What I Learned from Airbnb Data Science Internship
Strive to be a cereal entrepreneur
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of Airbnb or its employees.)
In the summer of 2019, I interned at Airbnb Headquarter in San Francisco as a data scientist. On the first day of my internship, I received a box of cereal as part of the intern welcome package. On the cereal box, it says:
Be a cereal entrepreneur!
This is a reference to the Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s cereal boxes that founders of Airbnb sold during the 2008 election to raise enough money to support the company. The idea of being a cereal entrepreneur is to be creative and bold to bring ambitions into reality, especially under constraints and limitations.
Following the footsteps of the founders and having support from my mentors and peers, I learned a lot from my internship. I think my learnings might benefit someone who is about to embark on an internship in data science or other technical fields such as software engineering. I’d love to share these learnings with you.
Forget the fact that you’re just an intern!
Don’t limit yourself because you’re an intern. You have access to a lot of the resources in the company and a lot can be done during the internship.
Get involved in fun activities and take learning opportunities the company offers. Speak up at the team meetings. Go to that interesting Tech talk you’ve been eyeing on. Join a book club or reading group to learn about new ideas and perhaps make some new friends. Participate in the team-building off-site and be part of the team. You’d be missing out if all you do is heads-down working on your intern project without fully experience some of the most fun and inspiring moments outside your immediate day-to-day work.
During the summer, I participated in many events at Airbnb, including a series of fireside chats with company leadership, where the speakers shared their stories and insights with interns. Those conversations gave me a better perspective of the company and the people running it.
Think big. Take risks. Be bold.
Data science interns often get to work on risky and exciting projects that sail into uncharted territory starting with a proof of concept. I just said it’s good to forget that you’re just an intern. Guess what’s even better? Take advantage and embrace your internship! Interns have the luxury to focus mostly on one thing at a time at work while full-time data scientists have to juggle multiple projects and other work responsibilities simultaneously.
As an intern, I had the opportunity to work on an exploratory project and answer open questions that are important to my team in the long term. I had several hours per day to dive into my project. I also realized that I only had around three months to complete my work there so I need to be creative to work with the time constraint I had. I prototyped and developed a solution to a hard problem.
Keep a founder mindset for your project.
As a founder or someone who keeps a founder mindset, you develop a mission for your project. You envision the ideal outcome, think long term, work hard, and seek help. You would do everything you can (legally and ethically, of course!) to make it work.
Also, as a founder, you will be building a strong team (think about you, your manager, and other collaborators) and you will be empowering your teammates. Develop a three-month vision, a one-year vision, and maybe even a five-year vision for your project and its potential applications that might contribute to the company in the long term. Pitch your project to stakeholders and potential internal clients, and get feedback and iterate your project.
For my own intern project, I scheduled dozens of coffee chats with data scientists, engineers, operations from different teams to consult them about technical questions and business issues. After I had a minimal viable product (MVP) in the form of a machine learning model, I presented my work to several audiences, both technical and non-technical across different teams. It was a lot of fun sharing my work and the feedback from teams helped shape my projects in a better form.
Think like a scientist. Code like an engineer. Present like a business executive.
- Think like a scientist. As a PhD student, I’ve been trained to think like a scientist. At the beginning of my internship, I sought to frame the problem without diving into the data. This empowered me to reimagine the solutions without being limited by the data at the outset.
- Code like an engineer. Follow best practice and keep your code base reader-friendly. Use version control and participate in the code review process. A strong engineering foundation goes a long way.
- Present like a business executive. Start from the big picture. Convince your audience why the work you do is important; i.e., why should they care? Tell compelling stories using the voice of data. Translate jargon and complex equations to accessible intuition and insights. Make actionable recommendations for business from the data.
Now I’ve been back to school to continue my PhD journey at MIT. I feel grateful for the opportunity to have joined the mission to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere. I was blessed to have worked with the remarkable, kind, and motivated people at Airbnb.
For more stories, find me on LinkedIn and Twitter.
