Reflecting on my Remote Data Science Internship
When you think of interning at an innovative tech company like IBM, it is hard to not envision working in a big campus, working side-by-side your team on innovative projects, or just having a great time meeting everyone at company happy hours. While these were some of the thoughts I had signing up for a 12-month internship in December 2019, the year ahead did not exactly line-up. As we know a little too well, 2020 was a crazy year. While many of my friends back at school were completing their final year through their laptops and on Zoom, I was able to spend the year at home working as a Cognitive Software Developer Intern in the Machine Learning Hub and Data Science Elite Team (DSE). Though initially worried about missing out on experiences taking a whole year off doing an internship, this turned out to be one of the best decisions in my life so far. Even through lockdown and the pandemic, IBM honoured my internship contract and proceeded to bring me onto the team.
Starting in May 2020, I was nervous and excited for my first day. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect especially conducting all of my first meetings over WebEx and not meeting anyone face-to-face. Similar to other employees and students everywhere, I figured that this would be temporary and within a few months I would be in office, reaping the benefits of working in the IBM Canada Lab. Well, that is not how the story goes. Instead, I was greeted virtually by the Senior Data Scientist on the team, Eric, who would prove to be an amazing supervisor and mentor. I would spend the first few weeks working through various on-boarding trainings, attending learning sessions and Think 2020, as well as meeting my new team.
Typically as an intern, it is difficult to get fully integrated and work as if you were a full-time employee. I assumed I would be taking on the typical tedious tasks that others didn’t want to do, or some project just to keep me busy. To my surprise, this was definitely not the case. Instead I was immediately brought on and treated as a full-time employee, jumping on projects that I had never experienced before and pushing me to learn things everyday. Coming out of my 3rd year in Computer Engineering and joining a team of Data Scientists, I did not have the skillset to take on all these big tasks and provide meaningful contributions right away. Never taking a data science class in the past, I felt a bit of impostor syndrome kicking in. But as I soon learned, it is not what you come into the job with, but how you can adapt and learn throughout the experience. Within the first month, my team brought me on to speak on topics that I had just learned about, to a wide group of Data Science professionals and others that had much more experience than I did. While I was trying to figure out why they would let the intern with one month of experience talk, it proved to be both a great motivation to learn about new topics and empowering to see how much my team trusted me already.
Over the next few months, I ended up working on an exciting project spun out of a hackathon idea in a team called Area631. Area631 is IBM’s internal start-up incubator, standing for 6 team members, 3 months and 1 innovative idea. This is where new ideas grow and build into hopefully becoming new product offerings. Since entrepreneurship was always something I wanted to involve myself in, I couldn’t have been more excited. It was a lot of work ahead, but also very fun and exciting to work with new technologies and demo every other week to upper management in the Data and AI portfolio (something I never saw coming!). The craziest part of these three months was the amount I learned in that timeframe, from learning new languages and frameworks like Django, React Native and Swift, to being able to put together informative pitches and demos to showcase our product.
On top of that experience, I worked on various engagements and projects that would help expand my skillset and provide meaningful contributions to IBM partners. I was able to help build an Industry Accelerator, contribute to Data Science engagements, and even compete in an IBM hackathon with other interns, letting me push my work aside for a few days to build something addressing a world issue — I chose climate change. Wrapping up the experience, I was able to work on a production-level dashboard for stakeholders across DSE and IBM, helping me learn how to code effectively and efficiently into a live application used everyday.
While you might be thinking that this only covers the highlights of my time at IBM, I can honestly tell you that I couldn’t have asked for a better experience over just 12 months. While I envisioned showing up in the office and grabbing coffees with my colleagues, I ended up not going into the office a single day throughout my internship. Even though there were some days I wish I was able to leave my house and work in the office, each day brought new problems to solve and things to learn, albeit remotely. Out of my time at IBM, some of the best things I will remember is their dedication to constantly learn, and the flexibility in the amount of projects I was able to contribute to in just 12 months. And the biggest thing I will miss will be my team. My team provided an amazing atmosphere: setting up engaging learning sessions almost every week, bi-weekly chats, and of course — virtual happy hours. They continued to push me to take on projects out of my comfort zone, allowing me to grow in just a short period.
To anyone starting a new job remotely, take this as an opportunity. For me, it allowed me to do all these things and work with IBMers all across the United States and Canada. Use the time you saved from commuting to learn new things, take more breaks, and spend more time with family. Take every chance to connect with your co-workers, even if its not face-to-face and finally, use every opportunity to make as much impact as possible.
