I really enjoyed interning at Google as an associate product manager. My responsibility was to start a project to increase the number of advertisers and in turn, drive advertisement revenue coming from the "long tail." The internship experience was fulfilling for the following reasons:
- the company really lets you take charge. Even though an intern may have little experience or credibility, there is no policy or culture that prevents him from contacting senior people for advice, negotiating with engineers about their API's, or asking for help from marketing people about how to design user interfaces.
- the role of associate product manager exposes one to many different groups of people, who may have different cultures and "working styles": e.g., lawyers, sales and marketing people, UI designers, engineers, product managers, and executives. This role is a great training experience for aspiring startup CEO's.
- the company provides interns with lots of farewell: e.g., free meals, lots of fun activities.
