The intern’s story: Agoda 2020
Hi, in summer 2020 I’ve got an opportunity to be a Tech intern at Agoda, Bangkok and I do find the experience to be interesting and impressive!
The location
My team’s office is located in the 22nd floor at The office at central world building. They also got free coffee and snack in the office.
My Work
I’m assigned to the data team which is quite known to have a huge learning curve for a new joiner and on top of that I have to do it remotely for the first few weeks because of Covid-19 lockdown. Those first few weeks was quite a hard time for me as I couldn’t accomplish much remotely but things got a lot better after I’ve started working at the office. Once in the office I start getting a more challenging tasks, the first few tasks is quite small as its goal is to get me to become familiar with the tools the team is using. The importance of the task I’m assigned to grew as I’ve finished more tasks. My final task is to create a dashboard and logging to monitor resource consumption by one of their tools which they said would be very useful for them in a long run.
The Team
The team I’m assigned to is one of the most diverse team I’ve ever work with, we have a European manager and engineers from many different parts of Asia. They’re all very responsible and highly skilled people and I’ve learned a lot of thing from them not only technical but also foods, career, culture and many more. It is with them that I’ve tasted my first Indian food and decided my first solo trip.
Intern pitch competition
As an intern I’ve got a chance to participate in the Intern pitch competition and won it as a team. Our team choose food as a starting point and develop it to become a feature that could be easily implemented into Agoda’s property page. I think this activity provide a good additional knowledge from business side to what I’ve already learn with the data team. Additionally, this is also a great opportunity to get to know other interns, your team’s mentor and the judges.
Agoda’s culture
The thing that impressed me the most during my internship is Agoda’s culture. Unlike many other organizations I’ve worked with, Agoda’s people take their code of conduct very seriously and always focus on a long term goal. For example, when we ran into a production issue, the first thing we’d focus on is getting that problem solved as soon as possible and in the right way then we move on to the next problem at hand right away. I firmly believe that those who value growth during their career would find the experience here very valuable and enjoyable.
My favorite moment
My favorite moment at Agoda is during one of my usual solo dinner after work when I was trying to eat hamburger with wasabi, I was joined by my manager’s manager and have a very good conversation with him. He gave me a very good career advice that will deeply impact my decision making for a very long time even thought I’ve read the exact same line before in a book but hearing it in person from the man who took them seriously make those advice exponentially more valuable.
Conclusion
Overall, what I experienced at Agoda is a light year ahead of any of my prior internships. However it is not perfect, as intern only stay for 2 month there’s a limit on how much work and responsibility I can take (maybe I’ll rejoin as a full-timer and remove this annoying limit xD). I recommend this place to anyone who value growth and want to work in a diverse team.
