Software Engineering Internship Experience in Japan
Hello there, If you are looking at this article, then you are more or less having some interest in working in Japan or finding a software engineering internship. Either way is fine! This article is for you! After reading this article, you will learn about an awesome software engineering internship program in Japan called the Global Internship Program (GIP), which is held by HENNGE, a Japanese SaaS company based in Shibuya, Tokyo. Let’s get started!
First, let’s talk about what you will be doing in the internship program. This internship is designed for people from around the world, so you will be using English and will meet many people from all over the world (There are also many full-time employees coming from many countries). During the internship, you will be working on two or maybe more projects, depending on the length of your batch. For me, my batch was four weeks, so we were working on two projects. The first project was to make a clone of Twitter (or maybe X) based on the technical stacks that the company was using. The second part of the project is to use Terraform and GitHub Actions to learn about the CI/CD workflow.
Personally, I learned a lot from this internship, even though I had several programming experiences before. You will have the chance to develop web apps on the AWS and utilize many of their services like EC2, ECS…etc. During the implementation, you will be working with mentors together, and they will provide you with some help. Usually, you can get some feedback from them and learn about what good practice for programming is, like professionals, which is something hard to learn at school.
The good thing about this internship is that you don’t feel pressured to ask questions; the mentors are always happy to help. I think it is because Hennge’s company culture encourages you to ask questions and not fear failure. So, if you are willing to ask questions, you will get more from this internship.
Next, let’s talk about the benefits of this internship. The internship is onsite, so you will be working in the office located in Shibuya during the internship. I'm not sure how it sounds to Japanese, but as a foreigner, I feel really excited to stay in Japan for a long time. Although this internship is unpaid, cover the round-trip airline tickets from your country to Japan. They provide subsidies for accommodation and also your living costs, and you don’t have to pay much for anything during the internship unless you plan on going to high-end sushi restaurants every day. And during the working day, you will have many chances to have casual lunches with people in the company. It is not like a lunch interview but more casual. And most important, it is free. It was very fun for me to learn about other company members and meet with people.
Also, you could join club events of the company, like board game night, hiking events, etc.… You definitely will not get bored during the internship. And if you have some other plan after work, it is also totally fine to have a personal schedule, which is the thing I like about it.
In the end, I recommend you check this internship out if you would like to have a special internship experience in Japan. You can definitely learn something and enjoy it.
Cheng-Han Wu, originally from Taiwan and living in the United States interned with the HENNGE Global Internship Program from November 13th to December 8th, 2023.
