Perks of interning at a Bay Area startup
During the summer of 2017, I worked as a Product Design Intern at Sumo Logic, a late-stage big data analytics startup in the Bay Area. Read this for a detailed description. Interning in the Bay Area has its own perks, but what are the exciting perks of working at a startup in the Bay Area?
This exquisite sculpture was made by my super talented manager. He welcomes every employee onboard with this little Sumo.
What makes my internship special?
Brilliant design team
Extremely talented and diverse team to learn from. Approachable and amazing mentors. We even discussed GoT or Stranger Things at work.
Company culture
Your manager (who is the Director of Design) performs with other leaders and it is awesome! How cool is that?
Delivering end-to-end features
Interns do real work. Yes, I worked on features that were shipped.
Communicating on Slack using GIFs
That is Daniel (my manager, who is also the Design Director) and I playing bubble soccer. The design team is big on boomerangs and the communication across the company is done on Slack.
Creating history in a company
I was the first ever design intern that the company had! Did I just create history? (Read this: What does a Product Design intern really do?)
Intern cohort
We worked on some of the most challenging and interesting problems at work and played the game One Night, everyday, during lunch. Small but extremely smart intern cohort!
Food! We had food trucks too
Apart from sumptuous food stocked in the kitchen, we had an assortment of food to pick from. Fridays meant food trucks!
Solar Eclipse viewing party
On August 21, 2017, America witnessed a total solar eclipse and it was dubbed “The Great American Eclipse”. Eclipse visibility in San Francisco Bay Area was 74.4%. Sumo Logic had a solar eclipse viewing party.
Nerf Gun Wars
One could see NerfGuns all around and on almost everyone’s desk. Random nerf guns wars used to happen at work. Everyone would chime in and be a part of it.
Open Door Policy
Well, there were no marked cubicles per se. Even as an intern, we could walk up to the CTO or CEO and say hi or just talk. Lunch with Ramin (CEO) or even Christian (CTO) wasn’t uncommon. In fact, I sat with behind Christian, Sandeep and Daniel with the other interns. The UX team sat amidst management and engineering and we had our huge whiteboards with post-its.
Boomerangs
How can I forget these. We clicked one everyday! This was a UX team thing.
User Experience Palooza
User Experience (UX) Paloozas are pretty common at Sumo Logic. They are week-long getaways where the entire design team sits together to solve a problem. The team invites product managers and developers too and present the result of the Palooza to the entire organization. Paloozas help the team solve critical problems at a much faster pace and ship things faster.
Team Lunches
The team loves exploring and we picked different, yet interesting places all the time. This was my first time ever eating Japanese icecream.
Company Outings
Company outings are fun. People are encouraged to bring family/friends to the event.
This is just some of the things that I could recollect when I was writing this article. There are many other amazing things that you get to experience — Yoga events, Game Nights, Sporting events, events like Tough Mudder among many other things.
