I struggled and was lost in the first two weeks during onboarding because I spent those two weeks on simple tasks to make sure I had everything set up, and I had to read many documentation. However, after two weeks, I finally knew what I was going to work on, but there was only 8 weeks left (I only have 10 weeks). Interning is a sprint, not a marathon like full-time. Find an impactful project and start working on it as soon as possible. Remember we only have 10-12 weeks.
My project was an internal tool used by our team. My team is IoT platform that is responsible for building cloud infrastructures for IoT devices; that is to say, we build bridges between IoT devices and backend servers. I used Golang to build the entire project. And I learned a bunch of AWS stuffs. It was nice for my career because I got to use and learn the new skills, especially those were popular at that time.
Moreover, I was able to connect what I learned from school to what I used at work. In order to work with IoT devices and clouds, there were some security infrastructure I was working with. At the same time, my project was very related to my networking class at school (God bless Ben - the instructor). I was very glad I connected the dots altogether.
Finally, I had to present my project. Although I knew that it was an interesting project, and it was beneficial to our team; however, I needed to present to a larger group of audiences, so I had to emphasize from the impact of my project on my team to the impact of my team on the entire org.
Everyone cared about my and all wanted me to have a wonderful experience. But, I needed to define my goals in the beginning of the internship and even talk to the supervisor first. As an intern, not only I want to learn and build an impactful project, but also I wish I can stay in the same team after graduating. Hence, I was very proactive and asked my lead and my manager multiple times. Every time I followed up how I could be converted to a full-time after getting out from school. As a result, I finally went through the conversion process and became a full-time software engineer in the same team.
Takeaway
- Define the project as soon as possible by
- discussing with managers and stakeholders
- initiating design doc earlier
- Pick tech stack you are not familiar with
- Connect the dots
- Always think of impacts
- What is your goal