Things I learned at my first software engineering internship that I didn’t expect to learn
This summer, between my freshman and sophomore year, I worked as a software engineering intern at a startup called FlyBuy based in Seattle. My primary duties were to maintain and add to a few web apps that were written in ReactJS. During the two months I was working there, I learned ReactJS to a degree where I’m confident in my abilities of building the client side of a web app, and also learned how to work with a Meteor backend to the point where I could do the backend of the web app I want to create as well. I also spent some time learning React Native so that when my internship ended, I was immediately able to start building an app idea I’ve had using React Native.
Going in, I knew that I would learn javascript to a much better level than I was at before (I didn’t know what ReactJS was before my internship). I also knew that I would learn how to work with backend. Most importantly, I learned how software engineers do work with a team in a startup, even though FlyBuy had a relatively small engineering team.
However, there were a bunch of things that I didn’t expect to learn at this internship that will likely be incredibly important in the future, maybe even more important than the ReactJS skills I’d gained. Here are the key lessons learned.
How to pick music to work to
I listen to a variety of music. I could be listening to a death metal song one minute and have a piano song from a video game playing the next. The question I had to answer was what to listen to when I was going to be coding for over 7 hours per day.
I tried almost every kind of genre I listened to: math rock, progressive metal, djent, death metal, piano music, and jazz. Aside from finding some really cool bands to listen to, I also found out that none of these genres are really optimal to work to. This went on for over a month, and I knew my productivity wasn’t that high during that time because the music I was listening to could get to be too distracting.

I did end up finding a solution to my music problem though. The proper kind of music for me to listen to while coding (or math or physics) is repetitive music that is not too complicated but high energy.
Video game music fits the bill perfectly. Usually it’s high energy and somewhat aggressive, so it gets you motivated to do the work, but it’s never complicated to the point where it takes away your attention. I plan on listening to looped video game music in the future whenever I want to focus for multiple hours at a time to get work done. If you’re going in for an internship, I’d highly recommend figuring out what kind of music you work best to for long stretches of time.
How marketing and engineering interns work differently
Most of the interns at FlyBuy this summer were marketing interns. In fact, I was the only software engineering intern. As a result, I got to really see the differences in what marketing employees do compared to engineers.
First, the marketing interns spent more time actually working than I did. Whenever I would look over, they would be designing a new flier or interacting on social media for the company. Just in the first week, I was incredibly impressed and kind of dumbfounded that people can actually work so consistently over an 8 hour period.
Next, the marketing interns had a constant stream of focus while I had intermittent bursts of extreme focus. This is natural given the different workstyles, as having extreme focus over an 8 hour period will no doubt lend itself to quick burnout. They were probably at 70% focus the entire time. Meanwhile, I would be at 100% focus for maybe 3 hours of the day, 80% focus for another 2, and then drop down to 20% focused for the rest. These percentages are very rough estimates, but they illustrate how lopsided my focus was compared to the marketing interns. There’s also the issue of me only getting my own full data, and maybe they were not as disciplined as I perceived them to be, but I can confidently say they were much more consistent in getting work done.
Lastly, I learned about the differences in how marketing teams communicate with each other compared to engineering teams. I worked side by side with the CTO, and after the first month, we spent most of our time working alone, with me asking him questions about how to implement something every 2 hours or so. Overall, coding was fairly solitary. However, the marketing interns were usually talking to each other throughout the work. While the discussion never overtook their tasks, they were frequently discussing how to get things done better, new ideas for promotions, etc. Not at all solitary like a coder. I can assume this is because people who are more extroverted end up in marketing type jobs while more introverted types end up as coders, although there are probably some details that I’m missing.
How to craft a good lunch break
I just thought I’d be eating lunch and listening to music during my hour long lunch break, but without properly managing myself, I usually ended up just devouring my lunch in 10–15 minutes and then continuing to work. The issue with this was that I’d quickly end up burnt out within an hour of my lunch break ending, right around 2pm. This meant that most of the 3 remaining hours at work were spent unproductively, and more importantly, with me kicking myself about being unable to get anything done. I definitely needed to fix this if I were to improve my productivity.
About a month into the internship, I started going on hour long walks after eating my lunch. These walks served a dual purpose: I would be able to better recharge from my work and take my mind off of it for some time and I would also be able to talk to people, something I didn’t do much as a coder.

These breaks ended up being just what I needed, since I actually came back refreshed and didn’t experience burnout until much later (around 4pm). I also worked in a much better mood, which is more important.
My position on breaks has always been that they’re kind of pointless and usually distract you from the main tasks at hand, but I think that mainly applies when your tasks take 2–3 hours each, where there will naturally be a break between each task. When you’re working 8 hours at a time with few interruptions (I made sure that nobody really interrupted me), you can quickly get burnt out, and a well placed break will help prevent burnout from happening sooner than later.
That software engineering isn’t where I want to end up
I ended up in CS after initially wanting to go to school for physics and electrical engineering. Initially, I took an engineering class and figured out that I disliked formal engineering courses, so I needed to change to a different concentration. CS became a logical choice after I realized I had some talent in it and it was similar to math if you study theoretical CS and algorithms. This is how I’ve ended up as a CS/Physics concentrator.
Given that I’m drawn to CS due to its mix of practical engineering applications and mathematical side, I think taking a pure software development job isn’t a good end goal. This became pretty clear during the internship, as I’d often spend time reading wikipedia articles about quantum mechanics or doing some math problem when I should’ve been coding. The issue was that my love of mathematics and problem solving wasn’t really being fulfilled by the internship, so I needed to find a different field to go into.
During July, I learned about hard tech startups, and how they are attempting to build technologies that engineers aren’t even sure can be made. These startups include companies dealing with machine learning, quantum computing, and computer vision, all fields that are mathematically heavy but also have CS involvement. Naturally, I should go into these fields.
Learning about hard tech startups was probably the best source of direction I’ve gotten all summer, because now I can orient my education to prepare me for work in one. Next summer, I’m looking to intern at a quantum computing or machine learning company, and I’ve built up my sophomore year to position me to get an internship at such a company.

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