Three tech internships before I turned 19
My journey through the tech industry.
Before I turned 19, I signed 3 tech internship offers. This journey had many challenges, many of them caused by the pandemic, but I will tell you how I made it here. I will break down the experience of two internship recruiting cycles and share everything I learned along the way.
How it all started
We must take a trip back to the beginning of college. In September of 2019, I started my freshman year at Harvey Mudd College in southern California. Coming in, I had no idea what degree I wanted to pursue and no relevant experience in the tech industry. Keep in mind; I was only 17. However, Mudd’s core curriculum allowed me to explore many different STEM fields like chemistry, computer science, physics, mathematics, and more. Within this exploration, I realized that I had a passion for computer science. More specifically, my intro computer science class exposed me to its constant problem-solving nature and real-world impact, which clicked with me and sparked a passion for computer science.
With this newfound passion, I sought to find out as much as possible about the software engineering industry. This meant asking friends what their experience has been like in the industry and talking to professionals. From this, I learned that internships were a critical part of becoming a software engineer. Unfortunately, internships are tough to get since they are extremely competitive. Luckily for me, many of the upperclassmen at my school were willing to help me. Although they expressed that getting an internship as a freshman was difficult, they told me to try my luck.
Applying for my first internship
Over the course of a couple of months in the fall of 2019, I ended up applying to about a half dozen companies. These included Microsoft, Facebook, Two Sigma, D.E. Shaw, and a couple of others. Because this was my first time applying to internships, I didn’t know that I would never hear back from some of these companies (Big Tech companies are notorious for ghosting applicants). Fortunately, I was able to score with a couple of companies.
The first company that I heard back from was Facebook for their FBU Engineering program, and they sent a coding challenge. Although not very well, I completed it and received a request a couple of months later for a behavioral interview. To prepare for this interview, I consulted one of my friends who had gone through the program a couple of years prior. I made it smoothly through the interview and got an offer a couple of weeks later with his help. I was super happy I received this offer, but there was also another side to this experience.
During this entire process, I did not hear from any of the other companies I applied to: no rejections, no coding challenges, no anything. I am saying this to highlight that it wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies. Instead, I felt lots of pressure because my options were relatively limited. In the end, Facebook was the only offer I received, and it was the internship that I accepted.
The middle (everything between accepting my offer and the next application cycle)
We can skip the second semester of my freshman year because it was uneventful concerning internships. Funny enough, there was enough other stuff going on to fill the void, namely the pandemic we are currently in. Its impact has resonated through all parts of my life. Although my internship was not canceled, we were moved from the Seattle, WA office to completely remote. I would describe the details of Facebook’s first remote internship, but I will save that for another article.
In short, the internship went as well as possible, given the unusual times we are living in. During my internship, I learned a lot and was really surprised about how tech is taught in school versus its industry applications. Additionally, I worked my tail off and was able to get a return offer for Facebook’s full software engineering internship.
My second time around the block
As I neared the end of my internship with Facebook in August, I had already begun applying to internships for the next summer (Summer 2021). This time around, I did a bit of Leetcode prep and applied to a lot more companies. These companies were mostly within the trading/finance industry because this is where my interests had shifted. To get an idea of the companies I applied to, I will list a couple: Microsoft, Jane Street, IMC Trading, Stripe, Google, and Optiver.
For this application cycle, I had a way more positive response than I did my freshman year. This was probably due to improved formatting on my resume and my internship at Facebook. I did not keep explicit track of my response rate from companies, but if I had to take a guess, I probably got a coding challenge from ~50% of the companies I applied to. Considering that I applied to over 75 companies, this was overwhelming.
To spare you all of the details, I will give you a quick overview of my internship search results. After the coding challenges, I got first-round interviews for 5 companies: Microsoft, PIMCO, Asana, Google, and Dropbox. From here, I got final round interviews from Asana, PIMCO, and Google. Following this tedious process, I ended up getting an offer from Asana. Below is a more detailed outline of the entire process I went through with Asana.
8/25 — Coding Challenge through CodeSignal
9/11 — Phone Interview
9/24 — Remote Onsite (4 hours of interviews)
9/28 — Offer Received
The Decision
Now, it was late October. At this time, I held offers for summer internships from both Facebook and Asana. It was time to make a decision. Initially, I planned to turn down Facebook and accept Asana because I wanted to try something different. However, an enticing opportunity arose.
To give some quick context around what was going on at the time, I was in the middle of my first fully online college semester. It was going pretty well in terms of grades, but I didn’t enjoy the online experience much.
Here, Facebook came to the rescue. I learned that I could switch my internship from Summer 2021 to Winter 2021. This ended up being the perfect option for me because I had enrolled in a couple of summer classes that allowed me to stay on track for graduation, even if I took a gap semester. As a result, I ended up accepting both of my offers in October: Facebook for Winter 2021 and Asana for Summer 2021.
There you have it, the story of how I got three tech internships— this was all just in time for my 19th birthday, which happened in November of last year.
My biggest takeaway
My experience in the tech industry has taught me that having a vision is invaluable. Being clear in my goals allowed me to effectively seek information from my peers and professionals to create a roadmap for success. This roadmap has adapted along with my goals and ensured that I am always moving forward and not backward.
My advice to anyone, which is truly applicable to any field, is to make a plan. Even if you are unsure of exactly what you want, you must have a goal to do something, no matter how big or small. This is summed up in a philosophy by which my dad has raised me — Keep on trying out new careers/experiences/hobbies because you’ll always find valuable information. Either you’ll be finding something that you want to do for the rest of your life, or not.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you found this article informative. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out by writing a response below. Good luck on your journey!