François Farquet, Communication Systems

As a computer scientist, we all dream to see the Silicon Valley at least once. This dream came true for me when I landed in San Francisco in July 2015. It was the beginning of a 6 months internship at Oracle Labs, research labs of the famous database company.
On my first day, walking in the corridors of the 501 building, I had my first surprise. It was hard to distinguish the color of the wall because of the huge number of metal patents describing in a few words and drawings some research ideas. Most of them had the name « Sun Labs » on top. Indeed, Oracle Labs is born from the acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2009.
After having met my colleagues and settled down in the fishbowl (the interns’ open space windows are covered with fish stickers), I dive into discovering what will be my work during these 6 months : build a tool to analyse and consume data from a promising distributed system in real time. This system kept me busy several weeks in order just to understand its complexity and subtleness of its components. But once this done, I could contribute in building this tool which will let me, a few months later, have my first clients : my colleagues who now have a new way to increase their productivity analyzing automatically their test results. Being part of a so huge project has been really rewarding.
Leaving for an internship also means leaving his small swiss life aside to discover another human experience. Evenings and weekends spent with other interns are an aspect of the internship as important as the professional one. Basketball was also a big part of these six months in California, either sweating in the company’s huge sports center or screaming to cheer for the NBA champions in… Oracle Arena ! (Despite the name, the employee badge doesn’t allow you to get in for free. That’s a shame !)
Now back to my swiss reality, I still have a taste of California thanks to my colleagues who haven’t change much... Greetings from Oracle Labs, Zurich !