9: Alison Chow - Exploring Tech, Traveling, Career Fairs

That Thing I Did For A Year

This week's episode features Alison Chow, an industrial engineering student who got to work as a product manager at Microsoft twice, as a developer at NVIDIA, and as a business intelligence engineer at a startup called Stylelounge in Hamburg! She had some interesting stories to share from career fairs, travels, and highly varied internships.

Notes

1:15 - Deciding to study engineering (science) because she was good at math and physics in high school, switching to industrial engineering

3:03 - Getting deep into YNCN and the benefits of doing heavy job hunting in first year

5:56 - What product managers at Microsoft do

7:34 - Being sheltered in the first internship, working on a project to grow an app ecosystem

11:18 - Things affecting the decision to do PEY: money, getting a wider set of experiences, trying a "technical" role

14:00 - Getting jobs (Microsoft, NVIDIA) from career fairs, having had experience before that working with her mom at trade fairs

16:44 - Some lowlights from grinding at career fairs

24:57 - Working at Stylelounge, a startup in Hamburg, doing business development; getting a visa herself!

31:21 - A day in the life doing business intelligence - "improving decision making through data"

36:02 - Adjusting to life in a place where she knew NOBODY

39:11 - Being more trusted the third time around at Microsoft and getting more responsibility - 3 simultaneous projects!

41:09 - Traveling with people you've just met

42:58 - Starting to miss school after a long time away

46:28 - Advice, value of early work experiences (e.g. before 1st year)

Music by Shawn Lee