Remote Internships Can Be Fun
Earlier this year, when I found out that I was accepted to join the remote Global Internship Program, I was excited, but to be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect.
Before applying, I had already browsed through the past intern stories on HENNGE’s Medium, but most of the articles were about the fellow interns’ on-site experience, so it’s kind of difficult to gauge fully what the remote experience was going to be like. I was under the impression that doing the internship remotely would be less of a fulfilling experience because we might miss out on company culture, suffer from social isolation, have a lesser chance of meeting new people, etc.
Fortunately, it turns out that I was underestimating what HENNGE has to offer.
Mentorship
Mentorship is a core part of the internship program. Over the course of 4 weeks, we were given two assignments to solve. The first assignment was about building and deploying a full-stack web application, and the second one was on the management of cloud application infrastructure as code with Terraform. We were assigned mentors that helped guide us through both the assignments. We had daily standup meetings through Zoom where we asked questions relating to the assignment and gave updates on our progress. Despite their busy schedules, our mentors responded promptly to our questions on Slack as well. I felt well supported by our mentors, and I could feel that they genuinely want us, interns, to have a great time learning.
Another thing that I really liked was that the assignment documentation was well written, as well as organized understandably, and is being consistently updated by the mentors. I could tell that the mentors are always looking for ways to improve the assignments, especially when my feedback regarding the assignment documentation was immediately addressed.
Knowledge Sharing
In HENNGE, information doesn’t just trickle down from the top. Anyone can share their new ideas and helpful insights. And the opportunities which allow that to happen are ample.
For example, I had the chance to join one of the Monthly Frontend Discussions, and the discussion on meeting the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for the company projects was something that surprised me. If you are somewhat familiar with typical Japanese websites, you would probably notice that international web accessibility standards are not necessarily being widely adopted here. I think that it’s a step in the right direction towards inclusivity for a Japanese company like HENNGE to take this seriously.
Another form of knowledge sharing within the company is the Monthly Technical Session (MTS).
During MTS, I had the opportunity to talk a bit about my school’s TSUBAME supercomputer. I also enjoyed listening to my colleagues’ presentations which covered a wide range of topics including erasing data, NFT, data fetching in React, and OpenAI Codex. In fact, I actually learned a lot just from the active discussion in the Zoom chat during the session itself.
Having Fun
As much as I enjoyed working on my assignments, I also had a bunch of fun doing stuff outside of work. For example, I got to join the board-game nights (technically virtual-game nights since it’s remote) thrice throughout my internship. We played games like Drawful, Among Us, and Gartic Phone. I discovered that drawing with a mouse requires some skill (which I don’t have), and also I am terrible at lying in Among Us.
Through virtual meetings, we were introduced to colleagues across the engineering division and other teams which helped us get a better understanding of how the company functions inside and out. HENNGE also uses a Slack bot called donut which randomly assigns everyone with 2 colleagues for non-work-related chats each week. We talked about things from the founding history of HENNGE (which included the co-founders having to share a pack of sushi during hard times when the company was just starting out), to the music production Slack channel (and the surprisingly large number of HENNGE members who make music!)
[One thing I should mention is that we weren’t at all pressured to join the casual meetup sessions, but the structure was set up in a way that made it easy for us to opt-in whenever we wanted to 💃]
Final Thoughts
It has been a busy and fruitful 4-week internship despite being stuck at home. I would like to thank everyone in HENNGE who made my brief time here an enjoyable one. Right from day one, I felt very welcomed, and I was able to experience the company culture even when working remotely. I couldn’t have asked for a better internship to spend my summer with.
Jasmine, from Malaysia, is a student at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan. She interned with the HENNGE Global Internship Program from August 2nd to August 27th, 2021.
