Getting Mind-blown at HENNGE Global Internship Program
I was looking for an internship during my summer holiday as a university student in Japan when I stumbled upon HENNGE GIP (Global Internship Program). At first, I thought it would be just another typical internship, but boy oh boy, I was so wrong!
About Myself For a Bit
Hello, readers! Let me first start this article by giving a short introduction about myself. My name is Nicholaus Danispadmanaba Yosodipuro. I know it is a long name so you can call me Nico instead. I am originally from Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia. Regarding my education, I went to Bandung Institute of Technology to obtain my Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems and Technology. Afterward, as of the writing of this article, I am currently studying for my Master’s degree in Information Science and Technology at The University of Tokyo.
I’ve been a huge fan of Japanese popular culture, especially anime, manga, and J-pop. Thus, coming to Japan and studying here in the first place has been like a dream coming true for me. Since I have achieved one of my life goals of studying in Japan, I reckoned that I needed to take things further by working there. And that’s how I got into the HENNGE Global Internship Program, or HENNGE GIP.
Getting into HENNGE GIP
I first noticed the existence of this program when HENNGE opened a booth for it during a career fair at my undergraduate university. I was still not confident enough with my software engineering abilities, so I didn’t try to apply for HENNGE GIP back then. Despite that, the name HENNGE somehow always stuck in my head, probably because their booth was memorable.
Fast forward a few years, and now I was looking for a summer internship in Japan, especially since I had already been there. I was suddenly reminded of HENNGE when I saw a LinkedIn job recommendation about HENNGE GIP. From there, I visited the HENNGE GIP website and decided to go through the selection process. The selection itself is comprised of two stages: coding test and interview.
For the coding test, the process is both straightforward and unique. They gave me a coding problem, and then I needed to submit the code using a method I will not spoil any further. The actual coding problem itself is not that complicated, in my opinion, but it tests one’s fundamentals and ability to research things. By the way, there is no time limit on the coding test, so it is quite convenient (it took me around 3–4 hours to finish the whole process).
For the interview, like any other good internship program, I was initially interviewed by HR (it’s called Engineering Talent Acquisition in HENNGE) and then by the engineers. The interviewers were very chill, and it felt more like a casual chat to get to know each other. I was asked about what I was studying then, my past experiences, and my plans after graduation. In turn, I also asked many questions regarding the company and what was expected from an intern.
Fortunately, I was able to pass the whole selection process. Moreover, since I was already in Japan, I was allowed to come directly to the Shibuya HQ office whenever I saw fit. In this case, I decided to go to the office three days per week.
What About the Actual Internship Itself?
Now, let’s get to the fun part! As for the internship, we were asked to finish two assignments: develop a full-stack web application and deploy it using Terraform. The first assignment required us to use the following tools:
- Python with Flask for the API back end
- Redis for the database
- Pytest for unit testing
- AWS EC2 for the preliminary deployment
As for building the front end of the application, we were given liberties to choose our preferred frameworks/libraries (I chose to use native Javascript, HTML with WebComponent, along with CSS Bootstrap). The time given to finish this first assignment was pretty tight, which was around 2 weeks. To make matters worse, I hadn’t built a web application since I graduated from my undergraduate university, so my skill in this regard was quite rusty.
Fortunately, each intern was assigned a personal mentor who helped teach us about best practices in web development. Moreover, they would also review our codes using the GitHub Pull Request feature, so any issues in our code would be quickly pointed out. We could even add other full-time members of HENNGE as our code reviewers to get an even wider perspective.
Every morning, a stand-up meeting with all the mentors and interns was held. The purpose of the meeting is to report our progress and to discuss any issues we might have with the assignment. Aside from those things, I also frequently used this meeting as a way to discuss possible approaches that I planned to use to build certain features.
At the end of the first assignment, we had to demonstrate our application to the mentors and other interns. In this demonstration, we were also encouraged to explain the methods that we used to implement the features, how we organized our codes and things that we could do to improve our codes. This assignment is great in getting one used to web application best practices code conventions, and preventing possible vulnerabilities in our application.
Right after the first assignment was finished, we were given the second assignment, which was to deploy our web application on multiple AWS services using Terraform. Some of the AWS services that must be included in our deployment scheme are AWS Elastic Container Registry, AWS Elastic Container Service, AWS Elasticache, AWS VPC, AWS Elastic Load Balancer, and many more. We were given around one week to finish this task.
The second assignment was more daunting for me because I had no experience with Terraform beforehand. Thankfully, there were DevOps mentors assigned to us who were ready to come to our rescue. I was helped by them several times when I was stuck in an issue that I couldn’t wrap my head around.
Like the first assignment, at the end of the second one, we also needed to demonstrate our Terraform-deployed web application. Since the main aim of this assignment is deployment, the demonstration was more focused on how we deployed our application and how we configured each of the AWS services using Terraform. If you’re new to Terraform like me or to infrastructure-as-code in general, you might find this assignment greatly insightful and intriguing.
More Than Just An Internship
What I also love about HENNGE is how they emphasize both work-life balance and positive interaction with other members of HENNGE. Regarding work-life balance, we were always told that we could not work after 7 pm (the work hour is from 10 a.m. — 7 p.m.). This surprised me because I heard plenty of rumors that Japanese companies tend to encourage their employees to do overtime work. So, it is great that HENNGE strives to be different compared to typical Japanese companies.
During the internship, we were also introduced to the various teams in HENNGE. Not only teams that are part of the engineering division (called Cloud Product Development Division) but also teams from other divisions, such as ETA and Customer Success. We even got to talk with Ogura-san, the CEO and founder of HENNGE himself! In the session with Ogura-san, he explained to us the history of HENNGE and how its history led to its current business model. All of these events/sessions were great because we could understand how HENNGE operates in the big picture.
We were also encouraged to join other activities to interact with full-time members of HENNGE outside of work. One such memorable activity is GIP Lunch, where I got to have lunch with other full-time members of HENNGE. Here, I was introduced to lots of good restaurants around Shibuya by them. It was really fun to talk with them and to get to know them more. Not to mention that HENNGE fully pays for the lunch!
There are also other memorable activities that I joined. On Boardgame Night, we could literally play board games with the full-time members. On Game Night, we could play video games with them. On Fun-Donuts, we got randomly grouped with other full-time members to converse with them via Zoom meeting.
There were also two special events that I was lucky to join, which were the Monthly Technical Session (MTS) and the International Day of Peace. During the MTS, volunteering full-time members of HENNGE and the interns were asked to present something technical. For this, I decided to present my Master’s research, which is about a simulator for cooperative autonomous driving.
As for the International Day of Peace, the aim is to promote peace (especially relevant at the time of the writing of this article) by making one realize that one is not so different from others, regardless of nationality and ethnicity. For this purpose, food from the origin countries of the members of HENNGE is served and shared. Here, I was able to learn about the cuisine and by extension, the culture, of various countries.
Conclusion
HENNGE GIP was a mind-blowing experience because not only was I able to learn the technical things, but also the importance of creating and maintaining a healthy connection with my colleagues. In terms of technical abilities, I experienced first-hand the end-to-end cycle of software development, starting from its development to its production-ready deployment. As for the connection with colleagues, I was really glad to know more about the full-time members of HENNGE personally and to have fun with them!
Nicholaus Danispadmanaba Yosodipuro graduated from the Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia. He is currently studying at the University of Tokyo, Japan. He interned with the HENNGE Global Internship Program from September 12 to October 7, 2022.
