My Experience as One of Whatnot’s First Engineering Interns
Julia Zhang | Software Engineering Intern, Seller Growth
During the summer and fall of 2022, I had the opportunity to work at Whatnot as one of their first software engineering interns, focused on growth. During my eight months, I worked out of three different cities, hosted two Whatnot streams, petted at least five Whatnaut dogs, and most importantly, gained confidence as a software engineer.
Here, I’ll dive into my Whatnot internship experience: the application process, onboarding experience and projects, valuable learnings, and fun memories.
Application process
In my internship search, I looked for startups where I could grow, experiment and learn as an engineer, and where I could also contribute to the company’s growth. I came across Whatnot’s internship posting on the University of Waterloo’s job board for the co-operative education students. After submitting my application, I was contacted by a recruiter who scheduled a follow-up call, technical interviews, and a values-based interview before receiving an offer.
What made me accept Whatnot’s offer:
- After hearing more about growth engineering from Whatnot’s Head of Growth, Jeff Chang, I knew it was an area of engineering that encapsulated my interests in full stack development, data, and marketing.
- I like Whatnot as a product. There are countless directions where Whatnot could grow. Additionally, it was a rare opportunity for me to work in an upcoming and high-growth, consumer-facing tech company.
- Whatnot offers competitive compensation for internships regardless of location. For most of my internship, I worked at home in Toronto. Additionally, interns are given a monthly dogfooding budget to use within the app. (I might have spent a few hundred dollars on Pokemon cards.)
Onboarding and mentorship
I was initially nervous about my first experience working at a startup. I was also anxious about collaborating with people across various time zones. However, Whatnot provided the smoothest onboarding experience I’ve had over my years of interning at various companies.
My manager, Koichiro, and mentor, Eda, gave me a warm welcome to the team. I was assigned three starter tasks that allowed me to familiarize myself with the web codebase. Throughout the week, Eda assisted me in setting up my developer environment, sent me helpful resources, and celebrated my small accomplishments with me. In fact, Eda was a constant cheerleader for me throughout my entire internship, even when we were working on different projects. During our weekly one-on-ones, we would address my areas for improvement (such as contributing to PR requests), discuss good engineering practices, or talk about whatever was on our mind. Both Eda’s and Koichiro’s mentorship were defining highlights in my intern experience.
In addition to working on my starter tasks, I immediately scheduled a one-on-one chat with each member of my team, which allowed me to get a better feel for the product, culture and growth engineering as a whole. I learned that growth engineering is about optimizing a product to expand the user base. This requires the ability to brainstorm and implement features across functions, and measure the impact of these improvements.
By the end of the first week, I was more excited than ever about my position at Whatnot. I was able to gain confidence through finishing my starter tasks, and was looking forward to spending my next months exploring growth at a fast-paced startup.
Having an impact
I have found that most internships fall under one of two categories. Interns are either given an “intern project” that they are expected to focus on and complete for the term, or are integrated into the team and complete tasks just like every other team member. Having tried both forms of internships, I find that I prefer the latter. This is how Whatnot’s internship works as well.
Projects I worked on included:
- Implementing optimizations to the seller application process to improve the applicant experience and increase the completion rate
- Building the new “Raids” feature for iOS which allows streams to send all of their viewers to a new stream
- Developing the idea for and introducing a “Test Mode” option for sellers on the iOS app so users can have a environment to familiarize themselves with the streaming tools
While I had no prior experience with some of the technology, I was given the opportunity and autonomy to work on diverse projects that allowed me to contribute to various parts of the Whatnot codebase. I started out working on web development, but I also contributed to the Android and main backend codebase. Near the end of my term, I developed mainly within the iOS project.
Each project developed my sense of ownership and confidence as a growth engineer. The test mode feature was actually an idea I brought to my team during a brainstorming session. It was extremely rewarding to work independently to see this idea come to life — from creating a prototype, implementing necessary endpoint changes, learning iOS development, facilitating employee testing, and opening the feature to all users.
Learnings and highlights
It is incredible to think about how much has happened since I began my intern journey. My team has almost doubled in size, Whatnot has introduced many, many exciting new product features, and I have learned so much more than I could have imagined.
My top learnings from my 8 months at Whatnot:
Ownership: I learned to take more ownership and responsibility with my work. Compared to my previous internships, I now rely less heavily on others to decide on my next tasks and ensure that my code is working properly. Additionally, I learned that a task is not defined as “complete” just because I have successfully merged in my PR. I must follow up by testing that everything is working as expected, dogfooding, and looking at metrics.
Ask more questions: Previously, I prided myself in being able to figure things out independently. This worked well at previous companies where my tasks were not always high-priority. However, there is a heavy emphasis at Whatnot to move fast. If I cannot figure something out, I should not stubbornly waste more time trying to appear “independent”, and instead use my resources effectively to unblock myself.
No harm in over-communicating: Knowing how to communicate effectively is especially important within a remote-first company with a reliance on asynchronous collaboration. In order to prevent misunderstandings and ensure that I fully understand requirements, it is important to ask clarifying questions and write clear messages.
Aside from allowing me to experiment with new technologies and heightened job responsibilities, my time at Whatnot has also granted me many new life experiences as well.
Some highlights:
San Francisco offsite: All Whatnot interns were transported to San Francisco for an offsite. During this three-day trip, we visited Whatnot’s SF office, met our mentors and managers, and participated in team bonding activities such as an escape room. It was very fun meeting the people I have been seeing on my laptop screen for the first months of work.
Los Angeles offsite: The growth engineering team held an offsite in Los Angeles where I met more members of my team, went to Disneyland, and had some amazing KBBQ.
It was also in the Whatnot LA headquarters where my manager called me into a conference room to give me a return offer as a new grad!
Living in San Francisco: In October, I moved to SF to stay until the end of my internship. During my time in SF, I made friends with many other interns in the Bay Area, went on spontaneous road trips (I love Big Sur!), and experienced what it was like living 2,000 miles away from home.
Looking ahead
This year, I wanted to try something new and exciting, and Whatnot has offered me even more than that.
I want to thank everyone on the growth team for welcoming me and guiding me throughout my internship. The growth team is definitely my favorite part about working at Whatnot. While I’m sad that my time with them as an intern is coming to an end, I’m excited to wrap up my last four months of undergrad and to return to the growth team post-graduation next July.
If you’re interested in joining Whatnot as an intern, apply through the Careers site!
