Information interview with a software engineer

I conducted an informational interview with someone who is currently working in the field of computer science which is another field I am interested in other than mechanical engineering.  His name is Kenny Yu and he currently works for Google Inc. as a software engineer.  The interview I conducted with him was very informative on how to become a software engineer as well as typical day of work for him.  Kenny got started in Stuyvesant High School where he had taken computer science classes which then extended into his college years at Harvard.  He goes on to say that in order to be a great software engineer, you would have to have a solid background in math, code, algorithms, data structures, features and properties about different programming languages, abstraction and design, and much more. All of this is to be able to properly write code.  Software engineers need to be independent and love problem solving. Software engineering requires lots of time and planning to best design how the pieces of software should work together. It also requires doing a lot of research into existing systems to understand the best practices in the field and how to put pieces together.  What Kenny enjoyed most about being a software engineer, especially for Google, is that Google lets him deal with massive amounts of data; from terabytes to petabytes of data.  What he dislikes most of his work is wait for his work to be approved by other people.  Kenny also advised aspiring software engineers to always study other peoples’ work and constantly study because the world of software engineering is constantly changing and updating.  In order to sustain great productivity with any company you may work for, he says that you must be willing to learn everyday and study everyday.

Andy Yee