After giving out the same story to ten people, I realized it would be much easier to put this on my tabulas and actually make some use of my account there. So check out my initial impressions and thoughts about California below, subdivided into easy-to-digest sections (because the whole thing is admittedly pretty massive):
THE COMPANY: First and foremost, my reason for coming here, NVIDIA Corporation. Yes, the same NVIDIA which makes graphics cards, which probably made the graphics card running in your computer right now! This company is one of basically two in this field (standalone graphics cards), with about 60% of the market share. The other major company is ATI with about 35%, and the rest divvied up among a few smaller companies. Started only 11 years ago, the company is fairly young, with about 2000 employees worldwide, of which about 1500 are based here in Santa Clara. As a result of being young, there is not a lot of hierarchy in the workplace. Although there is a system of managers, the vast majority of managers are also regular employees (i.e. with not just management duties) and that makes for a somewhat more relaxed/informal attitude–and much better, in my opinion, cause your boss is not some pointy-haired MBA with no idea what your problems are. As the HR/PR people like to point out, “even the CEO doesn’t have his own office, he’s in a cubicle just like you.”
THE JOB: Which brings me to me, or rather my internship here. I’m in the OpenGL Software testing group, with roughly 20 people in my “group,” although I don’t actually work closely with anyone else. What I do is to write software tests (basically programs), that thoroughly test out certain features. These tests are then run (along with thousands of other existing tests) almost non-stop at an NVIDIA facility somewhere else, on thousands of different hardware configurations, including all the various NVIDIA graphics cards, lots of different CPUs (both Intel and AMD), etc. etc. Thus I am not actually involved in finding or fixing bugs, although if I find any, I’m free to dive into the code and try and fix them =)
The work environment is really informal, and well-suited to the way I work. No one checks up on me every five minutes to make sure I’m doing work; in fact my immediate boss is in the North Carolina office of NVIDIA! I can work at my own pace, and so far I’m loving the work, and so time goes by real fast. There are no set timings on when I need to be at work, and so I generally arrive sometime between 11-11:30 a.m., and stay until about 9-9:30 p.m. I eat both lunch and dinner here, and so far (two weeks) it’s been different food every day and good food, at that. Here’s to hoping that it stays that way…
THE APARTMENT: My apartment is located 19 minutes (by walk) away from NVIDIA. It’s 2 bedroom, 1 bath, and was completely unfurnished when we got it. I have since gotten a mattress for my room, and then my roommate and I got a small card table with 4 chairs ($40 from walmart) and a small TV table ($20 from walmart), on which to place the TV. The TV is a donation from my roommate’s girlfriend (more about her below). We already ordered (and surprisingly, got installed also already) cable. I have no computer at home, and I like it that way. I don’t miss it at all, especially since I can even play games (ahem, “work”) at work.
THE ROOMMATE: My roommate is from Carnegie Melon (CMU), and he’s in the hardware side of NVIDIA (yes, he’s also an intern here). He seems cool, but I can’t really say much, because I have seen him for a grand total of about 10 minutes by himself; all the other times I’ve seen him (which is still not that much), he’s been with his girlfriend. His gf also goes to CMU, but her family lives close to here, and so she’s in town until her internship in NY starts, early June sometime. So he’s always either at her place, or they’re both at my place. Either way, it’s hard to really talk with him much because of this (not that the gf isn’t cool, I’m just kinda the third wheel).
THE AREA: California is awesome. Soon I hope to actually see it =) Not having a car here, I haven’t really been able to explore much, but what I’ve seen so far is promising. There are a ton of shops and restaurants in Santa Clara. This place is also the most diverse place I’ve seen in the US (except possibly NY): so many asians, a fair number of blacks, lots of hispanics, etc. Accordingly, there are hundreds of chinese places, dozens of japanese places, and several korean/vietnamese/other oriental places. Also, (perhaps more importantly for me), lots of Indian restaurants and grocery stores (in case I ever end up cooking or something (doubtful)). The weather so far has been perfect, every single day: Sunny and cool. This weekend, I’m going to San Francisco/Alcatraz/other places in the northern bay area, so I’ll actually get to see some more places =)
Well you’ve endured enough from me. Go now, and seize the day…or something.
Tags: nvidia, santa clara
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