In the early 2018, I bought a book after I read a post on hackaday. The title of the book is “The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation”, written by Jon Gertner.
(image from hackaday)
I thought it was really cool to work and collaborate with researchers to explore something. So, I said to myself I wanted to try to work at the Bell Labs. However, it was not something serious as I never thought I would work or study in the US.
Stupid of me, I didn’t realize that Bell Labs has been acquisitioned by Nokia then. I just learned about this after a few months studying in Finland.
Long story short, I applied for an internship there because there was a research on HTTP3 and QUIC, something I was interested with. When I applied for this position, it was a hectic period for me because I was also in the middle of recreuitment process for Intel in Finland, Nvidia in Finland, Facebook in Ireland and CERN in Switzerland. Before any of this, I said to myself I would pick whatever internship that came first.
Then, Nokia Bell Labs came first. They were kind enough to give me 1 week to decice. I took this time to finish the selection process for Facebook. Facebook’s recruitment process was quite intese: 1 online test, 1 coding interview, 1 Linux and netwoking interview, and 1 network interview with the engineering manager. The 1 week given by Nokia gave me enough time to complete the last interview, as the FB’s previous process was done even before Nokia announced the result. Facebook could only gave the decision 2 days after the Nokia deadline. And to be honest, I was not really confident with my last interview with Facebook. I tried to be realistic and I knew I would not get accepted by FB, and I told FB honestly that I took another company, which was Nokia Bell Labs. I never heard anything from them since then.
3 weeks later, CERN anncounced that I got the internship. This was my second trial. I was rejected by CERN when I was in my Bachelor’s study. Now I got accepted. But I didn’t want to be a jerk by declining Nokia’s offer after accepting this. So I played nice and clean by rejecting CERN’s offer. So far, I managed to be consistent with my words: I would pick whatever internship that came first.
In the end, Nokia Bell Labs seems a suitable option for my summer internship: people are nice, it is not a stressful job, and I can go out with my friends every Friday evening to have dinner and roam around in Helsinki. I also have free time to learn more things at home and do a side project.