Wharton Tech Blog

By: Felix Hu (MBA Candidate 2009, The Wharton School)

Mike Cassidy kicked off the Entrepreneur Trek with a keynote speech on how to successfully create a company.  Mike was the CEO of Stylus Innovation, Direct Hit, and Xfire, prior to their acquisitions and was well versed in how to form and exit a technology company in under three years.  He stressed the importance of speed as a strategy in a startup.  This philosophy of speed extended from market entry, to product release, and even to hiring.  Notably, many of the speakers over the weekend reinforced the importance of speed in all aspects of their own startups.  Bill Reichert, MD of Garage Technology Ventures presented us with 10 specific rules for pitching. 1.       Focus on creating value – understand how your technology creates real sustainable value.

by Sudip Chakrabarti

That was precisely how my engineering professor reacted when I mentioned Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Computing to him. Granted he is old school, but like him, a majority of us still think of Amazon as the online Walmart and nothing more. But quietly yet surely, Amazon has been transforming itself into the provider of computing power to the whole wide world.

So, what exactly is elastic cloud computing (or EC2 in techie speak)? In plain English, it is a paradigm that allows users to access IT-related services from the Internet (“the cloud”) without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them. Like one gets electricity by plugging into an electric outlet, users can access unlimited computing capability by “plugging” into the cloud computing infrastructure. It is elastic because computing power can be added or reduced as necessary, with the user paying only for the services used.

Of all the companies that are venturing into cloud computing, Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) has been the most prominent so far. AWS consists of three key pieces: 

• EC2 instances: EC2 instances are the actual machines that a user owns for the time he / she pays for. Depending on the computing capability and RAM required, one can buy a small, large or extra-large instance for a price ranging from 10 to 80 cents an hour.
• Simple Storage Service (S3): Amazon S3 is storage on the Internet. Users can store their data in unique “buckets” that are similar to directories, and access that data via unique keys that are similar to file paths. Once again, a user only pays for the storage and the amount of data transferred in or out.
• Simple Queue Service (SQS): SQS offers a reliable way of passing messages and data between EC2 instances. By using Amazon SQS, users can move data between distributed components of their applications that perform different tasks, without losing messages or requiring each component to be always available.

Using these three pieces of AWS, one could very easily build a distributed application that runs on several EC2 instances, writes and reads data to and from S3, and uses SQS to coordinate between the instances. Most importantly, the number of EC2 instances can be dynamically increased or decreased depending on the load on the application.

The opportunities and benefits of elastic cloud computing are simply enormous. It offers two guys and a dog working out of a garage the computing power to match the big boys at a cost of a few hundred dollars per month. It is no wonder the Google’s of the world are already jumping on the bandwagon. So far, however, Amazon’s offering has gained significant traction because of ease of use and companies such as RightScale that are selling services to manage AWS. It, however, remains to be seen whether AWS and similar cloud computing services can meet the stringent SLA requirements of enterprise users.
 

Useful links:
Amazon Web Services: http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws
 

A step-by-step guide to get started on AWS: http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/04/05/how-to-getting-started-with-amazon-ec2
 

Calculator to compute monthly AWS costs: http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html

by, Dan Richards, WG’09
Strategic Partner Development Manager (Intern)

I spent the summer on the Local/Core Content group in the Content Partnerships team (http://contentcentral.blogspot.com/).  As you may or may not have heard, Google is not a “media” company, in that they don’t “create” content - they just aggregate it from different sources and make it accessible and usable to the user.  Whenever Google can’t access certain content by crawling websites, that’s when the Content Partnership team steps in to negotiate deals with content providers and the like.  My role within this team was part business development, part strategy.  It was a very busy summer, but very enjoyable and fulfilling.  A typical day for me looked something like this:

8:00 - While Google provides free shuttle services to most areas from San Francisco to San Jose and up the East Bay, I lived in Los Altos Hills, which meant I would hop on the VTA (public bus) for a 20 min ride to the Googleplex. 

8:30 - Arrive and get settled at my desk.  I was usually the first one from my group there at this time.

8:35 - Head over to Cafe Moma for pancakes with strawberry syrup and whipped cream (which quickly turned into cold cereal and a banana after I gained 5 lbs in my first couple weeks).  I’d usually take breakfast back to my desk and start sifting through emails.  I worked with quite a few folks in Europe and Asia, so often had emails from them waiting for me when I got to work in the morning.

9:00 - I’d usually spend the next hour or so trying to make a dent in my to-do list.  Some days it seemed that I’d check one thing off and three new things got added automatically.

10:00 - The next hour could be spent sitting down with a product manager, legal counsel, or marketing manager to discuss a certain project.  Google is a VERY collaborative environment, and I learned that if you don’t reach out and work with as many different people as possible, you’ll get left behind. 

11:00 - Late morning is usually a good time to get some BizDev related partner calls in - whether they’re on the West Coast or East Coast, it’s usually a good time to chat with people.  I’d either make calls from my desk or reserve a private room on Google’s elaborate (but easy to use) internal network.

12:30 - This was always the toughest part of the day.  Tough because I’d have to decide in which of the 20+ world class cafes I’d eat lunch that day.  Each cafe has their own theme - from Pinxto (everything made from organic ingredients grown within ~150 miles of Google) to Andale (Larry and Sergey’s favorite Mexican restaurant that they convinced to expand from Palo Alto to the Googleplex).  The best part about the free lunch is that it makes it so easy to sit down with people from around the company.  My weeks often filled up quickly with lunch appointments with different people.  Whether I was working on a project with them or just wanted to learn about the next version of their product, people were very accommodating.  It’s a very open culture and people love to chat over free (and tasty) food.

2:00 - More meetings over the next couple hours.  From one-on-one’s with your boss (or bosses, in my case) to weekly team meetings to more project-centric meetings, early afternoon was usually the best time for this.  Google has a great video conferencing network with all their offices around the world.  I could reserve almost any conference room in Mountian View and be “face to face” with someone in the Dublin office, or in the next building over, within seconds. 

4:00 - This is where the “real work” began for me.  I’d usually try to block out this time to hack away at my to-do list, make some more calls and send some more emails.  Sometimes I’d book a private room in order to avoid distractions. 

6:00 - At this point, I’d either be wrapping things up and heading home or would grab dinner at one of the above-mentioned cafes and stick around for another hour, depending on how busy things were.  I’d try to hit the gym before I went home, but that happened with much less frequency as the summer progressed.  I convinced myself that riding the beach cruisers from building to building for meetings, along with the occasional mid-day basketball game, was enough exercise for me. 

All in all, it was a great summer.  It was busier and a bit more strenuous then I expected, but it was very rewarding and worthwhile.  I learned a lot, received great feedback from my managers, and was happy with how it turned out.  And if anyone ever tells you there’s no such thing as a “free lunch”, don’t believe them!

By Stephanie Chu | WG’09 | Product Manager Intern

This summer I interned as a Product Manager at Amazon.com in Seattle. I had a great experience with my projects, the business team I worked with (Grocery), and the company as a whole. I thought I’d try to share some of my experiences with you through a typical day.

7am - I start the day by making breakfast in my apartment. Amazon puts up summer interns in Harbor Steps, a fully furnished upscale apartment building in downtown Seattle with views of the water.

8am - I meet one of the other MBA summer interns downstairs in the lobby and walk to work together. Our offices are only a 15 minute walk from where we live, so it’s a nice way to start the work day. We grab coffee at Tully’s, then get to our desks.

8:30am - Check email, review to-do list for the day.

9am - Talk with logistics companies and put together a request for proposal. One of my summer projects is to figure out a fulfillment solution for Amazon to be able to offer some new grocery categories. This has included getting up to speed quickly on all of the relevant supply chain needs for the business, researching and reaching out to prospective logistics partners, and starting to build out a solution. My background prior to Wharton was in e-commerce product management, where I focused mainly on website product development and marketing initiatives, so it has been really fun to delve into the operations side of retail. In fact, this is one of the things I really enjoyed about Amazon - the breadth of the product management position means that you are able to get involved in many aspects of the business.

11:30am - Catch the Amazon shuttle to one of the other Amazon buildings for today’s Executive Speaker Series. Amazon sets up an amazing line up of executive speakers for its MBA interns including many of the Senior VPs as well as Jeff Bezos. This is in addition to the company-wide Fishbowl speaker series, which are typically writers, artists, and other relevant public personalities.

1:30pm - Meeting with the senior developer for Amazon’s pricing tools. My other summer project is around competitive price optimization for the Grocery business. I am meeting with him to understand how Amazon’s pricing tools work, so I can optimize the data quality and pricing algorithm in order to improve pricing to increase sales and optimize margins. I was impressed that both of my projects this summer were very hands-on. The work I did had a tangible impact on the business, and were also areas that needed attention, so the team seemed happy to have my help.

3pm - Kick-off meeting with the market research agency who is helping us collect additional competitive pricing data to inform our pricing strategy. Both Grocery (dry goods) and Fresh (Amazon’s local grocery delivery business) are doing pricing optimization projects this summer, so we are working together with the agency to deliver a research product that suits both groups’ needs.

4:30pm - Return some calls to West coast logistics companies.

6pm - Head out for the night. There is an Amazon MBA intern happy hour down the street, so I plan to stop by there for a couple hours, then join friends for dinner at Quinn’s, a new gastro-pub in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Today Erick Tseng, the Product Manager for Google Android, hosted the first “MBA Tech Talk” at Wharton. Although we had been anticipating his talk since it was first arranged, Tuesday’s announcement of the HTC T-mobile G1 [http://gizmodo.com/5054378/t+mobile-g1-info-dump], made it all the more exciting.

According to Erick, we were seeing the first live demo of the product since the announcement – and it was happening at Wharton! A few features Erick highlighted in his demo:

• Instead of an alpha-numeric password, you use the touch screen to draw a screen pattern to unlock the device
• Using the touchscreen, you can drag and drop icons on the “desktop”
• An extended desktop allows you to access your applications by sliding it over your desktop
• Browser usability allows you to easily zoom and “fly out” of a page, like in Google Earth
• Clicking on an address  takes you directly to google maps, with Street View available
• Street View Compass allows you to view a location as if you were viewing it through your video camera. You can pan left and right as well as up and down, by simply tilting the device upward or downward
• A search button on the keypad allows you to search from any application

All in all, a fantastic talk by Erick, who was able to water-down the tech in his Tech Talk for an MBA audience. Wharton looks forward to the next one.

I ended up in Seattle this summer, interning as a product manager with Microsoft.  My product was an edition of SQL Server, but first I’d like to talk a bit about the MBA internship opportunity at Microsoft.   Everything I was told by the second years last year about it being a fun and event filled experience turned out to be completely accurate and true.   
EXECUTIVE SPEAKERS: Every week we a number of top executives from around the company speak to us about their experiences at Microsoft and outside the company.  There were 60 of us (as opposed to  1,000+ “technology” interns in Redmond) and the general structure of these meetings was a brief 15-20 minute introduction talk by the speaker in the beginning and then an hour long Q&A session.   Some of the best speakers that I remember were Chris Capossela, Steve Ballmer, and Jay Allard.  There were about 20 or so speakers total.  
INTERNAL OUTREACH: As an MBA intern, I would not hesitate to reach out to school alums or to even the executive speakers.  Most people I reached out to were very receptive and were willing to grab lunch or coffee with me, or a group of interns.  I arranged about 10 sessions outside the main intern activities, and it was a great way to explore other parts of the company.  I heard some other interns arranged a lot more of these sessions….but I really enjoyed my group and my work, so did not have as much incentive to go exploring.   
ORGANIZATION SIZE: Redmond many many Microsoft buildings, but the feel is still fairly small, since the groups tend to be based together and are not very large.  But, the interesting aspect of it is that you may find some random people you lost touch with in the past. For example, I found a couple of old friends from undergrad, as well as a guy I knew from high school in Richmond, VA! It’s a small world, but if you also put 30k of techies together in one place…chances are you might meet someone you knew before.
FOOD: Besides a great time, it also meant free lunch, since each speaker picked up the tab for whatever was catered to the meeting.    Not as nice Google’s amazing food, but still a nice touch.  Speaking of food, the cafeteria’s are actually quite impressive and had a surprising variety.   I still tended to stick to sandwiches, but they had ingredients like fresh avocado and all kinds of pastes (tomato basil, pesto, hummus, etc.), and cheeses that I don’t normally see at delis.  There were also ethnic cuisine’s such as Indian, Pho, sushi, etc.
SOCIAL EVENTS: Anyways, back to the internship.   Beyond the speakers we also enjoyed a number of planned events that showed us Seattle in the best light.    These including kayaking, going to the tallest building in Seattle, dinners, happy hours and a stint at a local bar “casino” where we played for fake money, but still had a lot of fun.    The recruiting staff put a lot of time and effort into making sure that our summers were enjoyable, and it really showed.   We also went to a couple of Mariners baseball games at Safeco field. Both times we hung out at the MSFT luxury box, and it’s a completely different way to watch a baseball game! Additionally, there were countless raffles for all kinds of prizes including X-box 360s, trips and restaurant certificates….of course I didn’t win anything, but there were probably around 50-60 prizes throughout the summer.  
NIGHTLIFE: As far as nightlife, Seattle has a lot to offer in this category from dive bars, to lounges, to dance clubs to afterhours places open till 4 or later (though unfortunately no drinks after 2).  So overall, from the social perspective, the internship was a lot of fun.  I would however also mention that you would need to explore the city on your own or with a couple of friends and not depend on the intern class to necessary organize social events as a group.  I would not say that the intern class hung out a huge amount together, though there were times we came together outside Microsoft.   This apparently differed from the previous two years, when the interns threw a bunch of parties for themselves and went out a lot, but I would say play it by ear as intern classes vary from year to year.
LIVING ARRANGEMENTS: The corporate housing at Harbor Steps was quite impressive and affordable.   This was especially good since I did not sublet my place during the summer and was hurting.    The apartments are well furnished and are located in the heart of Seattle. There at least three large nightlife areas nearby and it is also right next to the famous Pike’s market where you can get all kinds of produce (if you cook) or grab a bite to eat at a number of great places.  There is an option to stay closer to work in Redmond, but very few people take it and I don’t recommend it. 
COMMUTE: The commute is not that painful, especially if you can get a carpool together of 3 or more people.  It’s about 25-30 minutes to Redmond and about 35-45 minutes to get back with 3, but could take an hour or more if you don’t have the use of the 3+ carpool lane.  The carpool was also great because I got to know some of the interns much better who I otherwise may not have spent much time with. Some of the discussions we had in our car were really cool and informative.  I actually feel like I learned a lot each time.   During the carpool people also generally discussed their projects, which provided me with valuable insight into other areas of the company – a very cool thing especially if you had no clue one area could have been so much fun or another so boring.
INTERNSHIP PROJECT DETAILS: Well, I think that about sums up the social aspects of my internship and now I will move on to my responsibilities.  While I will not discuss my project in much detail, I would say that I received an impressive amount of responsibility from my team and the test was significant and impacted the overall SQL Server product.    The entire team was very open and receptive to me. They worked hard to ramp me up and help me understand the business.  I learned a ton during the summer regarding product management, specifically about positioning and messaging.   
WORK LIFE BALANCE: My days usually lasted from 8:15am to 6pm, but I did at times do a bit of work from home or on weekends. This was however my decision and not something that I felt obligated to do.  The work life balance within my group also seemed to be good.  The flexibility was impressive – as some came in at 7, while others at 10.  Everyone was pretty much gone by 7pm, though judging by email threads, some continued to work from home into the evening.   
WEATHER: The weather was hit and miss this summer, as it started off quite cold, but then became gorgeous in July, only to become a bit more cloudy towards end of July and be amazing in the last few weeks of August.   I heard the winters can be rough, but I also heard that September is the truly amazing time to be there.   As far as rain, well the kind of rain that Seattle gets doesn’t seem to compare to east coast as far as intensity, but it definitely drizzles more often.  

So I too, like 20 or so other Wharton students (actually, no one really knows the exact count), was an intern at Google in Mountain View, CA this summer.  Unlike Igor (see blog below this one) who worked in the NASO part of the Sales organization which manages Google’s largest advertisers i.e. Fortune 1000 clients, most of us were hired into the Online Sales and Operations (OSO) group which basically manages the rest of Google’s client base (a.k.a. the “long tail”).  Since Igor provided such a thorough summary of a day-in-the-life of an intern, I’ll shed some light on how our OSO summer program was structured and what my own project involved.

This year was the first time that OSO offered a formally structured MBA summer program, hiring over 70 students from top schools including Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, MIT Sloan, NYU Stern, Kellogg, Columbia, etc.  Most of us stayed for 10-12 weeks and were offered the choice of three different start dates depending on when we finished our school terms or if we had pre/post internship travel plans.  Because of the short duration of the internship, we were all assigned internal consulting projects that addressed current business problems OSO faced.  Although this was not reflective of the people management aspects of the full-time OSO Manager position, it was a great way for us to get immersed into the Google culture and observe what the full time role is like.  To guide us on our projects, we were each assigned a ‘host manager’ from the different functional and product divisions within OSO such as AdWords, AdSense, Consumer Operations, Checkout, YouTube, OSO Engineering, etc. 

I worked in the Consumer Operations (ConOps) division this summer which is responsible for providing support to all the users of Google’s 35+ consumer products like Search, Gmail, Maps, Earth, News, Toolbar, Apps, etc.  My project involved looking at the division from a high-level organizational perspective (as opposed to digging deeper into product-specific issues), identifying the key business and structural challenges it faced and recommending an action plan for addressing these challenges.  I also helped with developing a training program for new managers and worked with a few other ConOps interns on figuring out a global resource allocation model.

However, it was definitely not all work this summer - the MBA recruiting team did a great job of organizing social events for us including baseball games, boat cruises, cooking classes, winery trips, etc.  All this, in addition to the usual perks at Google (food, food and more food), made for a very fun and rewarding summer! 

Here is what my typical day (if there is such a thing) at Google looked like:

6:45am: Wake up, shower, get dressed, walk 4 blocks down one San Francisco hill and 4 blocks up another to get to the Google shuttle stop

7:25am: Get on the Google shuttle. For the next hour I have a few choices: work in semi-comfortable position, take a well-deserved nap, or read. I usually do some combination of all three.

8:30am: Finally arrive on the Google campus in Mountain View. The temperature is at least 10 degrees warmer than in San Francisco, and it’s definitely sunnier as well.

8:30am-9:00am: I check my e-mail, prepare for my upcoming meetings, and catch up with my officemates. I share a small office with two colleagues and a cute little dog. My officemates are a Strategic Partner Manager and a Technical Account Manager, both responsible for helping launch large merchants that have signed with Google Checkout.

9:00am: Breakfast time. Breakfast is usually a quick affair, just some fruit and yogurt. I usually get a chance to catch up with Justin and Jace, the two other MBA interns in my group. It’s difficult to resist the gourmet breakfast options of omelets, sausages, and pancakes, but I am trying to be good this summer.

9:00am-12:00pm: Time for morning meetings. I try to schedule at least 2-3 meetings for this time every morning. I have 3 projects this summer. The one that takes up more than half of my time is analyzing the sales processes for Google Checkout. My goal is to identify process gaps and inconsistencies across different sales teams, and implement and document changes. Because Google Checkout is still very much a startup product, sales teams are running at a 1000 mph, without much time to think about creating efficient, scalable processes. So, most mornings I try to focus on this project, scheduling meetings with impacted groups and then taking some time in the afternoon to develop my analysis.

12:00pm-1:00pm Lunch. Anything you might have heard about Google food is true — the food is amazing and the choices are almost unlimited with 15 (or is it 16 now?) different cafe options on campus. My favorite place is the No Name Cafe. It’s on the main campus, a short walk from my building. I usually try to schedule lunch with someone, either with one of my colleagues in Checkout or with people throughout the company.

1:00pm-2:00pm Team meeting with Strategic Partner Managers (post-sales) team. After around the horn of top issues for each manager, we do a deep dive on the marketing plan for the new Google Checkout iGadget. Marketing team is visiting for this discussion to give a quick presentation on the new gadget, and solicit input from the team. After a quick discussion, a few decisions are made, and the gadget is scheduled to be launched in only 2 weeks. In the next couple weeks, we may discover a few holes in those decisions and revise them, but for now, the decisions are made. Everyone brings their laptop to meetings at Google, so it’s also a good time to catch up on some e-mail, because my GoogleMail inbox gets full really quickly here.

2:00pm-3:00pm Meeting for my other project. My second project is to analyze the mobile marketplace and to recommend a Google Checkout mobile strategy in the US. I am gathering information for this project from three different types of sources: web research, conversations with mobile experts at Google, and interviews with current and potential Google partners.

3:00pm-3:30pm Meeting with my manager, Sales Operations Manager for Google Checkout. Her role is to work with Sales director on anything and everything that he needs done: from developing sales strategy, to preparing executive briefings presentations, to dealing with HR issues. I meet with my manager at least once a week, sometimes more, depending on what is going on with my projects. Meetings with her are very informal and she usually leaves the agenda for these meetings up to me. I asked her for some feedback on my presentation in the last meeting, and so today is the day to review my progress and get direction on my process analysis. She has been a fantastic manager – pushed me hard and provided meaningful and insightful feedback.

3:30pm-4:30pm: Mid-afternoon slowdown and catchup. Between a ton of e-mails in my inbox, interesting conversations with my officemates, going to get frozen yogurt at a downstairs cafe, and catching up with other interns I spend my time on things other than work. This is also the time to go to leadership lectures and other events on campus. Catch up with another intern as we walk over to the John Edwards talk together.

4:30pm-7:00pm Productivity time. Feeling that I am falling behind in at least one of my projects, and refreshed after the previous hour, I get down to building presentations and Visio diagrams. At any given time, I have at least 2-3 presentations in play, and I usually use the afternoons to develop them. It’s also the time when things slow down a bit at the office, no more meetings, and people are beginning to head out. A good time to do some heads-down work.

7:00pm Time to call my wife in Philly. Being on different coasts for the summer isn’t easy, but having a daily call at roughly the same time helps create some semblance of normalcy.

7:30pm-8:30pm: Workout. The Google gym gets very crowded around 5-6 pm, but by 7:30 in the evening it’s usually not as busy. I usually see at least a few other interns here. Good to get a workout in after a full day of work.

8:30pm-9:30pm: Grab dinner to go from one of the Google cafes and head on the bus home. Dinner is not as exciting as lunch, but it’s free food and I can eat it while making my way home. I try not to work on the bus home, and usually just watch a DVD on my laptop.

9:30pm-sleep: Hang out with my roommate, watch a bit of TV, make plans for the weekend, play poker, read, relax. Not much time to actually enjoy San Francisco during the week, but it’s nice to have at least an hour or two to relax at home.

All the net’s atwitter with news of the as-yet unconfirmed Google acquisition of online video leader Youtube. Even if the whole thing falls apart (or never existed) it’s interesting that most are finding it plausible, at the least.

Does our collective willingness to believe that this deal makes sense hint at a sea-change in perception of Google? Several years ago, when the company’s future was so bright Messrs. Page and Brin wore shades, few of us would have imagined that the company’s efforts to dominate markets it entered would fail to take in the way that Google Video has.

Perhaps the deal signals a new realisation that even a company that hires, feeds, and handsomely remunerates some of the most brilliant software developers can’t possibly dominate every market it enters, even if it tells those developers to spend 20% of their workday goofing off. The market (comprised of thousands of firms and tens of thousands of innovators) will always outsmart a single company over the long run.