WiSTEM members tour Google campus, learn importance of experience in tech industry

In the central plaza of Google’s Mountain View campus, eight girls from the Women in STEM (WiSTEM) club gazed at the tall glass buildings internally lit by lights as workers bustled about their daily business on Nov. 14.

The tour was organized by Dongni Chen, the mother of junior Vivian Luo, who volunteered to host the girls at her workplace.

When the girls arrived at Google, Chen led them to a conference room, where she and her team work in Displaying Ads, the second largest of Google’s departments.

Dongni introduced herself and prepared a series of three female guest speakers for the girls. The speakers, talking for 30 minutes each, explained their experiences and shared advice for girls interested in the tech industry, said junior Stacey Chen, who participated in the tour.

Stacey said that a common theme among the speakers was that learning in the industry is very different from learning in the classroom.

“It was so great to hear from so many experts in the industry,” Stacey said. “I felt encouraged to not only study hard in school, but also to go for opportunities in the workplace.”

In fact, Dongni, who trains Google interviewers, gave the girls a few tips if they ever got an interview at Google.

During the technical interview, Dongni said, the interviewer might ask the interviewee to write a piece of code to solve a problem. Although the interviewee might not know the answer right away, they should walk the interviewer through their steps. The ability to communicate ideas is how an interviewer knows if the prospective employee would be a good worker on a team.

After the speakers talked to the girls, they walked around the quad, looking at the various forms of entertainment that Google employees are offered: a volleyball court, a mini golf course and a take-out diner, as well as a cafeteria.

The campus was “like a utopia,” Stacey said. It was a “utopia” where Dongni and her three coworkers found a place to express their passion in the sciences.

“I am really happy to see girls that are interested in STEM,” Dongni said, “and I hope to see some of [them] become my coworkers in the foreseeable future.”