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Ryan Burgess
Welcome to new episode of the front end Happy Hour podcast. In this episode, we're joined by a special guest mark to talk with us about internships. Mark was recently an intern at Netflix over the summer. So he'll definitely have some some good stories to share and what it's like to be an intern. Mark, you want to give a brief introduction of who you are, what you do and what your favorite Happy Hour beverages. Yeah,

Mark Benliyan
sure. Thanks. Hi, everyone excited to be here. My name is Mark. I'm currently now working as a software engineer at figma. But in the past had done a few internships. My most recent one was actually at Netflix where Ryan was my manager. And my favorite Happy Hour beverage right now is actually this like chai tea latte. That's basically like espresso and some chai, and then like milk to top it off.

Ryan Burgess
That's a really good choice. The chai tea latte. Very good. Yes, I like it. Good choice. All right, and it's just Augustus and I for panelists, Gustus. You want to give introduction? Yeah,

Augustus Yuan
sure. Hey, I'm Augustus and software engineer at Twitch.

Ryan Burgess
And I'm your host, Ryan Burgess. In each episode of the front end happier podcast, we like to choose a keyword that if it's mentioned at all, in the episode, we will all take a drink. What did we decide today's keyword is mentor, mentor, which I mean, when you're an intern, you kind of typically need some sort of mentorship. So I'm pretty sure that's going to come up at some point in time. Absolutely. Before we dive into the episode, I also want to say thank you to all of our amazing listeners out there. Over the years, you've all listened and chimed in and let us know what's working what's not. So we're asking you again, we'd like to run a bit of a survey, it takes two minutes to fill out just to help us know what's working, what's not what we can do better for next year. If you want to visit front end, Happy hour.com/survey. Take two minutes, please fill it out for us. Let us know how we're doing. That'd be really helpful. All right, well, let's dive in. Let's start with how do you land an internship? Because I think that can differ between the company even the school that you went to but you know, all three of us have done some form of internship have also helped as mentors. So I'm curious. Yeah. How do you even start an internship?

Mark Benliyan
I'd say one of the things that I think are important context to add, when you answer this question is like, how are we defining like, what is the first internship? I think, like, for me, what I see a lot of students kind of talk about is first internship being, let's say, their first internship at a really large, like tech company, like the Amazons and Googles out there. But like, for me, that was very different than what I would maybe consider like my first internship. My first internship for me was like, my school, I go into UCLA for like their ces program. And my school has like a newspaper where we have like reactives that just like put together websites before like upcoming sports games, or like just articles that are going on. And I had to kind of done like my first internship, just by joining that organization, it was sort of like unpaid, and I didn't even have much coding experience before then. But now I was in an environment where we have like actual work to do. And we have a team of people that are doing it. And that was where I would say like, was my first rhythm of kind of like getting an internship. But I would say like, if you are talking about the more corporate style of internship, there are some like, kind of rules to the road there, most of your roles are going to be coming up during like recruiting season, which is typically like August to maybe like even July on the very early on. And then this year, maybe it goes like September to October. So right around like the start of fall season is where 80 to 90% of your jobs are going to come out during this time. Like that's when Netflix releases their internships, figma, Google, like all of the companies. So there's that for like a hot time of the year, where you'd want to target those periods of time.

Ryan Burgess
And do you just apply to those mark like you just like, or does the school help in some ways? Because I know some schools actually work directly with some of these companies. But like, I guess in your experience, was it just straight up applying? Yeah,

Mark Benliyan
most of my experience has actually been just straight up applying. I do know that the amount of one trend that I've noticed is like the higher sort of rank or more maybe prestigious for lack of a better term school typically tends to have a better job at like helping their students place. I know at UCLA, like, maybe we have some kind of support for that. But it wasn't anything big enough to like fall on my radar. I think we had a few career fairs that mainly had like some defense companies based out of LA, but it usually isn't the kind of companies that most students are like trying to target for. They're kind of like the role that they really want. For me. My first ever one that I would consider as like a bigger name company was that like Tinder. And my Tinder one was actually sort of later I had kind of given up on getting an internship that summer because it was 2021 and I had learned I'd like made the decision to start coding I switched from business to computer science in August. Tober of 2021 is my freshman year. And so I am only like two months in. And this is near the end of the recruiting season timeline that I shared. And so by the time I felt like I even knew anything about what's going on, it was already like the new year. And so I just kind of assumed like, Okay, I'm like, probably not going to get anything for this summer. And that's fine. Like, I'll try to make the most of it. But I actually ended up signing my Tinder offer in like March of 2021. So don't lose all hope. If you're watching this right now. And you're like, I don't have something for the summer. But again, it was just a cold apply and like, things ended up working out.

Ryan Burgess
That's awesome. Yeah, cuz you're right. Like, if you've kind of missed the mark, sometimes when like all the schools are applying, it's not to say that you won't get it clearly you did. But it's like, there's a ton of applicants, right, that they may be already gone through. I'm happy that you were able to get that. So that's awesome.

Mark Benliyan
Yeah, for Tinder standpoint, it's actually kind of interesting, because they purposefully don't release their application sooner. Like I don't know, the entire sort of business decision behind that. But they don't recruit in recruiting season like they opened their applications in January. So it's kind of interesting. But Tinder, Tinder is one of those that like later on, they had opportunities. And then SpaceX was another one that I know has, like more recruiting year round than some of the other companies. Yeah,

Augustus Yuan
well, and actually, Mark, I love how you talked about what do you define as an internship because this actually makes me remember, I actually did have a school job as a student web developer, at the engineering school for my college at U DUB. And I guess I was kind of how I got my feet wet first and showed some like, technical experience, which, you know, at the time, like help really helped me set set myself apart. So but I actually I'm similar, I just went to career fairs, and I just applied, I didn't have to do anything crazy. But I have heard it's like, very competitive nowadays. So I don't know how different it is. But my experience was, you know, I would go to the career fair. And when I was in college, I actually was pretty aggressive and trying to apply, I would go like, in the September career fair, like very, very early on, and a lot of them would just be like, Oh, we don't have anything yet. You're gonna have to come back. But like, oh, you know, we'll remember be, you know, if here's my business card, like, please, please remember, be, you know, email them Be like, Hey, you know, I'm working on this project. It's really cool. So excited for your company. And it's like just trying to build that network and that connection, so that they remember you, because there's just, if you've, I'm sure, like, anyone who's gone to a career fair can relate like, this is just like a sea of like, you open the door. So there's a sea of people, I was like, so overwhelmed. That's how I got my work day. internship, I did have to do like a technical interview that was face to face. And then actually the following year, for my senior year, I didn't get a full time job. So near the end of the year, I ended up looking at internships. And actually, that's how I ended up getting one for Evernote. And the Evernote one, if I remember correctly, I didn't have I did have to do like a phone interview. But there was like a coding question too. And so I'm more familiar now. Like I hear like hacker rank. And these types of sites where they give these coding challenges. They're a lot more prominent. I started to see that happen more during that time, so that was like in 2014? Ish? Not

Mark Benliyan
sure, I guess is what do you say phone interview? Are you referring to kind of like a non technical sort of like, more behavioral style interview? Would you say? Good question.

Augustus Yuan
Yeah, it was kind of a mix. I think for this one. They like kind of did a mix. Like the manager really just did ask me some behavioral questions. But he actually did ask me some technical questions. So that so this internship I did was like, more for web development, because that was my experience, because I preferred friend friend and at the time, so he asked me some very basic like questions of like, oh, what's your familiarity with content management systems, which at the time, they were trying to build a blog, or like a little like internal portal at the time, so they asked me questions like that.

Ryan Burgess
That's cool. Yeah, I'm curious to like, you both had said like a bit about the interview process to when I did a mine I don't even think it was called an internship. I did I remember doing the Career Fairs and things like that. They were not helpful at the time. There wasn't a lot of technical jobs at the time too. And so a lot of it just it did feel overwhelming and also just kind of like not really helpful, but with the school that I went to, they had done a work practicum where they'd put you the basically I was part of finish your degree you actually had to do, quote unquote, an internship. I believe it was unpaid too, but it was just part of the Like actually getting a real life experience, which I'm all for, I think that's amazing to do that. I don't remember how it was set up, though. Like, I feel like it was, I remember some interviews, but I can't remember if I actually had to do like a technical interview at the time, maybe it was just more like, you know, they knew a bit of my skills or whatever it was, and just kind of talking to see if it was a fit. But I'm curious, you both had mentioned like, technical, were they really extreme technical interviews where you're doing, like whiteboarding? Or is it just more like Augustus like the CMS type question where it's just like, just getting a sense for some of the like, understanding of some of the technologies out there? Yeah, I

Mark Benliyan
can speak to some of my experiences where I think now since mine has been kind of like later on, I've Guess I'm like the result of where COVID has taken the industry. And so like, in person, whiteboarding has still not made its way back to life during my tenure as like an intern. Yeah, so all of mine that are technical, have been sort of like zoom interviews, kind of like this one. But instead, like, we'd be sort of going through some kind of like algorithmic style problem. Most of the times now, I'm actually curious how prominent like leak code things were at your guys's time. But now it's sort of like the majority of technical questions you'll be asked or like some variation of like a leak code style algorithm problem to test like data structures and algorithms. So most of them have been that Netflix is actually one of the only ones that do ask system design rounds, for interns. It's actually nothing. I haven't had that anywhere else. But I would say like they made it well, like it was well designed to sort of be a little more catered to the intern level. I think, like, I got a little panicked about that at the time, and was like trying to over prepare for it. And I think like when I got to the actual interview, I realized that like, they're not expecting me to have every con, like all the contexts out there on system design. And then some, it'll depend on the company. But some of them do have like a kind of behavioral interview, where I would say, I found that the companies that have a behavioral interview, I usually tend to end up having a better overall experience with

Augustus Yuan
Yeah, for me, it definitely differs from company to company. I remember, I, I, I'll just be honest, I failed one of them so badly. So I was asking the interviewer, interviewer for advice. And, you know, he was like, a really nice guy, he was so nice. He's like, Hey, I totally get it. We've all been there. You know, you're still in school, you have a long way. And at least back then he did say they asked for more algorithmic data structure, if you want to call it feed code. Questions be. And the reason they said they do that is because like, especially if you don't have a lot of like industry experience, they try to like ask questions that is like probably fresh, which is like what they assume is like CS fundamentals, or what you learned in school. So that was the justification they gave me. I can't say whether that's like, right or wrong, you know, every buddy has their own way of assessing. But I do know, like hacker rank during my senior year, and even like, when I was at Evernote, and then I had interns I mentored they said that they would use like hacker rank, or on these online testing, things where companies would upload their question, and they would have like, a certain amount of time to complete it. And it would be like technical leet code, ask questions. So that and from what I remember is like, there's like a list of 10 lists of unit tests that you have to try to pass. If you don't pass them all, then they're very, very unfortunate, probably, but, but they also like get, I think the, the company gets a recording, they even see like how you code during that time. So they can like kind of assess, I don't know what they make from it. But yeah,

Mark Benliyan
for online assessments. So there's like two popular ones that I run into nowadays, which is one of them is hacker rank, and the other one is code signal. There's a third one that is recently getting gaining in popularity, which is called byte board. And by far I prefer bipod. Like if I had the option as like a manager to pick which one I would go with, I would definitely pick bike boards. And I could speak to some of my experiences about them. So like hacker rank is like your typical you probably hop in, you might have like 60 to 90 minutes to do like two problems. And then code signals, in my opinion are like kind of extreme. Like I've done a lot of internships, but I've always sort of struggled with getting a good score on code signals. They've always been like, even more algorithmically complex in what I've seen, and they're also like proctored and you have like 90 minutes to do like four problems, or maybe even 60 minutes to do four problems. But bite boards on the other hand, like they don't focus on the whole leak code approach. And instead, like the ones I've done are split into two sections. So at first you'll get like a technical design, Doc, and there'll be like some questions already. left for you, like as if it was your coworker. And the idea is like your coworker is planning to implement this new thing. This is their design doc, review it leave questions. And then like, at the bottom, they'll give you a few open ended suggestions on like, which approach should we take. And you'll just have like a big textbox to kind of just talk about, like, which approach you want and why. And they'll have like a human actually review these. And then the second part is like, they throw you in a virtual ID, where they essentially have you implement the design doc earlier, and you have like multiple files, and some predefined classes already there for you. And so it feels like so much closer to the kind of work that you'd actually do on the job. And the ones that I've had that for have been like a breath of fresh air, I've given bike boards for figma uses bipod now, and Lyft also uses bike board, I couldn't speak to who else might have hopped on the bandwagon. I like

Ryan Burgess
that, though, that it sounds a lot more practical like to me even being a manager, like assessing some of these, like technical interviews, I look at it as it's, I'd rather see someone apply those practical skills, or even like you said, Mark, taking a class, it's already like there, and like how do you leverage it? Because it's not, there's not a lot of times that you're like, alright, write me this algorithm or, you know, do this data structure? I mean, yes, we do that. But it's like, I feel like these are a lot more practical to really get a sense for how someone operates and how they potentially could collaborate with someone else. This seems very promising have an approach. I would personally like that better to assessing someone's code. Yeah, this

Augustus Yuan
is like super cool for for folks. I guess we could leave it in the show notes. But it's called bite board dot Dev. I've never heard of it. That's this is really cool.

Mark Benliyan
I totally agree with you, Ryan, I think particularly in the age that we live in now, where like any kind of basically, code algorithm is like one ChatGPT away, and everything like that is so trivial to do now, where it's like, a lot more of the knowledge of DevOps kind of comes from being able to synthesize a lot of information together. And like, communicate it clearly, rather than just like code up a depth first search on like a binary tree. And so it's nice to see that, like initiatives taken more towards that.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah. And that's actually a good call out just with AI in general, right now, there is an uptick of people leveraging it for interviews in technical interviews, that it's a slippery slope, right? Like, I'm not opposed to using tools for what they're intended. Like, as an engineer. We Google things all the time, right? Like, it's like, I don't remember every, there's no way to remember everything, every method that's out there or API, it's like you, you have to leverage Google for that. AI is great. Like, why not leverage those tools. But I think when it comes down to some of those exercises, or coding interviews, where literally the AI is answering it for you, and it's just a copy and paste, it's not really demonstrate anything. And actually, I have seen people leveraging it where the people interviewing start to recognize, oh, they just use chat GBT to answer this. And like, yeah, that's not a great thing to be doing. Because you know, they're just going to pass on you there. And that's not going to work out for you eat anyways, it almost be better to get like a wrong answer by trying and demonstrating your skills versus like, here's the perfect solution. And it may not be right, but hopefully it is from the AI. You know, it's not even a perfect solution. Always. Yeah,

Mark Benliyan
that actually reminds me where interesting story where when I was at one of my companies, I remember that they were speaking about how they felt like some of their interview questions may sort of have been leaked, and that they've noticing a trend of like students are like interviewers kind of like solving a problem in a specifically particular way that maybe isn't the most intuitive way. And a lot of people sort of continuing to do the same thing. And it was interesting to me, like how how do folks approach that, like the committee that's responsible for these interviews, and it was interesting that the response that they received was that like, if we assess our interviews properly, and like our rubric, and sort of like, the what we look for is a line, even like, you should be able to see through that where the code complete solution isn't the checkbox, it's like, you should be able to understand if this person understands the code that they're working through, and like can communicate that clearly. So it was interesting to hear that like, that wasn't even the biggest emphasis, like the problem is just the tool to actually assess the other skills. And it really, to

Ryan Burgess
me, yeah, no, I think like, I always leverage those coding exercises later to in the interviews not always, I shouldn't say always, but often find they're really useful to you know, if it was a take home exercise, it's like okay, cool. You were you maybe time constraint on it, like you're not spending weeks on on it, it's only a couple hours. And so what are the trade offs that you made? What would you do different only given more time, those things are so much more valuable to me than just a right answer. Because it's like it's really getting at, like, how the person thinks. And we all have these trade offs in our jobs, right? Like, we're building something that's like, Yeah, cool. If I had three years to build it, I'd probably cover all the things that I need to cover. But that's a trade off that I'm making is like, I don't have three years to create this. I want this out there in the next few months. And so there's just different ways in which you, someone thinks about those things. And so someone throwing it in chat GBT and getting an answer doesn't really necessarily get at those things. Like, they may not be able to answer those follow up questions, and that's not going to look great, either. So I mean, maybe a public service announcement on here's don't just use chat, GBT or any of the AI that's out there. It's like, you know, try and understand what's actually happening in the question. But

Mark Benliyan
don't though, I would say don't hesitate to when you're studying, use chat dB t shirt. So now it like it takes rubber ducking to the next level, like the rubber ducks. Now? Yeah,

Ryan Burgess
no, I mean, that's the thing is like, it's a tool that you should leverage. I think like, I'm not against that at all. But that's a good call out to is like, Yeah, you should use it when you're studying or trying to get answers. It's it's pulling searches from a lot of places. So that's, that is a good way to use it. So we talked a bit about various companies that both of you've done internships. And I'm curious, how do you choose which company maybe it's from, like, the early days of applying, but is it maybe you have multiple offers? And so you have to choose, but even just those early days, like how do you choose what the right company is? Do you just like mass apply and hope for the best? Do you like, be a little more targeted specific? Mark, you waited till the last minute had to find someone? You know, Tinder? Yeah, I'm curious, like, how do you think about it?

Mark Benliyan
i For me, when I was starting out, it was definitely like I was applying to every single role out there that I feel like I was even close to qualified for it. That's how it started. I was kind of like, I'll take literally anything, and I just want to get an opportunity to put my foot in the door. So that was like more so year one where I was sort of applying to anything. And literally that year, I just I had two interviews. One was SpaceX, which I did fail. And the second one was Tinder, which luckily worked out. And but I did a tinder worked out before I failed SpaceX. So my nerves are a little more calm, I felt like things. But the second year, honestly, still saying like I did still mass apply to basically most of the big companies out there. And then, like the ideology was always like it can hurt to sort of send the application and it's, I'm in a much better position to pick where I want to go. Rather than like, be excluding myself from something that like, I don't even know if I have a shot yet. So I sort of applied to everything. And funnily enough, like Netflix was actually one of the ones where like, I felt like I wanted to work at Netflix, but you always still have the sort of thoughts creeping up of like, I don't know if I'll pass their interviews, I remember Netflix uses code signal. And code signal was something that like I would struggle with. And so I was like, man, but I might just like not even get past that. Is it even worth applying? Because I think I already had like another offer for the summer. But I just sort of went ahead to go with him, like it worked out timelines, and all that, like, fit into each other. So I'd say in terms of picking for me, I bet this answer will vary for everyone. My biggest thing for starters was that like I knew I wanted to stay in LA, I was willing to leave la short term for like an internship or something like that. But I knew long term that I want it to be in LA. And so I would say that was like my Northstar for filtering out companies, if I felt like there's a long term possibility of being here. And so like figma, it was something I moved from my figma internship, but it was something I let them know from like, early on that like full time, I'd really love to be remote. And it's something they were working with me on. I think I also had mentioned that to you, Ryan, when we had our interview are like I would want to be in LA. So that was definitely a big thing, which narrows down the companies a lot because like, especially for the new grads, there isn't a ton of companies that are offering remote nowadays. LA is not a big hub by any means. Even Netflix is like we have the LA presidents, but it's not primarily engineering at all. So it was finding with companies that could be in LA and then I guess the next thing from there was sort of like, there was a compensation aspect to it. Like I kind of did want to work for the companies that I felt like had the highest compensation that met the criteria of being in LA and being like something that I'm relatively interested in joining. And then I guess I only knew my other decision sort of pieces after I actually went through the processes at the internships, but in terms of like, offer to acceptance, I think location was my biggest benchmark, and then like which company I'm most excited about if compensation kind of felt similar, and that would that was like my Northstar. I like that

Ryan Burgess
though. I like that you had some checklists that you were like focusing on it's like, here's the criteria. area that it has to meet. And I think that that no matter what is important, you know, at first when you're talking about like, you know, mass applying, I'm like, normally advice I would say like for someone who's further in their career, I'd say do not just mass apply, be a lot more thoughtful and think really about where you want to work. But you know what it sucks being an intern or you know, new grad, anything where you're like, I just need my foot in the door to get the experience in order to get the job. That's difficult. And so you do have to cast a wider net, you really do. And so like, I know, there's even been times on probably prior episodes, the front end happy hour that we've talked about, where we're like, don't just apply to everywhere, like don't like it's, you know, it's, I mean, you can do it, but it's like, you should be a lot more thoughtful and really go after, like, what you want to narrow the focus. I think in this case, I don't think that is the right advice, because it's exactly what you said, Mark, where it's like, you just want that experience, like how do you gain the experience? Well, you got someone's got to give you that chance, and you want to get that. And if you have five offers, well, great, now you can start to narrow it down. But that that start, you just want to cast that wide net. So it's a good call up,

Augustus Yuan
I think I said this on a previous episode, but like, don't filter yourself out, you know, your job is not to filter yourself out. That's the interviewer recruiters job, like your job is to get a job at internship. I do think like, Mark, what you brought up is like, it's important to like, be kind of understanding of like, like, can you see yourself working there? And like, you know, within reason, right? Like, I think location is a really, really good example of like, you know, you could apply to everywhere in the world or in the United States or something wherever your base, but like, at that point, you're really just like, wasting more time for you. If you already know, that you're you wouldn't see yourself working somewhere else. So yeah, so be reasonable, but definitely, like, you know, let them do the filtering, you know, like, and I think like, that's important also for like, even like when you're looking for new jobs, or even just internships, and you see those minimum qualifications, like, five years expected experience, like, I mean, if you feel you can speak pretty well about a topic, like just ignore that, like, I swear, no one's like counting how many years like, oh, this person's 3.2 years? Graph QL I don't think he's gonna be a good fit. You know, I

Ryan Burgess
mean, like, my favorite is always the, like, 20 years of React experience. Man that hasn't existed, like, I've seen that maybe not 20 years, but where you're like, Wait, that doesn't even add up like React has? Yeah, exactly. I'm curious, as you both think, to internships, and I'll, I'll go back to mine as well. But what made it a good experience for you? Yeah, I

Mark Benliyan
can speak to this. I know the cute the learning the word, what do we call it like the key word tours now read yet? Right. I was gonna say like, chairs, mentor chair, one of the biggest things that are like a huge part of your internship is definitely like your mentor knows what I was getting up. Because Because with your mentor, right? They end up becoming a lot of who you're interacting with, on the day to day, even, let's say when I was on Netflix, I was on Ryan's team. But Ryan and I would speak sort of like a handful of times, it's like a very different amount, because your manager has multiple different reports. Whereas the person assigned to you to be your mentor, I have to say the word against yours. They're sort of fully invested in you. They're the one who's like waking up and wondering, like, what is mark up to today? How did this week go? Like, what are your highs and lows of the week, they're sort of the person who's like your right hand, man. And so I do think when I find myself reflecting on internships, there is a direct correlation between the relationship that I had with the person sort of overseeing my work with kind of like how I feel about that internship, I would say, there are nice things about like, what you work on, too, which is kind of out of your control, because even at the same company, we can all end up working on things that I might like, what I might project more than someone else might like their project. Those things do go hand in hand and like they definitely play a role. But I would say anywhere that I've gone where I've had a mentor cheers, cheers. Where I've had a mentor who I feel like was willing to offer me their time and willing to sort of like coach me to learn things that I feel like I otherwise couldn't learn. work right. And I feel like the internships that I had that in the most standout way were Tinder, Netflix and figma. What about you, Augustine? actually love it. Yeah,

Augustus Yuan
definitely the the teacher now I'm just gonna say mentor Hey, sure. sync up is definitely such a big part. I would say another really big thing that makes an internship experience really good is, knowing the project you're working on is something that will have an impact, or it will be on production, or it's not just gonna be like an experiment that someone looks at and says, okay, cool. And then, like you like, I feel like I feel and I've definitely heard from other people, other people who have been in internships, like, knowing your the project you work on has an impact is like really, really cool. It's like something to be super proud of. And I like knowing that the work I did, like, it's something that makes an impact, whether it be on the company or on the app, or whatever, like, it's just cool to know that that's a thing.

Mark Benliyan
Yeah, actually, like, that is a massive part. And I think my answer is kind of missing that where that really dictates how fun or how, like excited you are to keep working more at this company. Like that's what gets you up every day. And the places where I haven't felt that kind of impact. I've just been less motivated to work for the company. Like long term, I see less of a future with myself there. I think the I figma is a place where I feel like I had the most impactful project. And I guess maybe that shows the impact of it, because I did choose to return to figma. Like that has always stuck with me. And I do think like I figma Do you also the company size just naturally has to matter. Like I figma I think we're I don't know, like 1000 or so employees, maybe a little more, but definitely like less than 2000, something like that. And I work on fig jam, particularly, which is like even smaller subset of people. And so it's like the individual impact that I have as an engineer at fig jam, or like, I don't know, we might be like 100 people on fig jam is disproportionate to let's say, when I joined Netflix was the biggest company which and we're now at like 13,000 people, you just sort of can't really wrap your head around everything that's going on in the same way.

Ryan Burgess
I like that call out on company size, that is definitely something to think about. Because one thing I was gonna highlight for my internship was, I mean, I worked at a really small company, it was like nine people or something that was a small agency. But one thing was definitely the people that I'm gonna say it but the mentors absolutely cheers. What I liked about it, though, is I got a good mix of things that I was working on to like I remember even working really closely with the one designer, working really closely with the one flash engineer and then even like a back end engineer. And most of my work at the time was primarily in Flash, I wasn't really doing a lot of design work, or back end work. But I learned so much from all three of those people. And there was others too. But those three, just like so different in what I was learning from them. And that was so powerful. I was also exposed to so many different things to like, I think I even did some video editing while I was there. Like there was just some things like that, where it was cool to just kind of be thrown into things. I agree with you both. It's like you want to have impactful work that you're doing some of the work, I think it was all impactful in some way shape or form. But just being in also been able to just do different things that was really cool. Because it also helped me understand what would I want to focus in like we're where we're what I really want to go and learn more of that skill set. So I think that was a experience that I felt was really good. That's cool.

Augustus Yuan
Like a very diverse like,

Ryan Burgess
yeah, that's a good way to put it. I guess this is like a diverse experience, which I think is good. I mean, maybe if you already know what you want to specialize in, then that's probably not the best. I mean, it doesn't hurt to learn other things ever. But I think if you know what you want that can be better to maybe just narrow that focus.

Mark Benliyan
I'd agree. This makes me realize like, I guess how many factors really go into like an internship experience. But for me, one of the things that I can also mention about figma was when I was there, it was the place where I had the most opportunity to work cross functionally. Like you mentioned speaking with design and like I figma we have very tight like design engineering loops just by nature, like we're building designing the company. Surprise Yeah, right. Yeah. But I remember what I was thinking I was like, yeah, now I got like really experienced what is it like to work with a pm and report to both like my pm and have like a designer then have my own sort of like manager and all these different kinds of functions. And I guess that also, it'll vary from what people want. But for me, that's something that like I really enjoyed that process of and I feel like there was a lot of trickle down learning of sort of being thrown into like this team environment working cross functionally, basically every day and so I do think that was one of the things that made that internship in particular standout

Ryan Burgess
right on you know, we mentioned it as a key word and obviously super important. I'm curious what makes a good mentor. Cheers ring a ding ding

Augustus Yuan
Definitely patience is such an important quality. Because it especially like someone who has many years of experience, you, you tend to forget, like what it's like to learn, or be on boarded. Like. And also, you know, just like being in that environment for like many years, the natural jargon of even service names, like, we, okay, like we have services that are named after Star Wars characters or whatever. And so, you know, just in the hallway talking about oh, yeah, Bobo is having some issues, you know, we gotta get a job of that, or something like that, right? It's very overwhelming, and you're naturally going to have to ask a lot of questions. So I think a really important characteristic for mentors, especially for interns, is, you know, have patience, they really, really understand that, you know, they're trying to learn from the ground up, and, you know, really looking in for therapists interests. Yeah, I think that's like another big thing, right. Like, you know, the project that they're working on is important, but really remember that this is also a huge learning experience for them. And so you want them to take away something from it, you know, even if the prot you know, naturally, everyone would love that the project is finished. In fact, maybe there's someone saying, Hey, I'm expecting this person to finish it, or they might not get a return offer. And I would, I would say, as a mentor, sure, you know, like, really, like, try to communicate that. But really focus on what they're gonna get, take away from this internship, you know, like, what skills are they going to get? I really like to have that kind of communication with your mentee, talk to them, what are they interested in learning in and, like, really making sure that they're getting what they're looking for from this internship, they might not want to even come back to the company, you know, so like, really? Like, do what, like really understand what are they looking to get out of this internship, and then trying to see if you can help meet that.

Mark Benliyan
I agree to your point, it goes on, like, these internships truly are learning opportunities at the end of the day. They're almost like maybe extended interviews, in some cases as well. They are, yeah,

Mark Benliyan
right. Right. I would say one of the things that I found to be most helpful is when they're really open to collaboration, I guess, for me, like the best way that I learned was just being able to kind of download their brain, someone who has like way more years of experience and say I do. And so I oftentimes found myself wanting to not just know like, what would you do differently? But also like, why, like, how do you sort of think about that process, whether that be like, synchronously kind of reviewing certain bits of code, or whether that's like, just kind of like explaining the why behind everything that you're doing, or pairing more often, things like that, in my opinion, have gone much further in terms of making me feel like I'm learning a lot, and also learning to kind of operate in the way that this may be more senior engineer than I operates in. So that's been very nice, because as a student, you typically don't really get much exposure at all to what a senior engineer is even. And so that has been very helpful. And I would say the other thing that I think makes interns feel good is feeling like their mentor has a degree of ownership over their own growth, like they take a degree of like, this is also their responsibility to kind of think about what their intern is doing, what these requirements are, and like, you want them to be out there batting for you. And I think like that sort of combination is nice in terms of feeling like they're helping your career progress, and also just helping you develop your your own learning.

Ryan Burgess
I love that you said that too. Because there should be a sense of ownership on them. Like I look at it, too is for a senior engineer, I see that as an opportunity to for them, right, like as a growth opportunity that they may have never been a mentor for an intern or new college grad. Cheers. I know, we're just gonna say this abundance, whatever great word. But that's important, right? Like I see it as they should treat it as an opportunity for themselves to to try and help like teach someone because there's skills to that. But then it's also like helping build up the team. Like I think there's a lot of benefits to that as well. And Mark, I think you said it really well, too, is like one thing I was actually very much appreciated about you as an intern, you asked a lot of those thoughtful questions. It wasn't just like, hey, we're doing this, but it was like why, like, there was always that like, deeper question of like, even you know, one on ones with myself, I saw that with the your mentor as well. Like there was just really deep questions. And I think that's like a great opportunity. I hadn't even thought about it from that perspective, is like you're not faced with that, like a lot of being a senior engineer. It's just experience. That's really all it is, is like you're like yeah, I've kind of seen that that's gonna get us into trouble or that's not going to work because of XY and Z. And so the more that you can just like, eat that up and like be like, Oh, I'm going to put that in my back pocket to like remember that. That can be really fun. Powerful. So I love that you called that out. Yeah.

Mark Benliyan
And I do want to say one of the things like my, a lot of my understanding of what a good mentor should sort of look like did really Kate Hone itself during my last internship, like on Netflix, my mentor, his name was David was probably the best mentor that I've had, I think not even probably like he was the best mentor that I had over those six internships. And I think he really like exemplified a lot of these things that I'm speaking about. And now when I tried to find myself answering the question, I look back on what stood out to me about the way that like David mentored me, and so it's, it's cool to see that.

Ryan Burgess
Well, we should give David David simmer. Shout out for that one, two. Yeah, he's he's been on an episode of Front End happy hour. It's it's been a couple years, I think. But yeah, we did one years ago on transitioning from second career, basically, because David had moved into engineering after doing a prior career. So I think that's what the episode was when we talked on it. So David, very cool. So talked a lot about like, what are the good experiences or makes it? Good? I'm sure you experienced some bad experiences while being on interns? I'd be curious, we don't really need to focus on the bad, but like, what are some of the things that like, maybe if you didn't experience or what are things that could have made it better,

Mark Benliyan
I won't name names for like companies and whatnot. But I have had some experiences that I can look back on. And I'm like, think that like really could have gone better. That really could have been an overall better internship. And I think the biggest thing that stood out to me there was like, I've joined teams in the past where I guess it sort of felt like the company doesn't really care about having an intern, like, it sort of felt like everyone isn't on the same page about the internship program were like the team that I joined, I felt like me being an intern was like a responsibility dropped onto that team, rather than like that team wanting an intern and the business accommodating them. And so that was just always faced, I remember when I was there, I never even had a single one on one with my manager, like, they never sort of reached out. And I kind of like never really thing neither. And even some of the work that I was doing, like there were periods of time where it was kind of like, pending what I should do next. So I do think like, preparation is a big one, when you join a company, like you really want to feel like these people are excited to have you on the team and also know why you're here and what you're here to do. And so like, that is one of the biggest ones that I would say of like feeling like you actually have space for an intern on your team, and whatever it is that you're working on, rather than just like trying to pop an intern somewhere that they might not belong

Augustus Yuan
day, that that's a really good one. I was gonna say something about that. But I have another one. I have another one, which I think Mark, you actually kind of talked about, like, how you enjoyed the cross functional nature of internships, like, I would say, the biggest complaint I've seen, like when we like, ask interns like, Oh, what did you like, or when do you not like, is their project is too siloed. And this is like, by design sometimes, like, you know, like, sometimes very intentionally, like, will make the project like, okay, you know, we don't want too many dependencies, we don't want this intern going on goose chases of like trying to figure out and they don't do anything. But that also has this like kind of big drawback where they don't, they may not get a lot of interaction with like other people. And that's like a huge part of the internship experience or work experience, like a lot of people who pursue internships, they're trying to get real work experience, a need to work with other people. And if you make a project to siloed, then they kind of lose that. So I would say like, if you are like preparing an internship project, like trying to make sure at least there is like some cross functional, like, even if it's just a designer or pm that's involved. Like that's already a really big step. That's also why I think having like something that goes to production is really good. Because, you know, if it goes to production, people are naturally going to need to be involved in that, right? Like someone's going to be on call to like, make sure no issues happen. Or like, what's the rollout strategy? Like? How is it going to production? Like, what's the communication to users? What about the future, etc. Like, there's a lot of these little things that you learn from doing that. So yeah, that's definitely something I commonly hear. It's like too siloed

Ryan Burgess
it is by design a little bit, right? Like because, you know, you don't want to throw, you want to set people up for success. Right? And you want to set them up for success and you want people to be able to land something. Internships are shorter term. They're definitely not as experienced. So you're giving them things that you think are, you know, you don't want to just give them the easiest thing ever that they're like, yeah, it's too easy, but it's a balance. You want to try and get something that's like not so challenging that they can't land something But that's a good call out I guess this even on the advice is that doesn't mean that you're so siloed that know what you don't work with anyone like you should be collaborating with like a product manager designer, obviously other engineers within the team, but just getting a mix of that can go a long way. I think another one that I was going to add is that maybe a little similar, is just giving some of the grunt work, right. Like I've definitely, even in my own internship, I think a little bit there was points where I was like, and a lot of that work fell on me, which made sense. But some of it too, is I think, it needs to be a balance, where you're at least are getting something that's like, a little more meaty to so that you're making sure that someone sees something from early or starting a project to kind of finishing it. And getting the whole sense of it not just doing something like some of the grunt work that maybe some of the more senior engineers just don't feel like doing. That's not what the intern is there for. Also, I think a misconception that companies sometimes have is that the interns there to just like make your life easier, and to just pick up those tasks. I think that's false. Having interns is actually more work. Because Marx said it well, too, is you have to prepare for it. You have to be thoughtful, you have to spend time with them, you want to make sure that people are learning in those scenarios. So I think that that's another thing that can go wrong is where people are like, Oh, great, like we have an intern to just get a bunch of work done. It's like, no, that's not really what's going to happen. It's actually you invest in them. And that's how it should be. It's like it's it's more work up front, because you're investing in them. Right.

Mark Benliyan
I do think I totally agree with that. I think you exemplified that when you were like my manager during the entire trip, which was awesome. But I think that's what I see a lot like I think the approach of kind of like giving the intern grunt work is sort of very short sighted, I think like, it's all you're looking at is like, oh, we have someone joining the team for three months, like, what can we just give them to get out of our plate. But it's not really taking the long term approach of like, if you have an intern there for three months or three months is to set them up to be joining your company for years and years on end. And a bunch of groundwork isn't really going to get them there. And so yeah, I do think some people do take a short sighted approach on that. Absolutely.

Ryan Burgess
All right. Well, before we dive into pics, I would love one piece of advice for an intern out there that's just getting ready to apply to some jobs or thinking about their summer internship. What advice would you give them?

Mark Benliyan
My biggest piece of advice is to optimize for finding as many experiences as you can, even if they're unpaid, over just siloing yourself to more coding projects, because I know Augustus mentioned that he had, let's say, like that student web developer role. And my bet is that he learned infinitely more things from that role than if you just tried to even just build the same application, just like on his own completely alone. And I think like that's the biggest thing that I've done during my recruiting process, I never had a single coding project on my resume. And instead, I just constantly tried to like join school clubs or organizations like anywhere that I could kind of like build software with a team. And I do think that once recruiting season came around, those kinds of experiences send a lot more positive signal to a recruiter where it's not just the fact that you can like write lines of code. But it's the fact that like you have experience working in this sort of like structured engineering environment, collaborating with other people reviewing code, kind of like thinking about users, because your projects likely don't have users. And so it's like, try to focus on building your resume of experiences, and leveraging the credibility that those organizations already have, instead of just trying to make your own coding project from scratch, because you will get further that way.

Augustus Yuan
Yeah, I don't know if I can speak to like, finding internships because I feel like it's changed a lot. But definitely, when you have an internship, my biggest advice is pretty similar to mark you know, like making sure like you take advantage of that opportunity of working in the company and not just like interacting with your ring, a ding ding, your mentor. Cheers, cheers. But interacting with other people in the company, like getting to know them and networking. This is like the best opportunity to network and build relationships. Like, I'm gonna be honest, right? Like, I did not know, Ryan when I came out of college, but it was because of that internship. And I happened to sit next to them and I was like, Oh my God, he's working at a marketing website. He he owns evernote.com It's like, so cool. Like, that's how like, I got to meet Ryan and I built that relationship and my manager was able to work out something with Ryan so I could join his team. Actually, yeah, Augustus

Ryan Burgess
if we probably didn't know each other that may not have happened where I was like, Yeah, we will definitely take Augustus on right so definitely good call out is networking and like meeting people, that's your opportunity for sure. Even just during marks time at Netflix, I had interns reaching out to me a couple of them just like wanted to set up coffee chats. I'm like, Yeah, sure. Like that's why not right. You never know where Are those networking things go? But we've said this many times on the podcast for anything. It's like network always be networking. It's hard to know when it pays off. But it can. Yeah,

Mark Benliyan
even a small example of that is like when I was an intern on Netflix, I coincidentally had a one on one with Jem Young, before I even knew that he like helps you on this podcast that I was on here. So like, that just goes to show how some of those things can always sort of come full circle.

Ryan Burgess
And it's too bad. We didn't have Jem on the podcast. But yeah, that's That's hilarious. All right. Well, let's dive into pics in each episode, the front end happier podcast we like to share pics of things that we found interesting want to share with all of you sometimes are related to the episode topic, but a lot of times not Augustus, you want to start us off? Yeah, sure.

Augustus Yuan
I only have one pick today. And it's it's a game. It's called the finals. It is just such a cool game. It just came out literally a few days ago. It's I don't really know how to best describe it. But first person shooter arena style game, but it takes so many elements from a bunch of different games. Like you all the environments destructible. And there's like objectives or in a squad. And it just takes a lot of the elements from other battle royale and other these other squad like games and like combines into one. So I think it's a really awesome game worth checking out. Right

Ryan Burgess
on Ark, what do you have to share with our listeners?

Mark Benliyan
My pick is actually this interesting software I ran across recently that I've started using, I'm not sponsored, but they seem pretty cool. It's one of the first few times we read lately, I've seen like a demo that has impressed me. And so they're called the rewind AI. I don't know if any of you may have heard of them. But essentially, you might know Ryan Yeah. So essentially, like now keeps a constant like stream of everything that you do on your laptop. And it basically just allows you to go back in time, almost as if, like, everything had just sort of been recorded. And it allows you to also search throughout, like everything that you've sort of gone through listened to or seen anywhere on the internet. And so it's actually like very cool for little weird moments where you've like, forget something or you can't remember when you saw something or you want to like accidentally closed out a tab or a message and you can just instantly go back to it. So this has been I don't use it very often, but it's constantly there. And it's probably one of the cooler things that I've ran into lately. Yeah, it's

Ryan Burgess
it's pretty impressive. Just being able to like, actually see what's happening. And like being able to rewind and see that so very cool.

Mark Benliyan
The fact that you can search it too is like seriously impressive to me, because they scan all of it to like then make it searchable. And I do I do like the first thing I thought of if you're listening to this, anything like does now rewind on like all the data of everything that I ever do on my laptop. They say that they store that all like just locally and that they don't have it but I mean, don't quote me on it.

Ryan Burgess
I mean, there's always creepy factors no matter what. Right? Right on I have two picks. Both just things that I've been watching lately recently, I'm sure a lot of people have recently watched the squid game challenge on Netflix, I highly recommend it. It's it's a really cool challenge. I feel so sorry for a lot of the people having to go through it. It's like just a mental tax on them. And it's just like, random in so many ways if you're going to win the money, but it's probably been one of the biggest prizes ever won that I've ever seen on any of like reality shows like that. So that was kind of cool. If you saw the squid game, like the actual TV show series, this they they lived up to it and made the challenge very similar is really cool. A little too dramatic in my opinion for like the reality piece of it. But overall, I enjoyed it, I highly recommend checking it out. And then recently, I'm watching a show on FX. So I'm watching on Hulu called Fargo. I watched it many years ago, it's on like the fifth season. I'm watching the latest season that's out right now, which is the fifth season, but they're very isolated. Each season is different. But they're I don't think I watched all seasons. I remember maybe watching like the first couple seasons. So I'm probably going to have to go back and watch the some that I've missed, but they're just so good. They're like these raw stories. But they're great. I'm not going to say much more, I highly recommend going to check out probably any of the seasons there. So far really good stories that they tell. So worth checking out. I just want to thank you Mark, so much for coming on and sharing your experiences and insights, because it's really helpful just to really dive into the topic of internships. So thank you for joining us. Where can people get in touch with you if they want to learn more? Yeah,

Mark Benliyan
I think the main place that I guess I am is primarily LinkedIn. But I do also have a YouTube channel where now I've started like on LinkedIn I've lately been getting just like so many students reaching out to me with like similar themes of questions. And now it's honestly been like if you're listening to this, I probably won't be able to respond to your LinkedIn message. Because I seriously get like I have over the I wasn't unread messages. And LinkedIn doesn't even let you like filter them. So it's just like wild now. But I do now have a YouTube channel where I sort of answer all of the sort of most common questions and the advice that I would have for interns. And so that is just also just my name, youtube.com, Mark and LAN. Awesome.

Ryan Burgess
We will link that in the show notes as well. That's, I'm gonna have to check that out. Mark, that sounds awesome. I love that approach, too. It's like, I can't answer these all individually. I'm just going to answer this open on the web, so people should need to go check that out. That'll be great. Well, thank you all for listening to today's episode. If you want to listen to us or find us you can really search for us on anything you like to listen to podcasts on. You can find us on Twitter at @frontendhh front end happy hour.com Any last words honestly

Mark Benliyan
just want to say thank you for having me. This was very cool, and it's awesome to see how it comes full circle. And this was a great episode. Awesome.

Ryan Burgess
Thank you Mark,

Augustus Yuan
mentor mentors. Cheers.