40 seconds left it's coming hey everyone
I think I'm alive now I'm YK of course
and welcome to CS dojo and we have
Tanika veer as our guests today say hi
to everyone Tana
okay so Tana is actually a good friend
of mine and she was formerly an explorer
intern at Microsoft and she was also a
program manager intern at Microsoft and
she's currently at the University of
British University of British Columbia
in Vancouver pursuing a degree in
computer science yep yep and this format
is gonna be first of all we're gonna
begin with about 23 minutes of interview
or a conversation it would be like a
need to be a slash conversation where
I'm gonna ask Donna about what she did
at Microsoft as an exploring turn and a
program manager intern and what kind of
experience she had prior to working at
Microsoft and what her interview
experience was like to get into
Microsoft and after that we're gonna do
like seven minutes of you know audience
Q&A session so we can take your
questions so let's get started first of
all actually we're you know good friends
we we knew each other before this we got
to know each other through you know this
project called sound vision so maybe you
can tell everyone a little bit about the
project that this project called sound
business vision was an iOS app that
transformed 3d spatial information into
sound so pretty much it takes your field
of vision into sound and it was to help
those who are visually impaired navigate
unfamiliar environments and pretty much
use a device and the phone and we
participated Ericsson for that the
Ericsson Innovation Awards to help the
future of city life right so just to
give everyone a little bit of context it
was sort of like a student competition
that was held by you know this company
called Ericsson you might have heard
about
and it was in Sweden and there were like
800 teams at the beginning and we were
like one of the top four who actually
got to go to Sweden so that was really
cool
yes definitely my first time ever being
year so yeah and like at the end we
didn't release the product but like we
worked with some you know blind and
visually impaired people and I think it
was there anything you know new you
learned about like that particular
audience
um just from someone we were making the
app we did actually run it ourselves so
we would actually glad for ourselves I
walk around the campus and I think if
anything I just got a new level of
appreciation and also a new level of
understanding of the importance of
accessibility so I think that was the
biggest learning that I got was
accepting the importance of
accessibility in software today yeah
yeah sorry I think my audience audio was
off for a little bit so I'm gonna start
asking you about you know more about
yourself and software development and
Microsoft so how did you get interested
in software development in the first
place um I started off in old school I
was put into a programming course
because no the other courses were
available all the time and I previously
did a little bit of HTML with Neopets
they used to have those like pages where
you customize your profile I guess I'm
so had a little bit experience with that
but then when I went into a programming
course I started to like it so I
continued that on for 3 years throughout
high school and after that I went
straight into university into computer
science so that's kind of my background
before me before DBC though I didn't
have any like very strong experience
it's more just like Java the basics of
like mmm like declaration of variables
of stuff like nothing bad intense or
extreme right so I'm I've heard about
Neopets but I don't know like too much
about how it works yeah I could game
where are you girl pets and stuff kind
of it's this goal it's this old game
from like the 2000s where you have a
bunch of pets and I guess you'd grow
them you also make them stronger you
also like trying to make money by
playing games and I guess the main goal
of it was to make money to buy a house
to keep your pets in and buy them
clothes like accessories and things like
that so yeah and then with that people
would make like profile pages to like
highlight their pets and such and that
had like a lot of like you can put in
your own custom CSS and HTML to make it
look cooler so that was like my first
experience playing around with code
because I want to make my page look
really cool it doesn't really look that
cool but you know a little kid with a
lot of colors and everything as opposed
to basic pH I was available right so you
started learning HTML and CSS and maybe
a few other things from Neopets and you
were like I want to learn more about
coding yeah well actually after that it
kind of dropped off for a bit but then
when I
put back when I like into programming
class back in high school it all started
coming back and I started enjoying it
again and we used to make up Java games
in that class so I started enjoying like
the ui/ux part of that as well cuz it
brought back the Neopets days as well as
I just enjoyed the logic and the
mathematics behind it while I was in
high school so that's kind of what
started my interest okay and then when
you went to you know the UBC in
Vancouver you immediately choose
computer science as your major I did yes
I went straight into computer science
CBC had that option so okay and so at
some point you know you were able to get
your first internship at Microsoft I
think as an explorer intern so could you
tell everyone a little bit about what
kind of experience you had prior to
working there sure um so prior to that I
actually didn't have that much
experience the Explorer program is for
freshmen or sophomore those without much
experience in science so I think the
biggest thing that I had was they were
looking for an interest in computer
science so more my involvement rather
than like concrete things that I've
completed I think because by that point
I didn't I didn't have anything concrete
from sound vision or anything what I did
that in tribute so it was more just like
where I was showing my interest so me
participating a sound vision me doing
extracurriculars outside of class that
showed like my interest in computer
science and coding as well as you did
need some knowledge of data structures
so I did study off of there cracking the
coding interview book and that was the
main two things it was just showing my
interest and knowing like linked lists
and arrays and string manipulation those
are the main things from cracking the
code even near the beginning of the book
okay just just in case you know some
people came just now
sound vision was that project we worked
on us basically an iOS app and what was
your interview like for the Explorer
intern right I'll first explain what the
exported so it's more it's a freshman
program
that allows you to explore both the
three positions of being quality p.m. so
program manager and dev in Microsoft so
you do you're going to part of two other
interns with you you both you three of
you work on the same project and you
just cycle through the different roles
so in that interview process
they kind of tested in all three roles
so they would ask me some coding
questions and then they also ask me some
more design related questions like
design are calculated for the blind for
example and where you put into
consideration what the buttons should be
like what the material you're gonna use
for those buttons if there should be
sound feedback and it kind of just show
like you have a higher thinking like to
be more of PME to have like more design
or int your thinking as well as they
also did def questions so the usual ones
that you would find in practically
cutting each of you yeah okay that
sounds good and what is it has an
explorer intern so that was like for the
entire summer right for three or four
months yeah it's for three months twelve
weeks and as an explorer attorney I
worked under the edge team under the
quality team so we were building an
internal bug tracking tool yeah so what
second edge is the you know Microsoft's
new browser right yeah so we were
working on to the edge team specifically
under the quality team at Microsoft so
they the team that I was working on they
focus more internal tools making a lot
of internal tools so the tool that we
were responsible for was making a bug
tracking tool or pretty much those using
edge internally could submit bugs easily
into and to see bugs
so yeah that's what we're doing we spent
the first few weeks interviewing people
around the around the floor and around
our team asking them what kind of things
they want to see what Qaida and being
like interview all the stakeholders
essentially and then afterwards we
developed for a long time and then
finally we collected data so it's called
telemetry and Microsoft about
our findings to showcase the team okay
so it was like a team of just interns
working on this project
yes it was me plus two interns so all
the Explorer programs it's you plus two
other entrants
all right nice because you get a nice
like little teeny bonding experience too
okay so this like you totally owned this
project and it was up to you like what
you wanted to build into this thing and
what you wanted to do with it
yep pretty much yep they just kind of
gave like the overall like motivation
behind it so we want to see bugs for the
website and then it was just our
responsibility for how we want to do it
and what we would okay let's move
forward now a little bit so that was was
that like after your first year in
university or your second year first
year and then after that you you know
you returned to Microsoft as a PM intern
or program manager intern as they you
know as they call it yeah so what's that
like the year right after that um kind
of it was so I was in the summer of
first year I did explore and in the fall
of third year / second years after my
second year I went to another program of
the summer so that's why I pushed my
internship to the fall yeah so it was in
the fall and to pick p.m. what happens
with the Explorer program is after you
do it you I you sometimes interview for
well it kind of depends on what team
you're originally placed in but you
interview for another rule so I
interviewed to be a p.m. and then I was
places yeah right and just in case you
know people don't know what is what is
p.m. what is program manager and why did
you choose that role for yourself yeah
so program manager there's a lot of
definitions of it but I think the
biggest thing is from what my experience
with is to see end to end the whole like
a portion of the system and just keep
everything kind of on track as well as
kind of help the business value of your
projects so you kind of look a little
bit more into the business side as well
for me the reason why I picked
depict it because many of the peons that
I met I really liked a few of the things
they were doing so first thing is they
had full oversight of the whole project
which is really cool like if you ask me
a question they'll know everything about
something so if you don't know how to
use a certain tool if you have to PM
about it most of the times they actually
know everything about it first is if you
ask the developer they're very
concentrated so I like the like how do I
say a higher view of the project and the
other thing I liked is that you also do
code so it's not all just business we do
code and you tend to code at least for
me it was like other smaller projects or
like I've seen PM's prototype code
prototypes or code testing environments
or just code like different things so
you kind of get more flexibility from
what I found in what you want to do on
the terms of coding
I want to code so when I told my manager
like the first thing I said was I want
to code that's what I like doing so he
gave me a project purely relate to
coming and there are other pans who
don't want to come as much so they can
do other things as well I think there's
a lot of flexible all right so just to
give everyone a little bit of context
when people say p.m. it could mean like
a few different things it could be like
project manager product manager or
program manager and I Microsoft you know
the most common term is program manager
and it's sort of like this like these
whole things are this disposition where
you decide what the product you know
sort of looks like in general like not
too much in detail because that's the
the responsibility of you know of a
designer like a UX or UI designer and
then once p.m. has like a mock-up of
what the product looks like then they
sort of give it to the developers and
they did you know do all of it that's
sort of the usual practice at different
software companies so what did you do as
a p.m. Microsoft yeah so what I did was
I was working again on your edge under
their layout team which is responsible
for CSS so what I was doing was
collecting data about the usage of
certain CSS properties across the web so
pretty much I was crawling two million
and collecting data and aggregating that
into a website to be viewable by anyone
um you say you were you are scraping 2
million websites yeah yeah what did you
use to do that um so we have like an
internal crawler system where pretty
much I made the code the script to
scrape the information and I just ran it
on that crawler system that they have
internally and they went over Chrome
Firefox and edge and it just scraped all
the information off of some random
source of 200 million euros I'm not
exactly sure how we got that 2 million
from but it's supposed to be a very
representative sample and then yeah and
then I was just responsible for
collecting that data and then cleaning
it up to make it actually readable and
useful because you'd get I think we got
like I got 9 terabytes of data back
after doing that so that it's cleaning
it up and making it actually actionable
and that was pretty much my whole
project was making actionable data for
the other devil development teams or
other PM's or whoever else ok and you
say you the goal of that project was to
analyze how CSS was used um it was aged
analyzed but B was more to give more
actionable feedback to our teams so
specifically I was looking at rules it's
a new feature from CSS so I'm
specifically looking to how people
nowadays in their websites use that
rules and if our developers or our team
can be better suited for the web so that
just just in case you know there's
someone who's not familiar it's like CSS
and HTML CSS and HTML you know are
basically used to build web pages and
they're like always new developments in
CSS I think so they're like always new
features and stuff so you were basically
like maybe counting the number of times
that rule was used and how it was used
yeah yes accounting the number of times
it's used what kind of values people use
like for it because I'm like what kind
of specifications they would use I kind
of just getting an overall percentage
like what is used where and what kind of
sites use these okay and just moving
back a little bit I guess what was your
experience like you know to become a PM
or program manager intern at Microsoft
the interview experience or sure
interview experience right the interview
experience from what I know a very some
person person but for me it was there
was no technical questions for me it was
more questions related to like higher
level thinking of design or or even like
how to find business value and things so
I got questions like if you were to
pitch edge to a director how would you
pitch it what business value can you
like show for edge so things like that
but I know that other PM's who also
interviewed they got technical questions
so they got like code this thing or code
that so I think it really depends on the
interviewer because some p.m. tend to be
very very technical and some pants I
guess aren't as technical they're more
business focused so I guess it depends
on interviewer a little bit okay that
sounds good what did you think of you
know your experience as a PM intern and
then before that as as a exploring term
explorer I loved it and I would
recommend any freshman to do it I think
was a really great experience it was
really fun I learned a lot made really
good friends it was just an overall
really good summer so definitely
recommend to anyone
umm p.m. for me it was a very different
experience because I was in the fall so
I also got a little glimpse of what
full-time life would be like it's very
different in summer than it is in the
fall I liked it um I wouldn't say it's
like of the same excitement as explore
just because explore was in the summer
with like 2,000 interns a lot more fun
yeah yeah I think what like what people
don't see immediately is that you know I
interned at Microsoft to and in the
summer there are a lot of interns like
2000 interns and there's like even an
event where every intern sort of comes
together and there's a concert and stuff
so it's almost like a den party guys
and there's like events like every
single day and there's like foods and
like there's just like constantly like
things to do like they're barely bored I
wasn't bored at all like last summer at
all I never had a moment of being bored
because they're just so Mara I'm gonna
fall is a lot different I I still really
liked it like but it was like much more
realistic I guess if you could put that
as a word everyone's really nice and
everyone's really easy to work with but
of course it wasn't like the two
thousand interest to hang out with and
there was an event every single day it
was a lot more like normal life kind of
thing and as a p.m. I really enjoyed it
I really enjoyed our team I really
enjoyed talking to people but yeah I
think I think I enjoyed the talking to
people I enjoyed coding I think I was
lucky and that my manager was pretty
responsive to me so he I just told them
I want to code and he gave me a project
that was heavily technical um as opposed
to something not nice yeah so um you're
living in Seattle now yep so working on
your projects and taking courses at the
same time
what's your you know like what's your
life like in Seattle my life is very
interesting so a few like random facts I
guess is um so I'm living with a
roommate right now in two hundred square
feet place so probably like the size of
a dorm room and we're working on project
together so that's why I were living
together and I guess like if the random
facts is I actually live off of Soylent
which is not very conventional but I
don't know if you guys can see that
that's all the empty ones for like the
past I don't know three weeks or
something like that yeah so in case you
know Soylent is this like you know there
it's supposed to be food you can drink
yeah yeah pretty much
supposedly I mean I like it so far I've
liked it I've been on it for like many
months now but it's 20% of your daily
nutrition in a bottle and it's like
drinkable and it comes from Amazon so
yeah
today and this live stream is not
sponsored by Soylent it's not yeah
pretty much living off this toy line and
I'm perfectly healthy so that's good
working for you then written gay uh yeah
and then living in its very small place
I'm still doing school so I actually
spend a lot of time going back and forth
from make over to Seattle of attending
classes and quizzes but working on my
project here it's a bit of a mess uh
yeah that that's my semester in the next
few months really okay and you know we
we talked about it before a little bit
and what I found interesting is that how
you don't have a lot of stuff
no yeah because of a really small place
and there's two of us I think like yeah
I only have like one suitcase of things
which is like very different from the
usual where like if you're living
somewhere for a long time you can't fit
all of your belongings into one suitcase
so yeah and like we live on oh we sleep
on like camping cots um because it was
the easiest and the cheapest like a pink
card spot kind of pink hot so they're
like these beds that you usually take
for camping so they're foldable oh and
you put them in the car and you unfold
them we sleep on that because it was
cheapest and the easiest to get to so
yeah yeah the very minimalistic I would
say yeah yeah and you didn't even have a
desk gray at some point oh yeah for a
while we were using like an ironing
board from Goodwill it was like three
bucks and our chairs are actually like
three dollars each the diving board was
like four bucks maybe and using that for
a while it's really ergonomic so I kind
of think it's a business idea if you
also go with it
to make like an ironing board s cuz I
just heights really well but now we have
a desk fronting good well which is like
10 bucks but yeah yeah yeah that's
better
yeah okay so the life audience Q&A
sessions coming up it starts so many
questions
you leave live chat we're gonna take a
look at them you can ask kana or me any
questions you have and for future live
stream the best way to you know get
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let's do life audience Q&A kind of
beauty any interesting questions reading
yeah it's cool not any questions if you
see any yep is someone's asking are you
from India I'm not I'm actually Bengali
but I grew up in Canada Victoria my
whole life because someone's asking me
I am a University of Waterloo student
that's in Canada what do you guys think
of that school do you ever hear of it in
the industry definitely like when I was
interning at Microsoft you know I'm from
the UBC which is in Vancouver and there
were like maybe five people from UBC and
they were like 40 people from you know
University of Waterloo so I think it's
definitely the best school for computer
science in Canada
definitely it's insane even like they
also have a lot of meetup so all the
tech interns that I'm from Waterloo for
Facebook Microsoft Google all of them
meet up a lot it's definitely like
really like one of the best it has the
best network yep
Tenzing big one I think is asking what
is the best website or way to get
internship um so my my process of
getting my recruiter was I attended the
career fair at school and I kinda just
started from there and it's really
important one one advice I have for
everyone is if they don't reply to you
in two weeks please email them again
sometimes I forget and like so many
people I know missed out on
opportunities because they just didn't
think it was too routed email again but
you should like definitely suspension
weeks email again until you get a formal
answer but yeah mainly just from school
yes
I definitely agree with that career fair
thing so you know it's different for big
companies and smaller companies for
smaller companies I think the best way
is to just sort of you know be they're
all networked and you know maybe email
people on LinkedIn before large
companies going to career fairs it can
be really really effective hmm um I did
get paid I saw a question I did get paid
to work at Microsoft as both an explorer
and a PM injured I think someone was
asking like a salary question would you
be willing to share that sorry like well
some of us asking a question about
salary I wasn't there I don't know if
I'm allowed to say specifically but I
can kind of say that Explorer was a
little bit less than a regular insurer
oh but I don't think I'm allowed to
fully disclose the exact amount but it
was regardless right so I can you know
just share my personal experience I
think Microsoft so as a program manager
intern I was getting paid I mean I I
thought it was kind of crazy but I was
gonna pay like seven thousand US dollars
and when I heard it I was like well yeah
that's that doesn't make any sense but
that's sort of like you know what they
the level you know they go they go for
it like these big companies are pretty
similar there's another question for me
what programming language do you
recommend me to start learning if I'm
starting to learn any programming
language so my advice is sort of always
the same you know either Python or
JavaScript and you know if you do with
if you if you go with JavaScript go with
like HTML CSS and then JavaScript and do
you have any thoughts on that uh yeah
that was a similar path that I went
through with HTML CSS and JavaScript I
also really recommend maybe I'm a little
biased because of my computer science
degree but to have like to start
learning about the fundamentals and you
can use that
language business you're specific but
actually like try to learn it rather
than just like how to build a website
but also like the things behind cracking
the coding interview like the data
structures and stuff okay I'm looking
for more questions someone says what
about Ruby so I would say Ruby is like a
really simple and nice language to learn
it is getting less popular these days
but it's still like a good first
language to learn I think someone's
saying any interview tips um the biggest
interview tip I have is talk your
thoughts out loud that's really really
helpful for the achieve your and also I
think most my interviews have gone
really well whenever I'm just talking
through my thoughts hmm so as they ask a
question I repeat it as I'm writing down
things on the board
I like say them out loud I also before
encode make sure I understand the whole
problem so I will ask questions make
sure I understand all of the problem and
then start coding it even when I'm
coding I'm still talking about what I'm
coding and why I'm doing certain lines
and what my thought processes yeah I
definitely agree with that I think I
mean someone's asking me for it you know
some interview tips and I think a lot of
what a lot of people miss is how
interviews are not just about solving
you know the technical problem it's also
about communicating your thoughts and
trying to understand what the interior
like wants exactly so that you know you
can answer the question exactly that
they're asking okay so should we take
one more question - yeah sure okay
looking through some questions here
saying any website you recommend for a
self-learning coding I have some
thoughts on that do you have any
thoughts
okay sure so I would say code Academy is
good I also heard that let me just type
it in you know in the chat too so code
kata me I saw you was code Academy but
apparently it's code Academy was just
confusing and then another one is I
can't remember remember I can't remember
what it's called but it's similar to
code Academy like you know it does any
of any of those interactive websites
it's good and after that I would
recommend
Rinda calm and good to me like video of
websites anything you want to add um I
mostly I guess most money like online
learning has been prepared for
interviews so I really like using packer
rank and I leak code sorry I was
blinking so yeah those two um but I
don't know any specific like video sites
I also recommend also looking at like if
you have time to look through like
online video lectures from the
universities if you guys want like a
university I think courses on Coursera
and stuff are good too yeah yeah one the
one I was trying to think of yeah was
free code camp free code camp is sort of
I think similar to Co Academy but you
know three hmm yeah okay um I guess
that's it for this call yeah thanks for
having me yeah no problem thanks for
coming to my show first and thanks
everyone for um you know being part of
this and I'll see you guys in the next
video bye bye everyone