This past summer I had the privilege of interning at Google as an Associate Product Manager Intern at the Google office in London. I’m going to give you the full run-down in this article about this experience, including the highs and the lows!

Firstly, if you want to find out about how I got the internship and the whole recruitment process, check out this article I wrote: How I landed the Google APM Internship 🚀

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Working on the Android team

I found out about a month before my internship started that I was going to be working on the Android team. I was so excited. I wanted to work on a large impactful product area during the internship and this couldn’t have been the most perfect team to introduce me to PMing and building products at scale for millions of users.

I also had the pleasure to be working on physical products, which I wasn’t expecting but was a positive surprise. I got my hands on prototypes and had the experience of helping to debug hardware and software elements of the product. I also got the chance to work with many talented people both within the London office and the Mountain View office, as the product teams were split across both locations. I interacted with engineers, UX designers, and other PMs to complete my projects, which actually allowed me to have an insight into the tasks of these other roles. For example, I particularly enjoyed helping in the development of UX mocks and working on cohesive and aesthetically pleasing designs.

Also, because the product I was working on wasn’t going to be released until next year, I didn’t actually get to launch anything of my own during the internship. But that’s okay. The more you understand that each project and product area is vastly different, the quicker you accept that there is so much to gain and learn from working on a variety of different products that are at differing stages. Every experience is a learning opportunity!

Traveling to Barcelona and California

Around a month into my internship, I had the pleasant surprise of being able to travel to Barcelona for the Google EMEA PM summit with the rest of the European interns. This was such a cool opportunity, as the days were filled with inspiring and educational talks about being a PM, and other self-development topics too. I also got to expand my network massively, and learn about other product areas within Europe at Google. There were also some fun social activities too such as a graffiti workshop which was fun!

Then a few weeks after this, the European interns got flown out to Mountain View for Google’s international intern week! This was amazing, as I had never been to the US before. We got to work at the famous Mountain View campus, as well as visit some of the other nearby offices (Sunnyvale, San Francisco, etc), and we also went to DISNEYLAND (!!) in Los Angeles for our team building day. This whole trip was one of the highlights of the summer, as we got to meet all of the other interns and have the full Google experience!

Some challenges I faced

• Feeling inadequate — this first one hit me hard a few months before starting the internship. We got put into a Discord group with all the other interns, and I couldn’t help but feel like I wasn’t good enough amongst all these amazing people in my cohort. It seemed like everyone was from the world’s top universities and had amazing internship experience, and I just couldn’t help but feel like I had got there out of luck. I have learned to manage this imposter syndrome, as it is a normal feeling that most people face. But over the course of the internship, I started to appreciate the strengths that I have which helped to boost my confidence.
• Feeling out of my depth — this was during the actual internship. For a while, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was confused about my team structure, confused about my role within the team, and just felt like I didn’t have a handle on any of my work. From speaking to other APMs — this feeling was totally normal, and apparently, it takes around 6 months to feel like you have a full understanding of the role. 3 months is so little time, that you shouldn’t stress about having to have everything figured out because realistically no one expects you to.
• The pressure to get the full-time offer — this was also a biggie. Probably more towards the last couple of weeks of my internship I felt super anxious about whether or not I was going to get a full-time offer. Being in the role solidified that I loved the work of an APM, and I would’ve felt so disappointed if, after this taster, I wouldn’t be able to continue. However, all I can advise for this is to just really try and understand that stressing about this during the internship will only have a negative impact on your work- and that is ultimately what you are getting judged on. Just try your best to perform, produce great deliverables and be a good person to work with, and the rest will sort itself out 🙂

Feel free to reach out with any questions by connecting with me on LinkedIn,