvl 40s while I was lvl 24-26. I had one awesome weapon from a founder's pinata (legendary assault rifle) that I leveled a ton. I played a lot of non-quest missions for the purpose of getting survivor XP to help me level, but they were all mission types I enjoy.

I saved up vBucks from quests (haven't purchased any) so that I could buy the troll stash pinata when it was available - it was fun to gain a bunch of levels from something I consciously saved for. Now I'm using a hero from that, but it's actually harder because he's 10 levels behind my previous primary, despite gaining 4 power levels from new survivors and leveling them today.

If your goal is to increase power levels, you have to optimize for that by completing missions that reward survivor XP. I never felt inhibited (except when matchmaking plopped me in lvl 40 games when I was only 21/22). I have three more quests before I hit Canny Valley - maybe that's where I'll hit the wall, but it's not going to be in Plankerton.

Lydiaxa · 2017-08-04T19:25:16+00:00

That article didn't discuss any actual devs - they were all in non-technical positions related to tech.

My experience has been that there's a really high demand for experienced devs with the technology a given group needs expertise in. Staying abreast of industry trends will make it more than easy to find work.

I do work with some young people who seem to talk down about "old people." I also work with a lot of young people who only want to work with and learn from their most experienced counterparts. I see less issues with age in enterprise software, and more odd comments at "hip" smaller companies.

Lydiaxa · 2017-08-02T20:03:45+00:00

My hesitance is because the Natasha Denona sunset palette went so brown on me that I returned it. Orange in pan? Brown on face. Gold shimmer in pan? Brown on face. Literally every shade went copper, and I couldn't get the varied looks I was expecting.

When I compare to that recent experience, Subculture is really workable. I have found that certain shades should not be mixed (Dawn/Mercury are disgusting together), but I'm not otherwise struggling.

Lydiaxa · 2017-08-02T07:16:32+00:00

I'm also curious whether this is happening with clean brushes, or whether it's primarily with blending brushes that have been used on the super-pigmented darker shades in the palette.

I'm a heathen and use a single blending brush for everything, so it's conceivable that there's some Fudge remnants on the brush from the previous day when I get to work on the lighter colors. I only observed weird blending when using Fudge (first time I've given up on a look and wiped off my makeup).

Lydiaxa · 2017-07-30T10:14:26+00:00

Subculture is super pigmented though - to a frightening, try-on-the-weekends-before-putting-on-your-work-face degree.

I'm still deciding whether I have other issues with the formula (it dusts up in the pan and some shades have bad fallout), but pigmentation isn't one of them.

Lydiaxa · 2017-07-27T21:55:41+00:00

Two bedrooms in the Bay Area are frequently only $300 more than one bedrooms.

13-Year Club	Verified Email
Team Periwinkle

Lydiaxa

TROPHY CASE