My Internship Experience at Postmates
Intro
Hey! I’m Chris, and I was an intern at Postmates on the Operations Technology team from September — December of 2018. For some background, I’m a 4th-year Computer Science student from the University of Waterloo, and I was one of the first two interns ever at Postmates. This was the sixth and final internship that I completed through Waterloo’s co-op program, so I had a bit of experience with other companies and had a good idea about what I did and did not like about being an intern.
The First Week
When I learned that I was going to be one of the first interns, I was excited to have the chance to shape the program and give feedback on what could be done better, and what to do more of. That being said, the onboarding process was by far the smoothest and most efficient of any internship I’ve done. We spent the first two days meeting with people from all aspects of the Operations Technology org, including engineers familiar with the backend system, engineers familiar with the frontend system, product managers, and analysts. In these meetings, they each went on a deep dive of their section to give us a real understanding of how everything works and how it all works together. This gave us a ton of insight into the org and its products, allowing us to ship code within the first week.
My Experience as an Intern
A lot of companies, including ones that I’ve previously interned at, like to give us an intern project to work on and complete by the end of the term. At Postmates, this was as far from the case as possible. On my second day there, I was directly put into the Q4 plan, and expected to complete real, committed tasks throughout the term. So, when people ask about my internship experience at Postmates, I tell them that I pretty much forgot that I was an intern. I worked directly with other engineers from both my team and others to clarify/get clarifications on projects, worked with product managers to scope out future project requirements, and even worked with analysts to follow up on shipped projects to track the impact. I even got to help onboard new full-time hires when I was confident enough with my knowledge of the system. Postmates didn’t hire interns because they had some projects that no one else wanted to do, they hired us to do and ship real work important to the success of the team and the company.
What I Actually Worked On
Coming into the internship, I mentioned that I was mainly interested in backend work. Most of the work I did throughout the term was on or related to the automated refund system. This system tries to automate user issue resolution as much as possible. I worked on everything from adding completely new automations, to modifying existing ones, and giving buyers more insight on how their issue was resolved. This was a really cool system to work on because it allowed me to work with lots of different tools and technologies including Python Django, Docker, Kubernetes, Postgres, React, Node, and a ton more. The entire process of working on a project was also interesting and much different from my previous internships. I was responsible for the project from start to finish. I worked with the product side to get requirements and specs, wrote an RFC (request for comments) for each feature, and measured impact before and after release. Being a part of the entire lifecycle was an eye-opening experience to how the team/company operates, and it allowed me to learn who to go to and when to ask for help to get things done quickly and efficiently. There was a huge focus on measuring impact of a feature release. Following up with analysts just days, and even weeks after a release was really useful when determining its success, and allowed us to be proud of and share our impact with the rest of the org.
Events, Events, and more Events
When I got added to the Postmates Events calendar, I was shocked. There were multiple, interesting events every week which, as an intern, I definitely took advantage of. There was a spicy ramen eating competition, a huge Oktoberfest party, scary movie night every week in October, wine and cheese night every other week, and many, many more. One event that I really enjoyed was the biweekly all-hands. It wasn’t just an all-hands where Bastian would come up and give an update on what’s going on, but different orgs would have a chance to host it each week and give more insight into what they’re working on. Sometimes, external guests would be invited to come speak too, which was really interesting.
The End and Future
Once my internship finished at the end of December, I flew back home to Waterloo to finish up with school. I learned a lot while at Postmates about efficient software engineering processes, how a fast-moving startup operates, good code design and standards, and what the best food trucks in SF are, all of which will be very helpful in my future career. I really enjoyed being part of the pilot intern program at Postmates, and look forward to starting full-time after I graduate later this year!
Postmates Operations Technology is now hiring Software Engineering Interns all year round. Apply here today!
