Tech giants open doors to Hack-a-thon winners

Trip highlights included meeting lead designers for ‘Google Home’ to hear how they developed the product for market and taking part in an exclusive Q&A session with Uber’s lead engineers, including RMIT alumnus Ed Barwani.

Getting an inside view of the industry, and understanding how their skills could translate into jobs, provided a unique learning opportunity for the Bachelor of Computer Science students James Ng, Thang Pham, Isaac Keleher, Jia Jun Yong and Blaise Saunders.

“I’d never been to America, so that was amazing, and it provided us with so many opportunities to network, see what jobs are out there and plan for our future careers,” Saunders said.

“Listening to each presentation also drove home that personal branding and how you pitch yourself are key to career progression.”

Ng said the trip provided an opportunity to gain awareness about what your real strengths were while Pham came away with a greater understanding of the US start-up industry and insight into future trending technologies.

For Yong, learning what it took to work at companies such as Facebook, Google and Intel were highlights while Amazon Go made a big impression.

“I was amazed by how seamless and accurate the Amazon Go checkout process was; this is truly the future of retail,” Yong said.

Keleher had always dreamed of visiting San Francisco, where he was particularly impressed by one tech giant.

“We learned Facebook regularly hold internal hackathons and have free food and a laundry service to maximise employee productivity,” he said.

Saunders summed up the trip.

“It gave us so much to think about and I’m still processing what we learned and figuring out how to implement it into my career,” he said.