The BostonHacks Intern Life: Rudhra Raveendran, Intuit Intern
Hello there! Please introduce yourself, your role at BostonHacks, and where you interned last summer.
Hi! I’m Rudhra Raveendran, but I go by Rudy or ROODAY or anything really that gets my attention. I used to be on the BostonHacks tech team but now I have been offered membership into the shadowy organization known as the BostonHacks Alumni (sorry I can’t tell you any more, I fear I’ve said too much already). This past summer I interned at Intuit’s Workforce Tech team in Mountain View (the summer before that I was also at Intuit, albeit on a different team/location).
How did you get into Software Engineering?
Near the end of 8th grade/start of high school, one of my best friends who was already into coding showed me a project of his where he was using LEGO NXT robots to play soccer. I thought that was super cool so I looked into programming (starting with web development) and I took some intro courses at my high school (game development in Ruby and iOS programming). The biggest thing though was starting to go to hackathons in high school, from then on I realized programming was what I wanted to do.
How did you get an internship at Intuit?
It was a bit unorthodox. A friend and I won Intuit’s challenge at a hackathon my freshman year, and after winning a recruiter reached out to us asking if we’d like to interview. I said yes, but then I didn’t hear from them for a while, only to be told sometime in the spring that they ran out of internship slots. I figured that was that and ended up working at a great startup called NeuraFlash for the summer, but at the end of that summer Intuit reached out to me again asking if I’d like to interview for the following year. I said sure, did 1 technical interview over the phone, and then didn’t hear from them again for a while. I emailed my recruiter and then the next day I got a call with an offer.
How did you prepare for the interview?
So for that technical interview I actually didn’t do too much preparing. It was during the summer before my sophomore year so I felt like I hadn’t learned too much, and people hadn’t drilled into me that I needed to practice LeetCode, so I kinda just winged it. In retrospect I think they went a little easy on me because of winning that hackathon challenge, because after I took 330 (the algorithms class at BU) I realized that they gave me a dynamic programming problem (when I answered it I had no clue what that was and used a bunch of for loops). I definitely got lucky there and don’t recommend winging it as a strategy.
What was the hardest part or question of the interview?
I thought the interview was kinda easy only because I had no clue what dynamic programming was so I wasn’t aware that my solution was very inefficient (when they asked me if I could improve it I said no). Perhaps my inexperience showed and they were lenient, but instead of answering what was the hardest part I can say what I found interesting. They asked me a systems design question on designing a banking app, like what are all the layers to consider, how would you implement it, etc. I really like those kinds of problems (in my opinion they’re better at showing how people think than a LeetCode).
What are some tips you have for those who would like to work at Intuit in regards to the application or interview process?
Same as any other tech company, grind out LeetCode/Hackerrank/Cracking the Coding Interview. At the end of the day, that’s the barrier to getting into any company. If you can practice those problems to the point that they’re not an issue, then the interview becomes “Do I want to work here?” rather than “Can I get in?” And if you apply to many places, determining which is the best culture fit is a better position to be in than hoping you pass the questions. That being said, the process isn’t perfect so even if you practice a ton you might just have a bad day (or your interviewer might be having one) and sometimes it just doesn’t pan out. Applying often/casting a wide net is really the only way to solve that (and getting used to rejection is a tough skill that everyone eventually has to acquire). Oh, and if you have friends at companies, always ask for a referral, it never hurts to get a foot in the door (unless you literally stick your foot in the door, YMMV).
What is it like to work at Intuit?
I really enjoyed my time at Intuit. Both summers I was lucky enough to be on teams that had a lot of freedom in writing code. Pretty much no legacy code to maintain, almost no bureaucracy to deal with, as long as work was getting done and could be communicated to everyone else, how you did it was largely up to you. When I worked on a product team (Turbo), I could write code and see it live on the app within a couple weeks, which was really cool to see. And when I was working on Workforce Tech, I could try new things even if they weren’t a standard at Intuit since it was an internal team, as long as the code was well documented and maintainable. Overall the culture felt very relaxed and being in the office was always fun (e.g. one time a coworker was showing how to properly aim a pistol using a Nerf gun while another coworker was trying to grab the Nerf darts with his teeth).
What are some of your responsibilities?
At Intuit I felt like I was a real part of the team rather than an intern, the projects that I worked on were real, either seen by actual customers or actually used internally. This included writing features for products (adding new login flows, updating app screens, etc.), creating dashboards to monitor internal systems, and automating tasks that internal teams were stuck doing by hand.
What are some of the perks of interning at Intuit?
The company really likes having fun, especially for interns. There’s lots of intern events for interns to socialize (and the intern cohorts in my experience really enjoy hanging out together). Foosball tables can be found everywhere (as well as foosball pros ready to make you realize you’re not that good at foosball). However I’d say the best perks are that Intuit handles housing for interns (and the housing is nice), plus they group interns by 3 or 4 and each group gets a car (AFAIK no other company gives cars to their interns). And to top it off, the San Diego office has a VR setup, and Mountain View had a DDR machine. Nuff said.
Did you find anything surprising about interning at Intuit?
The VR setup and DDR. Jokes aside (although I’m not really even joking), I wasn’t very surprised work wise, as the work was fast paced like at a startup (which is a good thing, and again due to the specific teams I was on). Honestly, the perks for interns was the most surprising thing.
What is their culture like?
As I mentioned earlier they’re very laid back. People like having fun there, and as long as work is accomplished it’s all good. To be fair, I’ve only worked there in the summers, and I’m sure that they ramp up in productivity when tax season rolls around, but overall I still think they’re a very fun company to be at.
What do you think are some of the lessons that you have learned through this internship?
That it’s entirely possible to work 40 hours a week and enjoy all of it. Granted not every week was like that, but looking back I don’t really remember being bored (and if I was there was always something else to do). I guess the takeaway is make sure that you end up working somewhere you really enjoy. For internships, that doesn’t really matter, and actually working somewhere you don’t like would be a good internship experience as you will learn what it is you do and don’t like at a job. But when the time comes for full-time (not to sound cliche but hey it’s true), if you do what you love you’ll never work a day in your life (ok that does sound a bit too cliche you’re probably gonna work at least like 12 days).
Do you have any advice for those who would like to intern at Intuit?
Find a friend who can refer you (I had 2 referrals turn into intern offers so they seem to pay attention to referrals). Otherwise, just like any other company, just practice coding problems and have some good personal projects to talk about.
Any final thoughts?
Wanna play TTT? I just set up a server. HMU.
