Interning at a Tech Company on the East Coast as a Product Design/Marketing Intern for 3 Months
For those in the United States as an international student, I believe many students choose to intern while the school is out during the summer.
Without exception, I too interned during the summer in my 2-year graduate school program. What I had in my mind in the beginning and what I ended up with was different, and I wrote this entry to reflect my entire process of going through an internship. I hope this entry serves as a reference for other international students studying in the United States who think of doing an internship.
Companies I Had in Mind Originally
Summer internship during graduate school is, in a way, special. The term is fixed, and it is not expected that you work there permanently after the internship.
For someone who has been working in the advertising industry for more than 10 years, I considered this internship a good opportunity to expand beyond the advertising career and leverage what I have learned in graduate school in the industry.
So, where and what kind of internship should I participate in? My initial hope was to work at a company that resides in the intersection between design and technology and a challenging company on seemingly moonshot projects on a world-class level. Another thing I had in my mind was to work at a company that I would not be able to work if I were to be in Japan.
I thought it would be amazing if I could work at a company like the above. And hey, I think I will! It’s not a full-time position, just an internship. I have plenty of working experience, piece of cake.
No Offer After Applying for 80 Positions
I was wrong on so many levels. In fact, I underestimated the process of finding an internship. I needed to take some time to get used to school, but now that I look back, I should have started preparing since the beginning of the Fall semester. From what I heard, students at the Business School were searching for internships from the Fall semester. On the other hand, I started looking for an internship after the Fall semester ended.
I started by applying for UX design intern positions for major tech companies such as Google, but nothing happens.
This was quite devastating for me, but looking at this reality from a different perspective, I think this was fair. I may have spent a long time in creatives within the advertising industry, but I never had a UX designer position. Although I didn’t have experience working as a UX designer directly, maybe I could have worked on the resume to make it more to include experiences related to UX design. Or I could have revised my portfolio to some extent so that I don’t look like I have no experience in UX design. Or also, I could have reached out to the people around me for reference to other employees. But given the hectic nature of the school, I did any of them. I misjudged the situation lightly, thinking that I will be alright. For those who are thinking of studying in the United States and intend to do an internship, I highly recommend approaching the process of finding an internship strategically to achieve the best results.
If you look at it from a farther perspective, during the summer, if not from all over the world, but from all around the United States, students pour in, not just the undergraduate students but all graduate students, including Ph.D. students, to find an internship at numerous companies. If the intern is about a dev intern at a tech company, CS students will be advantageous. If the intern is about a research intern, Ph.D. students will be at a significant advantage. If the intern is about UX, students studying UX design will be more likely to be chosen.
I don’t want to complain too much, but I was none of these given my experience. Maybe I did apply for an internship at an advertising firm. Things might have been different, but since I was already in the advertising industry for a long time, it wasn’t my intention to pursue something I’ve done already.
While I was struggling like this throughout the semester, winter passed on top of my academic work, and spring was just around the corner.
I still had no offer.
Jumping into the World of Startups
Seeing that it was almost around the end of April, and being desperate, I started talking to the people asking for advice. Among the people I spoke to was my academic counselor. She gave me the following advice:
”Have you ever considered looking into startups?”
It was surprising that I’ve never applied for an internship position at a startup until she told me this.
Come to think about it, looking at my fellow cohorts at Harvard’s MDE program, many of them had already decided to work at various startups around the globe.
One was going to work at a satellite startup in Bulgaria as a strategist for 3 months, and two students were bound to Africa to work at an energy startup. In fact, people intending to work in a large company were few within the MDE cohort.
This made me reconsider my options. It’s not that I’m going to work at this particular place full time. Maybe deciding to work at a startup would be an invaluable experience!
After the conversation with my academic advisor, I registered myself on an online platform superficially tailored for finding jobs at startup companies.
Shortly after, I got a message from one startup. Reading the message and writing matches my background, and I felt that the sender actually read my resume, and I went through the interview process. I presented my portfolio and got some great responses.
I got hired as a product design/marketing intern.
It was almost mid-May, and Cambridge was showing it’s spring beauty.
Meeting With Amazing Boss, Colleagues
I got hired as an intern at a company called Tulip Interfaces.
Tulip Interfaces is a startup founded by Natalie Linder and Rony Kubat, former students at the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT Media Lab. This industry 4.0 company provides solutions, both in software and hardware, and enables manufacturing companies to achieve advanced data-driven manufacturing processes.
Tulip Interfaces was located at Somerville, MA, right next to Cambridge, where I lived. Their office was in a nicely renovated former factory, and as it was in the vicinity of where I lived, I was taking the bus every morning to get to the office.
My dear cohort from the MDE program was also interning there as a product design intern while going through the necessary paperwork to get started. Not only was she my cohort from the same program, but she became my colleague during the summer.
There were also several interns coming in from all over. We had hardware engineers, software engineers, and machine learning engineers working in one place, creating a special collaborative atmosphere.
Since I returned to graduate school in my 30s, not just the interns, but I think most of the full-time workers were younger than I am. Regardless of that fact, however, everyone at the office was friendly.
Among many things that I experienced during the internship, one of the most memorable aspects was meeting my boss for product design.
My boss had studied computation design at an architecture school at MIT and then worked on Twitter as an engineer. What I thought is amazing about my boss is that he had a deep understanding of product design and engineering.
During the day, he would eagerly write code, discuss that with the engineers, and then come to my colleagues and me to give precise feedback on the UX design work we’ve been working on and then go back to coding again. I notice that he would be doing his routine exercise using a basketball in the office space.
I’ve worked in the advertising industry for years as a creative technologist, but I have never seen anyone with deep knowledge in engineering and design. At the same time, I realized how much I lacked in ability despite the years throughout my career.
In short, I was enjoying myself greatly being surrounded by such amazing people during the internship.
[My First Paycheck in the United States]
While I was working for 3 months, I received a few paychecks.
I still can recount my feelings when I first received my first paycheck.
Although I have been studying in the United States under the Fulbright scholarship program, I have been burning all of my savings I’ve made throughout my career to be in the United States with my daughter and my wife. Life was not easy.
Until I started my internship, basically, money was something I spend, not something to earn. However, for the first time during my stay in the United States, I actually earned money to live with this internship to support my family. This meant a lot to me personally.
Given my former full-time career and years of working in the advertising industry, a summer internship paycheck was significantly different. However, I realized that this is my market value in the United States and felt the significance of my paycheck.
Life as an Intern
Since Tulip Interfaces was not so far away from my home in Cambridge, I didn’t need to relocate myself temporarily during the summer. I had the luxury to remain in Cambridge and enjoy the summer here while I interned.
I frequently jogged in the morning before going to work. I would report what I will be working on throughout the day on the standup during the morning and focus for the rest of the day. If necessary, I’d set up a short 1-on-1 with my boss to confirm the status quo and delivery once done. I would go out for lunch, or a deli comes to the office several times a week. I’d once again focus on my work in the afternoon, and everyone starts to leave around 6 pm.
The days were properly constructed and also productive.
Besides work, I had the privilege to enjoy the summer in New England in various ways.
Every Wednesday, there would be a free concert performed by the renowned Boston Philharmonic at the Charles River Esplanade, located by the Charles River's brink. You can experience a luxurious Wednesday evening at this outside concert listening to the gorgeous performance.
Tired of Boston? Then hop on to a boat from the Boston Harbor for an expedition to do some whale watching.
Driving up north, you can visit the beaches in Maine that are stunningly beautiful, and going south; you will encounter many of the scenic natures around Cape Cod.
As I mentioned above, life was not definitely easy. Still, it was an exceptional experience to overcome each of the problems one by one, as a family, to make most out of the opportunity to live in the United States.
Although my family and I are all back in Japan, to this day, we still talk about our experience reminiscing about life back then.
My young daughter would probably not remember much about her life in Cambridge, but I am certain that she would regret that she cannot recall her memories there every time we talk about our lives in Cambridge.
Paradigm Shifting
As I worked through the summer as an intern, I felt that my sense of career has been changing since day one of my internship.
When I first embarked on going to graduate school, I was hoping to work for a tech company.
I wanted to work for a company that goes after world-class moonshot problems leveraging the power of technology and scale. I hoped that I could work at a place like that; after completing graduate school, I will leverage the experience when I return to the advertising industry.
However, after working at Tulip Interfaces, I was starting to view different horizons.
An industry 4.0 startup like Tulip Interfaces offers solutions for existing factories that have been in business for a long time. They introduce both the software and the hardware, enabling the infrastructure to capture data within the ongoing business to identify bottlenecks. After identifying the problem, the factory improves its productivity furthermore.
As a reality, I realized that problem solving with technology does not necessarily need to reside only in big tech companies. Even infusing technology into existing industries would have a big impact.
In fact, since the existing industries are functioning as viable businesses, wouldn’t it make more sense to leverage the power of technology in these industries?
This realization had a magnitude big enough to steer my career direction later on.
Lastly
After interning for 3 months and enjoying the summer in Cambridge, I finished my job as a product design/marketing intern.
The position at Tulip Interfaces was a position I was lucky enough to end up after going through countless rejections. Still, all of that made the experience invaluable, especially after working with many highly talented co-workers there.
Words cannot describe how thankful I am to my boss, who decided to hire a guy like me. In fact, my colleague/cohort from the MDE program was so impressed by our boss; she decided to work under him for another year.
After going through a great internship experience, I returned to graduate school.
