Vanya Jain
MMC Scholars 1100.07
11/8/2020
Informational Interview with Mr. Geetansh Sharma
I was interested to interview someone working in the Software department of Facebook based in an international location. I have always wanted to work for a Fortune 50’s international office to see how the office culture and consumer dynamics change compared to a local location.
This interview was conducted over Microsoft Teams. We both were at a desk area, in business casual clothing. It was a professional environment and conversation, but Mr. Sharma was very considerate and kind with the time zone difference between us. We had a very friendly conversation, yet a very educational one for career advice.
Mr. Sharma is BS Computer Science, and a MBA specializing in Information Technology Banking and Finance from DAVV Institute of Technology and Symbiosis International school of Business, Indore. He always loved the intersection of banking and IT.
He started earlier on in his career by working for several national banks in India, and later got recruited by Facebook where he works as a Financial IT Admin in Hailey’s team. With the growing trend of the banking industry relying on technological systems this has been going on for a long time and definitely has immense potential.
This company has been a game changer and a dominating monopoly since the time it was founded by Mark Zukerburg. They obviously offer a lot of opportunities for everyone ranging from upperclassmen high school level students through inter-tied organizations to grad students and anywhere in between. People say that interns offen straddle between the line of professionals to discounted labor for busy work. However, a company like Facebook alongwith other major market dominating technology companies is where interns make more than people with salaries jobs. According to Mr. Sharma interns on an approximate make more than $8000 a month which according to Glassdoor is more than any other companies paid interns. According to this number and my calculations that is $96,000 a year for a high school upperclassmen or an underclassmen at college which is nearly double than the US median pay of $52,000 a year which is $4,400 a month of regular jobs in a similar industry.
It is often said that tech jobs in general, dominated the highest paid rank which includes companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Salesforce, Microsoft, and Uber. These numbers definitely correspond to the cost of living and the skilled talent acquired by the new hires not only from all over the US, but the world. The handpicked talent by these excellent HR teams, and extremely competitive along with the exhaustive hiring process of these companies contribute to the standard set by these companies, elite nature, and ambition contributing factor for young aspiraters like me. What companies like Facebook do is not comment on how competitive the hiring process is, all they say is a pure search of talent and when found grabbed. This sort of a suspense nature ranges mainly in IT intern positions like: Data Scientist, backhand and forehand software designers, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning specialist, Cybersecurity, UX/UI designer.
Mr. Sharma also brought up a very unique point of how the US government dominates a lot of our industry especially for the young generation who wants to work and settle in the US as immigrants. My parents and I immigrated to the US in 2016 because my dad worked in this industry. Nowadays with growing unemployment rate; the government is cracking down on visas of high skilled workers overseas causing companies to now provide more opportunities for young students in the US to fill the void. These immigrants used to be cost efficient skilled professionals for this industry which was very beneficial for the companies in economic and more diverse standards. The only solution they have to this in changing political scenarios is investing in the employee resources they have locally.
The skills required in this industry is rapidly changing with the different socio-political-economic climate, population and consumer changes, and technological enhancement. However, the basics of the workforce with soft, hard, and technical skills remain intact and just has survived the test of time. It is very easy to switch from one specialization and department in Facebook to another. The company promotes its employees to switch roles and departments every two years, it not only makes the employees more well rounded, but also promotes creative thinking, standardization, and interdisciplinary concepts.
Since Facebook is such a large scale company, opportunities to reach to the top tier CEO/CTO positions has a lot of time commitment and insanely intelligent and determined talent to compete with. Working at an entry level position is so prestigious, reaching the director rank or beyond is a true honor. Every yearly quarter at Facebook the departmental ranking comes out where the manager assesses its team members and considers them for potential appraisals or promotions. After your name is nominated, the candidate goes through numerous panel interviews and pitches the possible growth and assets they could bring after getting promoted. If the pitch is considered to have potential, then a promotion is being offered in the same departments or a transferred one to which the requirement is suited and the system development life cycle phase is complete with fruitful outcomes.
As mentioned this company has an abundance of internship opportunities for students all over the world. The requirements for this totally depends on the role and department you’re applying for. As a CS student specializing in Data Science I would have to go through visual diagnostic tests for logical and behavioral reasoning, then go through a series of phone/in-person/online interviews testing my problem solving and leadership abilities through technical coding interviews and traditional CAR (context, action, and reasoning) interviews. The company is not fond of referrals from Facebook employees, but a linkedin connection and an insider mentor never hurts.
Four years ago when I moved to the United States, to pursue my higher education here I spent the majority of my time to develop my skills to be successful in college and get a head start on the skill set required for this industry. Along With, taking rigorous coursework at school, I managed to expand my horizons in different technical arenas to get aquanatined with what exactly I want to be a part of.
Now I know I want to specialize in data technologies, either database management or cloud computing and later on take a management position. I am already certified in Microsoft till the expert level which is the maximum certification one can pursue; and in graphic design and web development through Google Garage. I am currently certifying in java through Udemy. And in the next five years I want to certify in the Hadoop Certification for Big Data, the AWS Certification for cloud computing and hopefully the Project Management Professional Certification.
I know these are going to be super challenging but one thing I have understood is that to be successful in this industry technical skills and certifications are what gives you an edge over others. This interview helped me find specifics for my plan and I am very grateful to Mr. Sharma for being an amazing guide.