Internship Chronicles

Now that classes are about to start for college students, it's an interesting time to check some internship chronicles–from no less than our own interns at Code Ninja!

Just some little tidbits about our interns: Arthur, Leandro, Paola, Micah, and Bill are all BS Computer Science students from the University of the Philippines Diliman, and the first wave of UPD interns at Code Ninja. They were all recruited from the recent job fair hosted by the UP Center for Student Innovations. These 5 students are the creme of the crop among all the students we've met during the fair.

Expectations vs Reality:

The internship concept is naturally exciting for a student who has no work experience but at the same time an intimidating idea, too. Here are some expectations that our interns had in mind, and what they actually got afterward!

• Work in the company is stressful and full of pressure.
  Having been told that the interns will be doing data engineering and full stack engineering (which most of them were quite unfamiliar with), they initially thought they'd be having a hard time and will be left alone for them to figure it out. However, they were surprised (and happy, of course!) to have received maximum guidance from their superiors.

• As interns, we'd only be doing minimal work. This has always been an intern's nightmare: not being able to experience a significant amount and quality of work to confidently say "I've learned a lot in this internship." Among those who were scared of this was Paola. At the end of her internship, however, she contentedly says she was able to experience real work. "We get to be part of the company, and contribute a meaningful work."

• Expected to do actual work and learn new skills. How ideal it is to meet this expectation for anyone who craves for learning, and guess what? Truth be told, our interns believe that their internship at Code Ninja exceeded this expectation. Not only did they learn a new set of skills in their field but also in their communication and teamwork competence. "I get to improve my written codes, appreciate every small thing that everyone contributes to the team, and most importantly I get to know how it's like to work," Leandro says.

The Code Ninja Experience

Our interns highly rate the culture inside Code Ninja. Among the adjectives they used were "flexible" and "liberating." Additionally, they commend the collaboration and work-life integration that is encouraged among Ninjas.

Code Ninja does its best to make the work environment conducive to work-life integration among its people. Based on experience, Micah shares about how the people efficiently get the tasks done, "while also having ample time to socialize, hang out, and enjoy life together with your co workers." Admittedly, the interns liked staying at the pantry and the bean bags overlooking the busy C-5 road. And of course on their desks and be productive in their work.

Among many challenges they've encountered during the course of their internship, Paola, on one hand, mentions some of her favorite ones. She was made to think about "What is the simplest but powerful strategy to use?", and "How can I write the solution in the most optimal way?" and learned how to solve them. Arthur, on the other hand, won't forget the time he did his first web scraper. "Every website I scraped was a new challenge as each had their own unique problems, but my favorite would have to be my first scraper. It looked simple, but I had to overcome a lot of obstacles to scrape its data," he says.

Moving forward, Leandro says that Code Ninja was able to open up a lot of possibilities in his career, considering the various tasks they were asked to do. "As I go back to school, I'd be working on figuring out whether I'd pursue hardcore dev or data science," he says.

When asked if they had the chance to change anything in their internship, all are in agreement that the pace and training course were optimal. If any, Bill would like to adjust his internship period. 'I would like to extend my internship to six months because I think I would be able to contribute more to Swaychat," he says. Code Ninja has no definite internship duration requirement; if an intern only needs 120 hours, or 500, the company would be most willing to open its doors for interns.

We at Code Ninja are genuinely happy for our interns to have appreciated and learned a lot during their two-month stay. Here's what some of their colleagues have to say:

To Bill and Micah, I hope you learned a lot during your stint with Code Ninja. Take what you’ve learned and improve on them, I’m pretty sure you’ll be great developers in the future. Just keep coding and stay hungry. - Mark

I am so proud of these three interns here. In a span of 2 months, you guys were able to exhaust all possible combinations of food we have in our pantry. Anyway, you guys will truly be missed. Galingan niyo sa thesis and academic requirements. You guys did good, now do better. - Gani

I am happy to have worked with you even for just a short time. Thank you for bringing more joy and youthfulness to the office. I hope you guys have learned a lot from your experience here in Code Ninja, may it be programming-related or about making sandwiches, Hehe. Hope to see you again soon! - Mike

Know someone who's looking for a niche for learning? Check out our internship opportunities here.