Summer of at ‘19 Intuit ;)
Intuit India has been ranked as one of the best places to work in India. In 2017 it was at #1 and in 2018 and 2019 it was at #2.
This summer I interned at Intuit India and truly felt why it has been given this status.
I began my internship on 6th May ’19 along with 11 other interns. We were the first batch.
Airport Pickups
Intuit had made all the arrangements for the travel and Airport pickups for us so that we could have a hassle-free journey to our temporary abodes. 😜
I arrived at Bengaluru airport on the night of 5th May and saw a man standing with a placard with my name written on it.
On day-0 only, Intuit had created an impression on me. 😄
The Stay
We were provided with a 7 day stay at Nagarjuna Suits. The stay was great. On the last day of the stay, we also made full use of the swimming pool there. 😛
Shifting to a local PG after such an awesome stay seemed like a huge downfall. Haha!
I would request Intuit India to increase the stay for the future interns. 😛
Day-1
The day-1 began by handing us all with our badges and locker keys. After that, we were taken to a big room where we had an ice breaker session. I won’t describe the session to keep it a surprise for incoming interns. But, I assure you, it will be fun.
Later we had many sessions (too many LOL) related to the work which is done at Intuit, tech, security measures, etc. The most important thing that we were all excited about was the Mac Book Pro and Goodies given to us.
After all the sessions were done, with too much information to digest, we were introduced to our respective teams and Managers.
We were also assigned our buddies and mentors who would help us during the course of our internship.
I was lucky enough to be a part of “QuickBooks Online Advanced” team of Intuit IDC, which is known to be one of the best teams of Intuit.
Thanks, Govinda for taking us in your team. :)
GED — Global Engineering Days
The first edition of Global Engineering days happened during the 2nd week of my internship. GED is an event in which everyone at Intuit leaves their normal day job for a week and work on the projects they are most interested in.
Our team made it mandatory for everyone to take part in this one-week long event.
I was working closely with 2 other engineers in our team, Nivedita and Diwakar.
I struggled a little with understanding the design and architecture of the system at first. But with little help, it became clearer. The other two engineers were kind enough to clear my silly doubts. Hehe!
In spite of being an Intern and being new to the code-base, I was treated like a full-time employee. I was asked about my thoughts on a particular approach that could be taken for the project. My ideas and opinions were valued by both the senior engineers. And that was truly a great feeling!!
Various Sessions
In the course of our internship, many sessions were organized for the interns. Some of them were….
- WCGB (We Care and Give Back) session in which we learned about sign language.
- Interns catch-up meeting to know if we were facing any problems during the internship.
- Session on Patents and Open-Source at Intuit was the session I was most eager about.
- D4D session which is a framework for making a decision in the design of software and also in real life.
- Many technological workshops.
- Product mash-up sessions in which we take a deep dive in the products made by Intuit
- Any many more………
I tried to attend most of the sessions, until and unless there was not something already on my plate. ;)
Lunch with the leaders:
We were called to Lunch with Sanket Atal who is the MD of Intuit India. He told us several things and interesting facts about Intuit. We interns also asked him several questions. The setting was sort of informal which we didn’t expect. We started discussing TV Shows and Movies in the end. LOL!
One of the things that I still remember was the secret of Intuit for continuously being in “Great Places to Work” list for the past many years.
He told, and I quote
In Intuit, our shareholders are like food — it’s needed. Our customers are like ‘water’, which means, without ‘customer obsession’, we can survive only for a few days. But our employees are like ‘air’ because without them we can survive only for a few minutes. Intuit believes in investing and taking care of its employees more than anything else. This is the sole reason why most of the people love their job at Intuit.
I still remember this statement, because it resonates with the kind of environment that I experienced at the workplace. 😄
The second “lunch with leaders” session was hosted in our internship’s last week, where all the interns interacted with the leaders who were present in IDC.
Intern’s Day out :D
On 21st June, we went to the Intern’s day out. This year the chosen destination was Area 83.
The HRs and the Area83 team had planned several activities for us there. It started with a team-building activity and ended with some rides in the area.
I won’t describe much here. But, believe me, it was super fun. 😃
This was the time when I got to know about all the 38 interns who were interning there…..at least by their names.😛
The Overnight Hackathon
A hackathon was organized for us interns in the last week of June. We were supposed to team up with other interns as a team of 3 or 4.
There were 4 themes given to us under which our final hack should fall.
I teamed up with two other interns. We were also provided with mentors who could help us to implement our ideas. All the arrangements of food and our comfort were made by the HR team.
As the world cup was also going on at that time, we also requested to stream it on the big screen for some amount of time. 😆
Next day we were supposed to give a presentation to the judges and other engineers present there.
My Project
I was lucky enough to get a project which mattered significantly for my team.
It was a really good project which consisted of a mix of both front-end and back-end. It involved technologies like React JS, GraphQL, Spring Boot and Intuit’s own Data Platform (IDP). So, as it seems I got to work on a variety of technologies. ;)
As I was dealing with “Data Platform”, I was in regular contact with the IDP team which sits in Mountain View, California office. It was fun connecting with them over Slack and Bluejeans and taking important decisions on the project. I tried to ask them less silly doubts as much as possible. 😛
Our manager had told all the interns in the beginning only, that our projects are super important for the team, will ultimately go to production and will impact thousands of customers of QBO Advanced.
Believe me, if your project is going to production, it is a thing to be proud of.
The Final Presentation
In the final presentation, we were supposed to give a gist of the work we did during the course of our internship.
All the interns were divided into different groups randomly. And each group had to give a presentation on a particular day.
On the day just before my presentation, I gathered all the interns of my team to take a mock presentation. That really helped to build confidence later on during the actual presentation.
During the presentation, the engineers kept asking me detailed questions about my project. I was able to answer most of it.
They were quite impressed I must say. 😃
Spotlights
Spotlight is a special prize you get when you show one of the core values of Intuit. Some of the interns got spotlights during the course of their internship.
Luckily, I also got two spotlights worth ₹4500 on the value “Be Passionate”.
One was given by our Hackathon team mentor, Ashwith for the dedication we showed during the intern’s hackathon.
The second spotlight I got was for contributing to intuit’s open source chatbot framework “Benten”. :)
Farewell Lunch
Before our last day, the interns were given a farewell lunch at “Marriot”.
Adieu…..
This was my first time in the corporate world, and it was much better than I had expected. Thank you Intuit India for making this a lovely experience.
To the fellow interns especially “QBO Advanced” interns, the time spent with you guys made this internship enjoyable on another level. I’ll always remember the teamwork we did, the talks we had, the FIFA, the Foosball matches and the outings we had together.
To the HR folks, thank you for taking care of us and giving us the best experience one could possibly have.
Peace!
P.S: I have not covered everything here. This is just the gist of things you’ll experience at Intuit. There’s much more which made this internship exciting. 😄
P.P.S: Thanks for the edits. :)
