A Day in the Life of a Backend Engineering Intern

By: Biruk Mengistu

My experience as a virtual-first intern

When I began my internship at Thumbtack, I had a vague idea of what to expect out of a virtual-first internship. Looking back, most of my expectations were met while others were surpassed completely. My experience at Thumbtack has been one of constant learning, cooperation, and even compromise. The virtual-first (not virtual-only) model that Thumbtack embraces is one of the best I’ve experienced. I’ve found that it maximizes and reinforces the pros of virtual work. While it’s usually difficult to make strong connections with coworkers in virtual positions, my experience has been quite the opposite. I’ve made great friends with people on my team and those across the company; and early in my internship, I attended a quarterly offsite that played a significant role in making me feel welcomed.

Working virtually with people in different time zones was one thing I thought would be problematic but it ended up working just fine thanks to communication and compromise. Throughout my three-month internship, we moved around meetings a few times to make sure they worked for everyone on the team. While our time zones varied by up to three hours, activities that required everyone to be present only took place during times when everyone’s working hours overlapped, which was great.

Working on the Home Guidance team

As a Backend Engineering Intern on the Home Guidance team, some of my responsibilities included: working with my mentor on my intern project; reading documentation; browsing the codebase to get a good understanding of what’s going on; attending meetings to discuss recent bugs, blockers and other updates; and learning to write production-ready code that is well-tested, reliable and performant.

The project I worked on for the first half of my internship was a recommendation analysis tool that other engineers and cross-functional teams could use to improve and analyze what recommendations are served to the end user by adjusting certain variables. This was one project that I was really excited to take on because it was practical, offered actual utility to employees and touched on a wide range of concepts. The project pushed me to do backend work and frontend work; as I worked on both the visual and logic aspects of the tool. This helped me understand Thumbtack’s infrastructure from end to end and helped to reinforce my interest in backend work.

In addition to this project, I also helped create a way for other engineers to fetch dynamic statistical data to be used on various pages instead of an old, more static approach. I also took part in transitioning an old service and all its usage over to a new one. A lot of the projects that I took part in felt really meaningful and useful, further encouraging me to take on more responsibility and find pride and satisfaction in the work I do.

A typical workday at Thumbtack

While every day looks different, this is what my average day as an engineering intern looked like:

8:00 am — 9:00 am: Get ready for the day

This is usually when I get up, workout, shower and freshen up to get the day started. This is also when I grab some breakfast or a snack and head back to my room.

9:00 am — 9:30 am: Check emails and eat breakfast

Around this time, I check and reply to emails and slack messages. This is also when I check my calendar and get an idea of what I’ll be doing for the day or what meetings I might need to attend.

9:30 am — 10:00 am: Do code reviews / meet with my mentor

At this time, I usually check to see if anyone has requested/cc’ed me in a code review. I’ll usually have a few of these requests. I then check to see if anyone has left comments on my code reviews and have a discussion with them there. Sometimes, this is when I’ll also have a check-in with my mentor or just sync and discuss any roadblocks.

10:00 am — 12:30 pm: Focus hours

Around this time is when I get a good amount of coding done. This might involve writing new code or debugging code that I wrote the previous day. Other times, I’ll spend a good portion of this time thinking about how to approach a given problem by looking through the codebase and seeing past examples of how certain things are done and/or reading documentation. If I have any questions or roadblocks while doing this, I usually keep note of them and ask them during our standup meeting.

12:30 pm — 1:00 pm: Standup Meeting

During our standup meeting, our team will usually take a few minutes just casually talking with people in the room and catching up until everyone joins. After everyone joins, we go over what we have been working on for the past day, what we plan to work on for the day, and discuss any blockers we may have. Sometimes, I will stay on the call with someone else to ask any questions or get help getting unstuck on something after the call, but I’m usually done with this by around 1 pm.

1:00 pm — 1:30 pm: Lunch

I usually get takeout for lunch to save time.

1:30 pm — 3:30 pm: Get more work done

At this point in the day, I focus on getting more work done. By this time, I’ve typically overcome any roadblocks, so I’m most productive at this time. I usually write unit tests, add new functionality and figure out ways to make various components interact.

3:30 pm — 4:00 pm: Events

Around this time, there are usually events going on. There may be company-wide events such as All-Thumbs or more team-oriented ones — like my team’s weekly engineering and non-engineering meetings. There are even “ask me anything” events where interns get to connect with our CEO (which I think is incredible). Other times, interns have fun events to connect and get to know one another better.

4:00 pm — 5:30 pm Get more work done

At this time, I’ll usually get more work done that I haven’t had the chance to do yet, or keep notes of things that I’m stuck on or need to continue to work on the next day. As I start to wind down for the day, I’ll have some casual, fun conversations with teammates or complete more code reviews.

My time at Thumbtack

Looking back at the last 3 months of my internship, I have to say that I am very happy with my time here. I never really felt like “the intern.” Instead, I felt like a valued member of the team that was appreciated and had value. I took on lots of responsibility, learned to not be scared to ask for help and made a ton of friends and connections along the way. I’ve learned many tangible and intangible skills that will help me in my professional career, and feel that I’m well on my way to becoming an even more successful engineer.

Interested in joining Thumbtack? Visit thumbtack.com/careers to learn more about open roles and Summer 2023 internship opportunities!