Making the Most of Silicon Valley Tech Internships — Intern Events 👨🏻💻👩🏾💻
This summer, I was a software engineer intern at Facebook’s Menlo Park office in Silicon Valley. I’ve always wanted to work in the Valley because of its reputation as the center of the tech world and sure enough, I’ve been blown away by all the opportunities there are for tech interns.
This post is my attempt at cataloguing them, in the hope that it’ll be helpful to future tech interns interning in the Valley/the Bay Area. Of course, my list is definitely non-exhaustive, so do comment below on stuff I’ve missed and I’ll add it to the article! In no particular order, here they are:
0. Your company’s intern events
Once you’re an intern, most companies will have intern-specific events that you can go to! I personally thought Facebook’s intern events were a great way to get to know other interns in the company, particularly because of how large the company was. And don’t be afraid to go out of your comfort zone 😄— reach out to people who don’t go to the same school, or don’t have the same interests, etc. It might be uncomfortable at first, but it tends to be really rewarding in the end.
1. Company open houses
A loooot of tech companies in the Valley, from Google-sized giants to small 10-people startups, want to hire new grad software engineers. As a result, many companies hold open houses during intern season to sell interns on how amazing it would be to work for their company. This summer, for example, I got the chance to go to Quora and Palantir’s intern open houses.
These events cover the basics — engineers and recruiters talk about the company’s mission and size, what the engineering culture is like, etc. plus time to chat with them individually for personal questions.
Companies will also put their own spin on the open house: Quora had a Q&A with its founder-CEO (and Facebook co-founder) Adam D’Angelo, Palantir turned it into a quiz night, and Slack hosted an intern hackathon.
These events, however, aren’t just a way to get swag and food. Every tech company will tell you they work on interesting problems and have a great culture, but asking questions like:
- What type of technical problems does the company work on and does it fit your skillset? (e.g Does the company do a lot of ML? How big of a priority is mobile?)
- What mindset are the engineers at the company encouraged to have? (e.g “move fast and break things” vs. “security/reliability is no. 1 because we handle people’s money”)
can help you understand what company culture is really like, and whether you’d be a good fit.
So how do you find out about these open houses? For me, it was a mix of getting invites from friends who intern/work at other companies, finding random public Facebook events (e.g Blend, Plaid) and recruiters (from a company I was rejected from lol) reaching out, and I suspect it’s the same for most people.
2. Intern programs by venture capital firms
Venture capital (or VC) firms are firms that give startups money in exchange for a small percentage of the startup, the hope being that the startup will become a wildly successful business that’ll make the VC’s ownership stake worth much more than the initial funding given.
What do they have to do with interns? Well, VCs are often trying to help their startups find engineers, many of whom are small and don’t have a giant recruiting department. Some programs in this vein:
Greylock Techfair
Greylock Partners hosts an intern-only career fair in the summer for many of the startups it funds. Students can apply to attend the fair on the Greylock website (https://www.greylock.com/greylock-u/techfair/) and the application usually open early in the summer. I went to Techfair this summer and was really impressed. A variety of great startups attend (e.g Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase, Flexport, Slack, Thumbtack etc.), it’s a really effective way of landing interviews, and there’s plenty of time to actually talk to engineers, so I’d definitely recommend the event.
KPCB Fellows
Kleiner Perkins, another VC firm, also has a program that students can apply to during the school year (http://fellows.kleinerperkins.com/). The program lets participants intern for one of the startups in KPCB’s portfolio, and then KPCB adds a bunch of other events on top of the normal internship, including community events with interns across the entire KPCB portfolio, meeting interesting and important people in tech, etc. I didn’t apply to the program, but there a lot of articles online about what it’s like (e.g https://www.businessinsider.com/kleiner-perkins-fellowship-what-its-like-2015-6)
VCs are also in the business of finding people who want to start promising new startups. Intern-tailored programs in this vein:
Floodgate Insiders
This program lets interns sit in on the day-to-day operations of a VC firm and gives Floodgate a chance to build relationships with potential founders. The applications opened early in the summer. I applied and got rejected, but ended up getting invited to a small Q&A with Floodgate’s 2 co-founders that ended up being super informative and covered a wide range of topics, including their thoughts on how to pick a company to join out of college.
3. intern.community
intern.community is run by a group of tech interns in the Valley, and the (pretty informal) program is a great way of meeting people from other companies. They host a bunch of social events throughout the summer and they have a giant Slack group for interns to join.
Overall, I’ve personally found that the Valley provides tech interns so many ways to understand how the tech industry operates, beyond just the day-to-day experience of the internship, and I hope you’ll have a great experience being an intern in the area too!
