My 1st Week at Uber
What’s it like to onboard at Uber remotely? I’m about to tell you!
Uber is the largest company I’ve ever worked for. With offices in over 32 cities worldwide, it is quite a lot bigger than my last internship with Provectus Robotics, where I was one of 6 total employees.
Uber being so large means that their onboarding process is very involved. In all my previous internships, I’ve never spent more than a day on onboarding. Here, it took up the entire first week!
Because I’m working remotely, I was worried I would never get the chance to form personal connections with my teammates and my fellow interns. However, a multitude of steps have been taken to make connecting as easy as possible.
I video call with my manager Benjamin Himes every day for a brief wrap-up of what I’ve accomplished and anything I need help with.
The university onboarding team arranged multiple calls throughout the week for us interns to get to know each other. All of us had the chance to individually introduce ourselves to the entire group, and get to know a few interns more closely through breakout groups.
Casual getting-to-know-you lunch meetings are a great way to make up for the lack of casual hallway office encounters! This week, I’ve already gotten to know two other interns over my lunch break, and I plan on continuing that practice for the rest of my term. Simply reaching out on Slack is a great way to introduce yourself and set up a meeting.
So, if you’re worried about missing out on the social aspect of your remote internship, know that there are still plenty of ways to connect remotely.
As for the technical side of my onboarding, that was mostly achieved through online modules.
Experienced Uber employees would guide us interns through what we had to do over video call, then release us to walk through interactive training modules on our own. Help was readily available to us whenever we got stuck, and most onboarding steps went very smoothly for me.
I learned about Uber’s mission and culture, essential security practices to follow, and sorted out all my benefits and legal forms. I got set up with all the permissions I’ll need for my project, configured the various internal and third-party tools I’ll use, and became familiar with all the processes of developing code that I’ll employ over the next four months.
I finish this week feeling welcomed, supported, and prepared for the exciting term ahead of me.
