How GO-JEK Refactor My Life
If I was asked to describe my GO-JEK internship experience in one word, it would be: skydiving.
Why skydiving? When we first begin our free fall, most of us will feel intense fear due to our lack of experience in skydiving. However, as we get used to the surroundings, we started to enjoy the thrill, we started to try make some manoeuvres — turning it into a memorable experience.
Likewise, I was extremely nervous on the beginning of my internship. I was particularly scared of drawing the ire of other interns by being a burden to them. This particular fear was washed away after going through the bootcamp. During the first week of the internship, I and 14 other people were plunged into a rigorous one-week bootcamp. Initially, we were all quiet and reserved to ourselves, but all the “rm -rf’s”, the speaking drills, the late night efforts in tackling the homework allowed us to bond together. It’s after this bootcamp that I was able to feel the full thrill of this “skydiving” adventure.

The internship was an enlightening experience, I have learnt a lot both from my fellow interns and mentors. As such, I would like to share how this internship has helped me develop better life values.
Learn to Think. Think to Learn
Fun fact: This is the parting words given by Ajey Gore, the CTO of GO-JEK group, during the final showcase of our projects
Active learning is one of the many values encouraged in GO-JEK. We were all encouraged to be curious, to learn and apply new knowledge. I remembered the day of our project briefing. On that day, Mas Giovanni Sakti, a senior engineer for GO-PAY systems, briefed us on three different projects for us to work on. The three projects were:
- A stream processor and analytics for queued with Kafka
- A scheduler for LXC containers
- A centralized configuration management system
Having only learnt the fundamentals of computer science back in college, we were all stunned by the scale and the technical complexity of the projects. Mas Gio however, was delighted to know that we have little to no knowledge about the projects; he was happy that it would be a challenge and that we will learn something new. He was right. The complexity of the project captivates each of us —everyday there will always be a new challenge to overcome. The constant challenges combined with the work culture made me confident to say that there was never a day where any of the interns lacked the motivation to come to work — it was that interesting.
Finishing the internship made me truly experience the joy in pursuing new knowledge and as such, my eagerness to learn is raised to a whole other level.
Learn to Receive and Give Good Feedback
I have always struggled with feedback. I realized that I tend to go on the defensive when I was being criticized which hinders my ability to learn from the feedback. I also realized that I can’t give people feedback — I find it hard to criticize people since I have always felt they are okay.
This particular weakness of mine was further put to the test when pairing with other interns on the project. Pair programming is a crucial component of GO-JEK’s engineering culture and such, we were also told to work in pairs. In addition, receiving feedback is the name of the game on our project showcases since our design decisions were constantly challenged by both the other interns and our buddies(our technical mentors and I would refer them as such in this blog). As such, it’s imperative for me to conquer this particular weakness of mine during the internship.
Fortunately, during the internship, the GO-Academy team tried to improve our non-technical skills through a process called the Learning Action Plan, or LAP in short. Kak Devina guided me in solving this particular weakness of mine by setting goals, for instance, I should try to ask and give feedback to both my buddy and partner. One particular helpful advice that she told me for giving feedback is to set a higher expectation for someone, even though he/she might be okay. Doing this would help in giving valuable feedback that will help others to improve.
Not only I learned how to improve my skills in both receiving and giving feedback, I have also realized the significance of feedback. I would reckon that without the feedback that leads to review and discussion during the pair programming, our projects’ progress and quality wouldn’t be as good and I personally wouldn’t have learnt as much. Criticism is truly a gift.
Don’t wait until you are ready
As the great Shia LaBeouf once said, “JUST DO IT!”.
Sometimes, you just have to try and fail before making the right choice. This is the name of the game during the internship period. Sometimes, I am clueless on how to approach the problem which leads me and my pair to come up with a hypothetical solution after researching about the problem. It’s common for our solution to be either shot down by our buddies/colleagues or we later find it ourselves that it wasn’t the optimal solution by failing which would sometimes leads to a lot of refactoring in our code. However, I reckoned that without these failures, I would not have both learnt and progressed as much.
One other thing that I have also learnt is that when we struggle, it’s okay to ask other people around you for help. In fact, we will be surprised on how much you can learn from those around you. For instance, one of my fellow interns taught me the crux of databases; another taught me JavaScript; another taught me about writing clean code and many more.
Conclusion

The GO-JEK tech internship is one heck of a ride. I was glad to be granted the opportunity to meet amazing people such as my colleagues and inspiring local Indonesian engineers. I have experienced crazy stuff, such as having Ajey spectating and giving feedback on me during the final showcase, and hilarious stuff like how Kenneth forcefully installed zsh on nearly all of our laptops (and thank you for that). I will also miss our second job as GO-Play System Engineers and our “receh” jokes.
Nevertheless, it’s time for me to move on to the next chapter of my life, hoping to utilise everything that I have learnt from this journey. Shout out to the GO-Academy team, the buddies, and my fellow interns for making this internship a memorable chapter in my life.
Thank you for reading!
#InfiniteLearning #GoAcademy
