This Document Contains Two Applications: One to Fog Creek and Apple, Both for Software

To: Professor McLaughlin
From: Kyle Donnelly
Subject: Cover Memo for Job Application Packet
Date: February 9, 2012

This document contains two applications: one to Fog Creek and Apple, both for software internships this coming summer. Because I already have an internship lined up for this period, these applications are only for the purpose of this project.

Fog Creek is a small software company based in New York City. They hire a relatively small number of interns each year, as noted in the job ad. However, they mention the fact that their interns typically build an entirely new product for the company, which is a very unique aspect of the program when compared to larger corporations. The ad does not list any information about the recruitment process beyond providing an email address for applicants to send resumes to, but based on the size of the company I would address it to either a project manager or a recruiter who works particularly close with the managers. Since I do not expect my application to be passed around among HR personnel, I will write my cover letter in a relaxed and polite tone to reflect that of the ad.

Taking into account the variety of projects they have had interns participate in before, I would expect that they focus very narrowly on applicants with practical experience in a variety of languages. One of the preferences listed is that interns be rising seniors in college with significant coursework in computer science. Generally speaking, companies would desire this when looking for candidates who are prepared to begin working on a new project immediately and do not need the time to learn new languages or technologies. For this reason I will highlight the languages I have experience with along with my relevant work history. Roughly half of the languages I list have been gained from projects outside of the Penn State curriculum, so this should set me apart in terms of the ability to grasp new ones quickly (the more languages you know, the easier it is to learn new ones is a basic assumption in the software industry). Focusing on work experience will highlight the fact that I have dealt with a broader spectrum of the development lifecycle than I would have been exposed to in classes, as well as been successful in an environment that places emphasis on results that are new and useful rather than repetitive and simply for a grade.

Smaller companies like Fog Creek typically do not have pre-determined roles for incoming interns. This statement is based on what I have heard from recruiters that hire a small number of students in the past. A manager would likely decide on a project a few weeks before the internship period begins, so I will attempt to keep my cover letter broad so I do not pigeonhole myself into being labeled as someone who can only do testing, front-end development, back-end support, optimization, or some other narrow field that would be more suited to a large company.

On the other end of the software company spectrum is Apple. It recently became the most valuable company in the country based on its stock valuation. Hundreds of interns and co-ops are hired each year by Apple and are placed into a variety of software engineering positions. The job posting that I am using for this project is more specific in terms of requirements and qualifications that they look for than Fog Creek’s, so I will focus on highlighting those which I meet the most completely. Apple’s hiring process also includes a large role by HR, making it important for the cover letter to be as professional as possible. There is no way of knowing which manager’s hands my application will end up in so it is impossible to address to a specific person.

Apple’s job ad specifies certain areas that are available for interns to work in. Two of them are core operating systems and development technologies. These two best align with my goals so my cover letter will focus on them specifically, but not to an extent that will exclude me from being considered for other areas. Neither requires the qualification of experience with OpenGL/OpenCL since they are not oriented around graphics at all, which is great because that is the only qualification I do not meet. Because of how straightforward the job ad is about requirements, I will directly address these in my cover letter and resume.

Based on my time at Cisco and stories shared by my friends with internship experience, many large companies can afford to have interns spend a few weeks learning the specific technologies they are using. Because of this I will emphasize school and work experience similarly. Both show that I am able to learn and use new technologies or languages to achieve results given a deadline. The specificity in the enumerated areas of work makes me believe that Apple is looking for people who are proficient in one area and do not need to understand a product’s entire development cycle, so there is not much reason to emphasize skills gained at Cisco over those gained in courses.

Two of the key qualifications are behavioral skills. These types of qualifications are difficult to establish by discussing how proficient I am at database design, so I will focus on the benefits of being a philosophy major and also my role in hosting an arts festival on campus. Going into some detail about these will hopefully persuade the recruiter that I am able to handle social problems in addition to technical ones.

Before I end the memo, I would like to comment on a few suggestions Sydney made on my resume. I will leave out the purpose as she suggested since it seems unlikely that it will ever be read, though I do like it as a way of introduction (I assume the cover letter will not be read based on what recruiters in my field have told me). I also choose not to use bullet points to save space. I recognize the potential benefits but I want to keep the resumes on a single page. I will continue to include my availability time range, since almost every recruiter I have talked to has mentioned that they are glad it was included. I am going to ignore everything she said based on unfamiliarity with the software field (languages vs. programs, competitions like CodeSprint, not knowing what Cisco does, what networking is, etc). I also am leaving the three languages I am most experienced with in bold. I have received positive feedback about this practice. The ordering of the programming languages is based on length for aesthetic purposes.

Fog Creek Software Internship

Are you a college student looking for a summer internship in the software industry? Fog Creek Software is the place for you! Founded by software guru Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software fame, Fog Creek Software is a small and friendly startup in New York City that's growing fast.

At other companies, your internship would consist of work-TV-sleep-work-TV-sleep, for most of the summer, with a scintillating July 4th picnic to break the monotony. With a Fog Creek internship, you're not going to want a TV and you'll have to decide between sleeping and checking out the latest nightclub, restaurant, or show. That's because we're located in New York City, so when coding gets boring, you can sneak out to the Metropolitan Museum, a Broadway show, or a trendy club to find inspiration. (Don't worry, you can sleep when you're 80.)

What do our interns do?

We always give our interns a big project working on real, shipping software. For example, in 2005, all four of our interns teamed up to build a completely new product from the ground up. By the end of the summer, they had launched Fog Creek Copilot to paying customers. We didn't stop there -- our Summer 2009 interns built Kiln, and our Summer 2011 interns pushed Trello to v1.0.

Here are some other typical projects:

• Highly optimized Monte Carlo simulations for project scheduling
• An ASP to PHP compiler
• Bayesian Filtering code to filter spam and sort FogBugz email messages into areas automatically
• Adding SSL security to VNC
• A powerful Flash-based chart engine
• A dynamic, check-as-you-type spell checker—entirely using AJAX
• A plugin framework for wiki widgets
• Contributing bfiles support to Mercurial and Kiln

At Fog Creek Software, we'll give you a lot to do, and we'll expect you to deliver something great.

“I simply could not have asked for a better experience than my internship at Fog Creek Software! Fog Creek gave us the perfect balance between freedom and guidance, offered exciting and substantial projects, and provided a wonderful work environment that emphasized creativity and critical thinking while ensuring that we enjoyed every day in New York—both in and outside of the office.”
Erik Goldman, Stanford, Summer 2006

Our internship program includes a great salary, free housing, free lunch, and free weekly events, like Yankees games, a boat trip around Manhattan, walking tours, museum trips, Broadway shows, movie openings, a trip to the Hamptons, and parties.

“Fog Creek is the best place to spend a summer! I learned more about software engineering here than I could in any school program—not for a lack of quality in schools, but because of the opportunities I've had here. Also, we’ve been taken to so many awesome events in NYC. You just can’t get this kind of experience anywhere else.”
Jacob Krall, Rose-Hulman, Summer 2006

Fog Creek Software started in September 2000 based on the simple idea that if we built a company that was a great place to work, we would be able to attract great talent. Our summer internship program allows talented college students to learn about the software industry from the inside in the most exciting city in the world.

As a Fog Creek Summer Intern in Software Development you will be given a real project to work on that will ship as a part of one of our products. You will receive mentoring from the team at Fog Creek, and learn about the software development industry from the experts. We're a small company, so you'll see everything that goes into software—not just code, but testing, marketing, sales, documentation, customer support, and user interface design—stuff you would never learn at a bigger company.

“I knew at Fog Creek I would work with a really smart group of people, but what was completely unexpected was how fun a place this is to work. Sure, we get to go to great Broadway plays, have legitimately delicious free food for lunch, and go on impromptu afternoon trips to movies and bowling. But more importantly, it is the fun and social people that work here that make Fog Creek such a great place. It’s the weekly paper airplane lofting contests every Friday at 5pm, cramming 18 people into Tyler’s office to watch England-Portugal get settled on penalty kicks, lunches where people finish eating after 20 minutes but stick around talking for an hour.”
Noah Weiss, Stanford, Summer 2006

Requirements

• Excellent command of written and spoken English
• Currently enrolled in a 4 year academic institution. Preference will be given to students between their Junior and Senior years.
• Top grades or a track record of success
• Permanent legal right to work in the United States (includes TN status)
• Significant coursework in Computer Science (major not required)
• Top-notch computer programming skills. During the interview we'll give you some coding problems and you will blow us away with your brilliant solutions.

Benefits

• Salary of $5000/month
• Free housing in an area dorm (usually with private rooms), or $1000 taxable stipend towards alternate housing
• Free gym membership
• Free MetroCard (gets you on any bus or subway in New York)
• Free soft drinks
• Free lunches

More details

• The position is in our office in New York City. No telecommuting.
• Internships last between 10 and 12 weeks.
• Coops are also available in the fall and spring semesters

To apply, please email us at , attaching a current resume in HTML, Word, Plain Text or PDF format. In the body of the email, explain why you would be a good fit for this job. If you have a website, send us the URL.

Fog Creek Software, Inc. does not discriminate in employment matters on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, military service eligibility, veteran status, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, or any other protected class. We support workplace diversity.

To whom it may concern:

I am interested in the summer internship position offered by Fog Creek. I read about some of the projects your previous interns have worked on as described in the ad description and I believe I am well-qualified to fulfill the position this year. The impression I receive about the types of work and general atmosphere at Fog Creek are exciting, as well as the opportunity to work for a small, results-oriented company.

Currently I am a junior at The Pennsylvania State University majoring in Computer Science and Philosophy with Mathematics minor. My classes have provided a solid foundation for computer science fundamentals along with the chance to work independently and with teams on practical projects, such as building a shell for Unix. I have encountered a variety of topics ranging from low-level programming and algorithms to web application development, which has made me comfortable working with both back-end development and user interfaces.

Outside of school I have completed two internships with Cisco Systems as a software engineering intern. During the first one I learned how to program in C on a Linux machines, the fundamentals of routing, and how to turn project specifications into results given a deadline. Despite the size of Cisco, I worked on a team of roughly 30 people, which resulted in a working environment similar to that of a smaller business.

In my free time I have been working on developing and designing a social media site focused on sports. This project has required me to develop new skills such as working with the web framework Django and rapidly gain familiarity to start making progress. In addition to this, I have competed in several online coding competitions such as CodeSprint, Project Euler, and TopCoder to further develop my ability to quickly create solutions to programming problems.

As you can see, I have a solid background in skills that I believe will help me be successful as both an employee and a member of a team. My combination of experience from the professional and academic worlds provides a great balance between theory and practice that would make me a productive and creative worker. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or to discuss items on my resume further. I am looking forward to hearing back from you.

Sincerely,

Kyle Donnelly

RELEVANT WORK EXPERIENCE

EDUCATION

LANGUAGES

INDEPENDENT EXPERIENCE

INVOLVEMENT

AVAILABILITY

Cisco Systems, Inc.
Software Engineering Intern: Summer 2010, 2011.
Updated test procedure for In-Service Software Upgrades (ISSU) to support more types of routers. Built and configured an enterprise-simulation VoIP network.
Integrated performance log specific to EIGRP routing process with general IOS log.Documented progress during each stage of the development cycle.

The Pennsylvania State University
B.S. Computer Science (3.69 GPA)
B.A. Philosophy (3.82 GPA)
Mathematics Minor
Class of 2013

C / C++JavaShell scriptsMySQLTcl
PythonMIPSHTML/CSSDjangoPHP

Fanship.me
Co-founder, developer, designer: 2011 to present.
Developing a sports-oriented social media and content aggregation site with two other students. Designed much of the user interface.

CodeSprint – Solving real-world programming problems.
Project Euler – Combining the fun of math and coding.
TopCoder – Freelance software development community.

Students Organizing the Multiple Arts
Arts Crawl (current): Organizing and running an Arts Festival on campus (advertising, fundraising, working with dozens of artists).
Webmaster (current): Overhauled website. Maintained blog and social media for promotional efforts.

Penn State Filipino Association
The Asylum Music Club

May 2012 – August 2012

References and transcripts available on request

Apple Software Engineering Internship

Job description

Requisition Number / 9425318
Job title / Software Engineering Intern
Location / Santa Clara Valley
Job description / Our software engineers are the brains behind some of the industry’s biggest breakthroughs. Mac OS X, QuickTime, and iChat — not to mention the system-level software for iPhone and Apple TV — all started here. This team is on the front line of Apple’s constant charge toward innovation.
Areas you can work in:
Core OS
OS X Frameworks and Applications
Interactive Media Group
Audio/Video
Development Technologies
Software Integration and Localization
Advanced Computation
iLife, iWorks, Aperture, and Pro Apps
Embedded Platform
Key Qualifications
Proficiency with C/C++
Familiarity with Objective-C/Cocoa
Experience with UNIX and/or Mac OS X preferred
Experience with OpenGL and OpenCL for graphics related roles
Strong analytical and problem solving skills
Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Education
BS, MS or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, HCI/UI, Software Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering

To whom it may concern:

I am interested in the software engineering internship offered by Apple. The opportunity to work for such a well-respected and successful company that creates software used in many aspects of people’s lives is incredibly exciting for me. I believe the skills listed below make me a great candidate for the internship.

Currently I am a junior at The Pennsylvania State University majoring in Computer Science and Philosophy with a minor in Mathematics. My classes have provided a solid foundation in computer science theory along with opportunities to work on projects both independently and in groups. I have developed a variety of types of software, from back-end algorithms and operating system design to user interfaces for web applications. In addition to the typical computer science courses, I have pursued a more profound understanding of the mathematical principles behind algorithms and other computer science theory that my peers who do not have a minor likely lack.