An Octocat Only Has 5 Tentacles
Stories from a Design Systems intern at GitHub
“GitHub has designers?” is the first question I got when I signed up for 3 months in San Francisco in December of 2018. Over the course of the summer, I would grow and learn more than I ever had before.
This article was written for Interns, a project out of Future Careers to shed light on coveted intern spots and make new cities feel less lonely and hence, does not represent Microsoft, GitHub, or any of its subsidiaries in any way. If you’re a job seeker looking for events, AMAs with industry professionals, and access to a community of like-minded, ambitious folks, consider signing up for early access! Additionally, if you have an internship story you’d like to share, consider applying for that, too!
Getting the gig
GitHub’s interview process was very different than I imagined it would be. Many friends and mentors told me to prepare hours and days in advance for the 30 minute slot that would decide whether I would be moving forward in a process. I have no doubts that this is true for many candidates — however, GitHub’s process felt dreamy. While I’ll avoid specifics, I was astounded by the kindness of my interviewers, many of whom were members of the team on which I’d join just a few months later. I actually looked forward to each interview for a chance to meet more people on the team.
My life as an intern
Design at GitHub is super interesting because most designers code. Product design teams were supported by my design systems team, which created components and overall guidelines for products. My schedule each day was pretty similar:
7:00 AM Wake up & eat breakfast
7:30 AM Gym & get ready for work
9:00 AM Walk to work (~15 min, housing was really close to the office!)
10:00 AM — 12:00 PM Stand up on Slack, weekly check-in/other meetings
12:00 PM Lunch 🍔
12:30 PM Beat Cole (the other intern on my team) at ping pong
1:00 PM Back to work — meetings/design time
5:30 PM Work over ✅
After work, us interns usually hung out together or explored the city. GitHub is a majority remote company, so much of my actual work time was pretty self-mediated. I could design, think, or do whatever I needed to get the job done whenever I didn’t have meetings. On the other hand, my meetings were much more meaningful since they didn’t occur as often as at non-remote companies.
Design @ GitHub
GitHub design has a unique perspective on what it means to be a designer. As part of the Design Systems team, I can’t speak much about the Product Design side of things, but I did find it interesting that Design Systems coded actual, product-ready implementation guidelines for the front-end of the product. It was lovely to sit in on talks about component naming conventions and going through iterations on redesigning certain system elements. The design process was tough sometimes since only 1 of the designers on my team was in the office in person. However, this also led to some great solutions since I had to push myself to utilize all the extra time to create more explorations and only get feedback after I had exerted all my creativity.
Before the summer, I had sent my manager, Diana Mounter, a list of goals I wanted to achieve by the end of the internship. Diana sat with me for weekly 1:1s, made the trip down to San Francisco multiple times, and helped me think through not only my work but also my future career. I didn’t even realize that I was making progress and accomplishing goals until she pointed it out to me. The mentorship was amazing at GitHub, and I’d highly recommend the company for someone prioritizing growth.
Some coffee and an iconic statue
GitHub has some similar perks to other midsize tech companies in the Bay Area. Housing was provided through a startup called Zeus, and most of the interns in single bedrooms. However, many interns lived on the same floor of various apartment buildings as others. Zeus essentially provides everything you need in a home away from home — including cookware, cable/wifi services, and even toiletries so you’re not packing shampoo bottles into your luggage.
Other perks included lunches provided every day, happy hour on Fridays, and the amazing office. The GitHub office’s beautiful first floor was complete with a barista-run coffee bar and Octocat statue. It housed the event space for the launch of GitHub Actions, the dining area, a fully stocked bar, and the classic ping pong and pool table setup.
Living in San Francisco was also great — getting to explore different areas of the city with other interns and friends made me see that it’s not just a place for hiking and spin classes. I personally feel that places are best experienced when you don’t over-research, so I won’t go in-depth here. If you want specific recommendations for boba tea though … my DMs are open.
The office is ~ e v e r y w h e r e ~
GitHub has a 60% remote workforce with an HQ in San Francisco. Interns are required to work and live in San Francisco, so this creates a unique culture where all but 2–3 of my team members were not in the office. This really didn’t take away all too much from my experience, but it was something that made my first internship experience pretty unique. While working remotely sometimes made it harder for me to open up to the rest of my team, it taught me a lot about communicating clearly and being more efficient with the feedback I got from other designers.
Remote work aside, interns were treated as full-time employees. I actively worked on and contributed to Primer, GitHub’s open-source design system. I made commits, resolved issues, and even occasionally pushed code (i.e. designers should code). I also got to spend some time with each of the other interns at events like cooking classes, visiting the Exploratorium, and the tradition of watching the San Francisco Giants at Oracle Park.
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Being my first internship, GitHub is a place that’ll always hold a place in my heart along with all the other hooligans who spent 3 months with me. GitHub has a very unique working ecosystem and I would recommend it to anyone looking to apply skills to a global product. You can check out openings as they are released at https://internships.github.com/.
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