My Experience as a Web Dev Intern in Japan @ HENNGE!
A no-strings-attached, 6-week technical internship in the heart of Tokyo, Japan.
Hello, my name is Justin Figueroa. I’m a 22-year-old recent graduate from the University of California, Riverside, in the United States and, as of writing, the latest in a growing line of GIP interns at HENNGE.
My goal today is not only to let you know about my experience as an intern for HENNGE but also to try to demystify the process of getting in as well as the challenges of moving to and living in Japan!
What is GIP?
If you’ve read about HENNGE in the past, you may know that the main language spoken at this Japanese company is not Japanese but English! The Global Internship Program (GIP) is a 6-week internship program at HENNGE aimed at gathering engineering talent from all over the world.
For most prospective engineers at HENNGE, the company recommends that you first complete the internship before applying to become a full-time employee at the company. As a result, you’ll find at HENNGE that many members of the engineering team are former GIP interns themselves!
The Recruiting Process
In total, the time between accepting HENNGE’s online challenge and the end of the internship was about 8 months. Your first hurdle to becoming a GIP intern will be the online challenge — a two-part challenge involving first solving a simple program, and second, using math to submit your entry to the company.
I want to make this clear to anyone hoping to be a GIP intern — HENNGE does not expect you to be an expert on all the topics covered in the online challenge. Rather, I believe the online challenge is more of an opportunity for prospective applicants to exercise their problem-solving skills.
What does this mean for you? It means that, even if you struggled to complete the challenge, you should not discount your ability to participate and thrive in GIP. In fact, I would argue that your key to success in both the recruitment and the program is perseverance, a willingness to learn, and just a little bit of luck.
I found that after I spent a few hours understanding the specs of the assignment and had a good night sleep, I was able to figure out the math required and solve the challenge myself. There’s a reason that the challenge has no deadline!
Interviews
About a week after my submission, I received an email from HENNGE with a phone screening with an Engineering Talent Acquisition team member. I’ve heard from others that it took two or three weeks or upwards to hear back from HENNGE. Patience is key!
The interview process had two stages: the first with the recruiter to formally introduce myself to the company, and the second; a technical interview with two engineers from the company.
Do not stress out about these interviews! This stage in the recruitment process gives both you and your interviewers the opportunity to really find your “why,” whether it be the prospect of working and living in Japan or trying to land a job as a software engineer.
In both interviews, I had plenty of time to talk about not only my interest in Japan but also my accomplishments as an up-and-coming CS student. My cover letter talked about my initial experience taking Japanese for a year in college and how that translated into my curiosity about living outside the U.S. and eventually finding out about this opportunity at HENNGE.
The interview with the engineers is not a typical “whiteboard” interview at all! Remember that online challenge? Here, I was able to relay my thought process and research when solving the challenge and later talk about the different projects I worked on throughout college. The departure from the typical coding interview left more room to talk about myself as a person and my accomplishments and working habits (both good and bad) as a software engineer.
Before Japan
About two weeks after the interviews, I finally got my acceptance from the company. For the past four years, GIP has been exclusively remote, with most GIP’ers working in their home country for the duration of the program. However, due to Japan reopening its borders to tourists, I was fortunate to be part of the second batch of interns post-pandemic who would work in the office in Shibuya!
Since GIP would take place after I graduated from university (and I was already planning to go before I applied for GIP), I took the opportunity to visit Japan for vacation before the internship started!
In normal circumstances where you arrive about a week before the internship starts, the company pays for the flight to Japan from your home country — but since I arrived earlier, I picked up the bill for my flight out of the U.S.
Because U.S. citizens can travel to Japan visa-free, the process of acquiring my visa was seamless. This can be a very different process from country to country, but the company takes care of most of the visa work for getting to Japan! GIP is an unpaid internship but offers a very livable stipend, and I found it was enough to cover the rent for my accommodation as well as my living expenses, transportation, and more.
Accommodation was as easy as contacting the share house company HENNGE recommended and picking from the options presented by the leaser. I found myself in the Kitashinjuku share house, right next to Nakano-sakaue Station. HENNGE also took care of my cellular plan while in the internship! I mainly used the cell service provided by the company by tethering it to my own smartphone.
The Internship and My Time in Japan
HENNGE is not your typical Japanese company. With a diverse workforce that represents almost 30 countries and a culture that values change, healthy work-life balance, and inclusivity over hierarchy, the company is fast evolving and constantly poises itself for its next innovation.
HENNGE has an open office layout without assigned seating, and spans 3 different floors in its Shibuya office building. The top floor, 11F, has a beautiful view of the city, and I often found myself working in this area throughout my 6 weeks. However, hands-down my favorite location was what HENNGE calls the “forest”, a green area with lots of large monitors and plants all around.
There are plenty of opportunities to get to know your co-workers. Communication lunches, board game nights, and happy hours are just a few of the events you should expect as someone who works at HENNGE! The company still embraces a flexible, hybrid work week, but there were always people who came into the office each day, and a lot of others tried to come in as much as possible.
I fondly remember how nervous I was on my first day in the office. Meeting my fellow intern, setting up devices, getting to know the CEO and all the teams, trying out the Dr. Pepper machine and going on some lunches with co-workers were all tightly packed in Week 1. All of this quickly set the stage for the rest of the internship.
HENNGE’s GIP was a unique internship for me in that I truly think that I could make meaningful friendships — the company is going through a hiring and growing period, but it still is at the size where you could realistically try to meet everyone, even those outside of the engineering teams.
In fact, I highly encourage you to take all of the opportunities you can to socialize with your co-workers at HENNGE. Attend office events, chat with others about anything, and participate in the endless Slack channels on just about any topic.
Many countries from around the world are represented at HENNGE, so there is never a shortage of fascinating things to talk about or learn. If all else fails and you like Japan, chances are the person you are talking to will do as well and have plenty to say about it!
While I won’t spoil the exact details of the work I did on the internship (although you could probably find a few other blog posts that do), rest assured that your mentors and fellow engineers want you to succeed. At HENNGE, I learned real engineering skills and tech that I’ve gotten to use even after the internship.
I attended daily standups first with mentors and later with one of the development teams I joined to relay my progress. I experienced first-hand the pressure of getting things done in a timely fashion. I got stuck plenty of times, browsed numerous documentations and talked to my peers for advice. I did a (very) cool presentation on the Nintendo DS during the company’s monthly tech talks!
I got my hands dirty with HENNGE’s tech stack and made plenty of mistakes. I learned what HENNGE’s initiatives are and what drives its products. I may have broken a record on our AWS intern costs (sorry!). I definitely came to play on board game nights and was absolutely ruthless (not sorry!). But most importantly, I learned a ton and had a lot of fun doing it.
GIP is also a part of the hiring process for working as an engineer at HENNGE, and plenty of your co-workers are GIP alumni who have done exactly what you are doing and can, therefore, give you plenty of tips on any problems you may encounter.
Between work weeks, I made several day trips all throughout Japan. I saw the beautiful waterfall in Nikko, took the Shinkansen and stayed in a capsule hotel in Kyoto, went to a maid café in Akihabara and even climbed Mt. Fuji before my last week. While you’re here and living in Japan, make the most of your time and discover the country from outside the tourist’s perspective. (Also, tell your co-workers all about your exploits!!!)
Give it a shot
Look, even if you are still skeptical or worried you might not make it, please give GIP a shot.
From someone hopelessly curious about Japan during their high school and university days, to actually having the privilege of traveling alone and living in another country for the first time (in JAPAN!), GIP gave me a very unique experience, one that I think most who come to Japan will never have, and one that I’ll always cherish.
In the seemingly backwards-at-times work culture in this country, HENNGE stands out as a progressive, inclusive, and globally-minded force, with a CEO who aims to gather talent from everywhere — to an extent greater than any other company in Japan.
読んでくれてありがとう！
- Justin
Justin Figueroa, from the United States, interned with the HENNGE Global Internship Program from July 10 to August 18, 2023. This article was written following the GIP internship.
