No, Really. HENNGE’s Global Internship Program is Actually That Good.
I found out about HENNGE and their Global Internship Program through my college’s job aggregator and my desire to work in Tokyo for a summer. It seemed too good to be true: pass a coding challenge, pass an interview, and spend six weeks working in one of the most amazing cities in the world and I don’t have to learn fluent Japanese? I assumed, reasonably, that it was a complex organ harvesting scheme. There’s a joke in here somewhere about how Japan stole my heart while I’m here (but let me be perfectly clear that there has been no organ harvesting in experience here).
I thought that there might be something wrong partly because of how many positive Medium articles I found from their former GIP interns. Turns out one of the assignments you’ll have is to write up an article on your experience and that HENNGE gives you a lot of positive experiences to write about. I’ll be brutally honest and it’ll sound a lot like praise just because my experiences were honestly great.
Boring technical details
So. Let’s get this out of the way because it would have been useful for me but I doubt most readers want to see it. The office is in downtown Shibuya, a tech-heavy and fast-paced district in Tokyo. Restaurants, karaoke, arcades, shops, it’s all nearby and a lot of it’s between you and the main subway station nearby. Speaking of, you should get used to using it because the subway system in Japan is amazing and is the most convenient and cheapest way to get around. I thought I’d try and find a cheap bike and use that but the allure of air-conditioned trains to work (and the ability to play phone games on the way) proved too strong for that idea. While HENNGE doesn’t directly help you find lodging for the summer, they recommend Sakura House for short-term rentals.
Things I thought would be issues but weren’t
Japanese culture has a lot of rules about politeness and hierarchy that I was worried about. I didn’t need to be! HENNGE has traditional elements but understands if you don’t share those traditions. The politeness you’d have at a workplace in any country is enough to get by. The sea of salarymen and women in identical dark suits and white shirts are absent at HENNGE, with people dressed in everything from shorts and tee-shirts to dress shirts and slacks to skirts to dresses to (in the case of the CEO) yukata!
Even though the company sounds perfect, the work visa application process sounds like a pain... the process definitely is but that’s not relevant! It is a short working period (you’re only allowed to be in Japan for 90 days as a US citizen anyway), and you aren’t technically working for pay. There is a living expense stipend to cover costs while you’re here, but as it’s unpaid you don’t have to worry about visa hassles.
Pros and Cons
On the plus side, all of the interns are required to do a simple project using Flask and Redis for the first couple weeks, followed by a week with working with AWS tools. This helps to even out any differences in background.
The main minus side is that the pay isn’t as high as I could have found in the US for an internship. That said, none of those companies are in Tokyo and allow me to have an amazing vacation beforehand, so your mileage may vary.
Ultimately my time at HENNGE was amazing. From the other interns to my coworkers to the work to the skyline, every aspect of the work and play was amazing.
Jonathan Gaul is a graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA. He interned at HENNGE Global Internship Program from July 1st to August 9th, 2019.
