We all know that getting an internship before graduation in a good tech company is not that easy. Because the company expects so much from you as an intern. But here I am going to share my experience and path that I followed and landed up getting an internship in Spotify and then in a start-up as a backend developer (web).
Basically, I am a CSE student from Lovely Professional University and now in my final year of engineering. When I was in my first year the thing that I was doing was following the academics and was getting very good grades than I expected and I was pretty much happy. But at that point in time, I didn't know the importance of programming.
One day near the end of my first year I saw a post saying the importance of data structures and algorithms. That post motivated me in such a way that I started learning data structure and most of the basic algorithms in the start of my second year and then I kept on practicing them on a daily basis. It was then that I started feeling confident in data structure and algorithms.
The thing is that I was getting confident in data structure and algorithms but didn't know where I going to implement them in real-life projects. So I started doing a couple of projects to actually try to implement what I was learning. At the end of my second year, I learned DBMS, OS, data structures and algorithms(as part of the course). But still, I was not confident enough to face any interview because I thought I lacked in programming. So at the end of my second year, I started doing competitive programming.
Competitive Programming is not limited to any subject because it is like a sport, the more you play the more you learn. In competitive programming, there are tons of problems starting with basic mathematics to advanced dynamic programming problems. While solving competitive programming problems, side by side, having a keen interest in machine learning, I started learning machine learning at that point in time. I continued this path for around 4 months. If you don't want to do competitive programming then there are a set of interview questions that have been repeated from years, you can simply practice those and can easily succeed in any coding interview for an internship.
But the important thing I want to share is that if you want to work for the company as an engineer or developer then the company expects that you know data structures and algorithms. I also thought how can one use data structure in web development but when I was working as an intern the logic that I was writing in the code is basically an implementation of data structure and I was impressed by the thing that I was doing.
If you want to end up getting an internship in a good tech company then the thing you can rely on is coding and knowledge of system design. If anyone doesn't know what system design is, then imagine you are building an application that will be used by millions of users so in the backend you need brilliant engineering. So using concepts from computer science to build large scale system is known as system design. So if you know both of this, it will make you a complete engineer. Then it comes to the added advantage if you know SQL or NoSQL and Operating systems.
So if you haven't started coding then don't demotivate yourself and start learning from now. It's never too late to learn anything you want.
Talking about my Spotify internship. The first round was an online test consisting of 4 programming questions and luckily I solved them all. Then I got a phone call from the Spotify office that I cleared the round. Then it was time for the face to face interview.
In the face to face round, they asked me to solve two programming questions and I solved them too. Then in the third round, they asked me to design Tinder's architecture and I started designing the system as per my understanding and the interviewer was happy with my explanation and I cleared that round too. One important point to remember, good tech companies these days expect you to know the concepts like load balancing, consistent hashing, message passing along with oops concepts. So be prepared for that.
Then the next round was about my project and I explained the projects that I did in my college. My projects were related to computer vision and machine learning so the interviewer was really impressed by my projects at that time. The funny thing is that I applied for Software Engineer (SWE) role but I ended up getting a machine learning engineer intern for 2 months. After my internship at Spotify, I got to learn a lot from there so then I thought to work in a start-up so I gave an interview and I cleared all of those.
Now I am currently in a start-up working as a Product Intern (Backend Development). The thing I want to mention here is that coding got me everything and where I am today. So focus on your problem-solving skills and coding skills and it will get you a job anywhere you want.
I followed the path of coding and it worked for me. I wish all the best to you as well. If you have any doubts you can ask me in the comment section below or can send me a hi at sarthak.acoustic@gmail.com! Happy Coding.
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