My Imgur Experience
My internship at Imgur enabled me to make an impact on a large scale, explore new areas of interest, and aid in propelling my personal development. My name is Brendan Nofs and I’m a senior computer science major at Miami University (in Ohio). For my last semester of college, I’ve had the opportunity to live and work in San Francisco while I finish up classes to graduate.
First I want to talk about how I was able to make a large impact, specifically as an intern. Starting my internship, I was placed on the community engineering team — their main function is to build tools for admins to moderate content on the platform and keep the community safe. My main project was for April Fools’ Day, which if you’re not familiar, is a big deal for Imgur. For 2019, we introduced a ‘Meh Vote’ button to every post, in addition to the current up and down votes — an option to select when you are “plainly whelmed” by a post. I was responsible for developing this feature on our desktop platform, where it was deployed and seen by roughly 2 million users. You heard that right. I, as a 21-year-old college kid, developed a feature that was seen by 2 million people. It was exciting to see all the awesome feedback as the day progressed, and an amazing experience at such an early stage in my career.
After the April Fool’s Day project ended, I met with my manager to discuss options for my second project. Earlier on, I had mentioned I was interested in Product Management so I was very excited to hear that Imgur was willing to move me to the product management team for my final project. For the remainder of my internship, my project consisted of analyzing current market trends, creating financial models, and predicting future revenue streams which were very different than my previous role as a full stack developer. It was refreshing to have the flexibility to move around and try out new things, and in this case, something I am very interested in. I also really liked how everyone I talked too was very supportive during my transition into this new role.
Concluding my internship, I got the chance to pitch a proposal to the Imgur leadership team of what I’d been working on, and give my recommendation for how I think the company should progress or transition in the future. Again, not an opportunity that every intern gets, especially when compared to the experience at a larger company where your voice often gets lost. This is a great example of something I could not have known about when accepting the position but served as an incredible bonus due to the smaller company size and open work culture. These are exactly the type of experiences that are instrumental in progressing my personal and career development, specifically at a young age.
I hope this gives you a small taste of what it’s like to work at Imgur, as well as some of the projects and opportunities they give to their interns. I couldn’t be happier with the amount of experience I’ve gained during my time at Imgur, which has played a major role in developing my professional confidence as I move forward in my career.
