An Old Proverb from Southeast Asia about HENNGE GIP
Have you ever heard of this old proverb from Southeast Asia, “If you are too lazy to read this, just apply for HENNGE Global Internship Program (GIP) right away since there is literally nothing to lose, only so much to potentially gain.”?
Well, you might not have heard it before because I just made that up. Here’s the full story.
One summer break while lazing around after the third internship of my entire life had just ended, I woke up. Then, I started playing around 8 games of DotA II for the day. Then, I read some manga chapters to help me fall asleep. Then, there were so many repeatable thens for weeks. And finally, a thought crossed in my mind, “Holy smokes. What am I doing with my life?”
After I finished reading Oyasumi Punpun, I thought that life in Japan might be interesting.
During the winter break of mid-December 2019, I applied to HENNGE through their portal by solving an admission challenge that you should be able to finish on average in a day. About 7 weeks later, I got invited to an online interview, and to my surprise, one of the interviewers was a Bandung Institute of Technology graduate—just like what I would be in 5 months (amen to that).
Also to my surprise, I got accepted.
And then, after four weeks filled with eventful events, today will be the last day of this internship. ‘Twas a fun journey. That’s all from me, catch you later!
… or not. “What is the internship about?” you may ask.
And today might not be my last day of the internship, either. Because the internship itself had basically two parts: (1) the training part and (2) the working part. I just finished the training part, where you can expect to learn about application development from scratch using HENNGE tech-stacks and standards.
DISCLAIMER: I initially planned to do the internship in May 2020. But, because of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, I asked the Global Talent Marketing (GTM) team of HENNGE to postpone the internship due to having a mandatory 10-week internship requirement for the semester. And I was hoping that in January 2021, COVID-19 would end, so I could experience this to the fullest.
The GTM team was very responsive and helpful, though! Shout out to Belle, Yuri, and Sean. They promised us that the working part would be available for us in the future after the Covid-19 restrictions are lifted, should we choose to participate again, which will be held on-site in HENNGE Shibuya office, Tokyo, Japan.
Training Part
There were 3 options (Flask-Redis, aiohttp-DynamoDB, and Go-Redis) for the first assignment of the training part, and I chose Python with Flask because I had experience tinkering with Flask for my side projects. I thought that would learning something entirely new like aiohttp or Golang might make me struggle with it because I was also doing my thesis on the side.
The first three weeks were for the first assignment, i.e. full-stack application development. I learned so much in coding practices even when I had dabbled in Flask application development before. Designing the database using Redis and the dockerization also served as nice challenges for this assignment. Shout out to my mentors and teachers, Hayashi-san, Bumi, and Jonas!
The fourth week was for the second assignment, which was writing your infrastructure as code (IaC) using Terraform and Amazon Web Service (AWS). I had never really touched DevOps before, so this assignment was quite challenging — and frustrating because in some parts I could not figure out where things went wrong. But then, our mentors Bagus and Michelle were really helpful and considerate. They always gave us feedback every day during our daily meetings.
After the day ended, we (the interns) had to report on the progress we made during that day, and the mentors usually gave us an “おつかれ” (otsukare, meaning good job!) and some dancing stickers.
That’s It?
Nope, because HENNGE GIP is one of the most unique internships that I’ve ever had. They didn’t just give us tasks and give us pointers in that tasks. HENNGE also tried its best to make us interns experience the whole experience of an employee at HENNGE, with all of its culture and activities.
Did I mention that I got a package on my first day of the internship, even though I was located in Indonesia? It even included a handwritten letter from Belle.
Monthly Technical Session (MTS)
Every month, HENNGE holds an MTS where HENNGE members share their thoughts on anything, be it technical or non-technical (even though it has “technical” in its name). I and the other three interns were given an opportunity to take part in four of its January talks as speakers. There were 7 talks, each had 10 to 15 minutes in duration. The MTS ended with a beer bash where everyone greeted each other and could come or leave as they liked.
GIP Lunches
Three times a week, I had the chance to eat lunch together with two other HENNGE employees. I expected those to be really awkward because it was online and each session lasted for about an hour. Turned out it never did- somehow we could keep the conversations going on and on — I got a lot of anime or film recommendations, mind games such as chess and poker, life experiences that can be learned from, mechanical keyboards (which I started liking just recently), people who also had spinal disc problems, what certain Tagalog phrases actually means in the Philippines, and a lot more.
I couldn’t find fellow DotA II players (Sonam played Gyrocopter in DotA I), though, until I met Yui-san — one in charge of HR member’s husband. Yeah, even I got a chance to talk to him.
“Hello, Good Morning” and Team Intro Meetings
Every morning (or three times a week in the last two weeks), we interns got the chance to learn more about the different teams at HENNGE. They gave us a short introduction and answered all of our questions. There were also those “Hello, Good Morning” meetings where people could randomly join and talk about random things. It could be a little awkward having a lot of people in a room though, so sometimes the meeting was broken into rooms, or we played a “2 truths 1 lie” game to get to know more about each other.
All in all, those were pretty nice short greetings to start your day.
Board Game Night
Every Wednesday night, Sean (the Third—as he referred himself by his Slack nickname) hosted board game night that everyone could join. I had the chance to join in sessions where we played skribbl.io, winning once in the session. All of the other sessions were almost won entirely by Kenny. I had a GIP lunch with him days before. As he was a mechanical keyboard enthusiast, I considered the suspicion that it was perhaps because of Kenny’s mechanical keyboard that he could type faster than the rest of us.
… or perhaps it was not, and he was just a pro.
Other Stuff
When I said that things might go a little awkward, I really meant it. I was afraid that I would not be able to keep up with the vibe, but then the people were very welcoming and friendly. We once had a talk with Ogura-san, the CEO, to learn more about the company and its values. To our surprise, Ogura-san also joined one of the “Hello, Good Morning” meetings and took notes when Doi-san gave us his manga of the year recommendations.
Those small things mattered quite a lot to me.
When Jonas discovered a “fun little feature” in Python by discussing hashables with me, when Pete gave me career advice based on his life experience when Belle asked me if I was okay and reassured me that I can always tell her the day after I was sick when Michelle pinpointed a “gotcha” in my final speech that made me kinda flustered, when I had a little Slack chat with Bagus in the very last hour, or when I told Laine and Yui-san that I had only ever cooked instant noodles and they told me that it was not cooking.
おつかれ, those times were fun. Thank you very much.
One of the coding principles that I talked about in the MTS was “Don’t Repeat Yourself”. But then, I can’t really end the story without violating that exact rule. So here we go:
And then, after four weeks filled with eventful events, today will be the last day of this internship. ’Twas a fun journey. That’s all from me, catch you later!
Asif Hummam Rais is an Indonesian studying at Bandung Institute of Technology. Asif took part as one of the four interns of HENNGE Global Internship Program for the first batch of 2021 that was held remotely from January 18th–February 12th, 2021.
