A typical day in the life of a Microsoft Intern
written by Pravandan Chand
The internship is well-paced for a college student and you have ample time for both completing the project assigned to you and chilling out.
This is what a day as a Microsoft intern looks like:
7.30 AM — Being a morning person, I wake up early, freshen up and go downstairs to the restaurant to have breakfast.
Microsoft provides both buses and cabs for interns. The bus usually leaves for the office at around 9 A.M. But since I like some quiet time in the morning, I take a cab to the campus.
Here is a glimpse of the beautiful campus of Microsoft IDC, Hyderabad.
8.15 AM — After arriving at the campus, I go straight to my desk to put down my stuff, open my PC ( P.S — I never switch it off 😅), look at unread emails or messages on Microsoft Teams and then respond to them.
9 AM — I think morning is a good time to focus on the more crucial tasks because you generally don’t have other things going on in your head then. So if there is any important work left behind from the day before I like to do that to have a good start to the day.
10 AM — By this time, I feel the need for a caffeine push. The pantries are well stocked with coffee, tea, cold drinks, soups, supplements, etc.
But I prefer chai to coffee, so I visit the cafe downstairs and have a nice cup of masala chai while watching cricket highlights (Yeah, it was World Cup time 😛).
11 AM — I’m back at my desk. By this time most of the fellow interns and the other people arrived, so I walk over to someone’s desk to chat about a thing or two.
12 Noon — 1 PM — It’s going good, I am on track to finish today’s tasks or most of them anyway. More often than not, I plug my headphones into the system as it lets me concentrate better.
1 PM — Time for lunch. I usually ping my friends on Microsoft Teams to plan for lunch or go with my team. But the dilemma always remains the same — “kya khana hain?” Thanks to all the available food options — Chinese, North Indian, South Indian, Biryani and Salad(for those who are watching calories).
After some tough calls (yeah choosing what you eat comes under tough calls 😅), we usually sit in the balcony to eat quietly and enjoy the view, just like this one —
Over lunch, we discussed random stuff ranging from “ kal isko kyun batting ke liye pehle bhej diya” to college gossips😉.
If we are not yet back at the desk, some of us stop by to play carrom or pool, depending on the availability, but usually, it’s carrom (because well, carrom was always free and everyone knows this game).
2.30 PM — I’m back at my desk — but not before picking up some fresh fruits from the pantry. (I try to eat healthy stuff too.) I’m usually busy reading some developer blogs or watching keynotes.
3 PM — You have a weekly/daily scrum meeting to attend. I can tell you these are the best meetings ever: rather than the tense environment usually associated with meetings, there’s a pretty relaxed air here as we discuss current tasks and decisions to be taken regarding design, etc.
Also if someone is blocked on something, either a bug or something else, other people help him/her to get unblocked so that things can move on.
4 PM — Back to my desk, but not before picking up another cup of Chai, because by this time the caffeine rush is certainly required.
It’s mostly debugging now because the feature you coded this morning has some cases left to be taken care of, which could give rise to errors.
5 PM — Now this is the time to get some free snacks in the cafe, we usually round up the guys and go together.
Some days, we have a party😉, so we leave around this time.
6 PM — Back at the desk, after winning another game of carrom😋. Now it’s mostly testing out the thing you’ve built, fixing the errors that come and making sure you have a stable code.
8 PM — Some more cups of coffee, some more games played, I wait till this time to leave since I take the shuttle back to the hotel and there isn’t much traffic on Hyderabad roads around this time either.
9 PM — Back at the hotel, you now have the liberty to order your own dinner(courtesy to Swiggy and Zomato) and then watch it over some random stuff on TV.
Or I go out to have dinner, which is mostly on weekends.
11 PM — It’s the end of a long and eventful day. I’m off to bed to get some good 8 hours of sleep so that I can begin the next day full of energy.
Although I believe I have probably made you anxious with my schedule, you need to remember that what’s more important out there is to build connections, to interact with all the new people you come across and to share with each other all your wonderful stories. This is one hell of an opportunity to build up your network and understand the corporate world.
Everyone is awesome out there, everyone’s helpful and nobody will say no to clear your doubts. You’ll learn to work in a team, listen out to different people and get to know their ideas. Everyone’s feedback matters, consider it. Stick to this formula and the result will be fruitful.
