Christopher Sauer on learning as you go
Stanford undergraduate Christopher Sauer shares his internship experience at Dropbox
Dropbox intern Christopher Sauer is a rising sophomore at Stanford. Here he shares his experience working with the Dropbox for iOS team this summer.
Where do you call home?
I’m from Portola Valley, which is about twenty minutes west of Stanford. That’s where I grew up, and I go to Stanford now. I’ve lived there my whole life.
How did you first get interested in computer science?
I was lucky enough to go to a high school with a reasonably strong computer science program. I’d never programmed before that. I was put in an introduction to computer science class my freshman year and just really loved it and took off with it.
How did you decide to intern at Dropbox?
I wanted to be building something that directly adds value to the world. Dropbox is one of the clearest examples of that. At this scale, if you make some small change that saves each user only one second, that’s 300 million seconds saved. It’s a scale I’ve never operated at before, but there’s the opportunity to do a tremendous amount of good.
Tell me about your project this summer.
I’m on the iOS team. A lot of what we’re doing now has to do with getting ready for the iOS 8 launch. That’s been my focus for most of my time here. I’m working on something that’s really allowed me to build from scratch.
What were some of the challenges you faced this summer?
This being my first internship, I had never seen so much code in one place. I’ve only worked on things for school that I was building from scratch, so I always understood all of the pieces.
When you open up Dropbox code for the first time, it’s like, “Wow, there’s a lot here that I don’t know about yet.” Finding your way and putting all of the different parts together is a challenge in the beginning.
How did you overcome it?
You learn to fit more into a mentality of learning what you need as you need it, rather than understanding everything all the time. Once you switch to that perspective, it’s a lot more comfortable. You become a master of your own piece of the code.
What have you learned this summer?
There’s so much I’ve learned. Things about working with a team, organizing meetings, talking about a project and making sure all the different pieces are on track.
One of the most pleasant things about Dropbox is that when you’re meeting with people about things, people are so willing to change perspective. We all might have different ideas about what something is going to be, but through talking about them, we sometimes switch positions. We’re so willing to think about other people’s ideas, and we’re so focused on trying to make the product good, rather than just getting our ideas through.
Tell me about your mentor and your team.
My mentor is Rich Chan. He’s an amazing engineer. He’s awesome and knows everything about everything.
Our team lead is Erik Klein. He meets with each person on the team one-on-one every couple of weeks to just connect, see how things are, learn a little about each other. That’s been really good.
On my team, there’s just an overwhelmingly large number of great people.
Tell me about a highlight of your internship.
I like to think that it will be when my feature actually goes out. I’m really excited that once my feature ships, there will probably be millions of people who interact with it right away.
I think Dropbox does a pretty good job of matching interns with projects that are going to go out and be something they can talk about and be proud of. I’m building something I’ll use on a regular basis. That’s awesome.
It’s just fun building something new here but also being able to leverage everything Dropbox has already built.
Do you have any advice for getting the most out of a summer internship?
I was definitely more worried than I needed to be about the complexity. I could have gotten going on things earlier if I hadn’t been. At the beginning, I also didn’t have enough confidence to speak up when something was blocked. My advice would be not to fall into those two traps.
How would you describe the Dropbox culture?
I would say that it puts a human feel on things that tend to be very technical.
Everyone is doing what they’re most excited about and best at. The team has been assembled so that when each person just focuses on what they’re excited about, they find that they’re supported in every other way. That’s an overwhelmingly good feeling.
It’s not like you’re just focused in on the code. You’re building something that people are going to use. From the engineering side, it’s both technical and detail-oriented, and it’s also very human and fun and makes you smile. People care about connecting with you and about making Dropbox a great product.
Learn more about opportunities at Dropbox for students and recent graduates.
