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Hello there! My name is Aashwin Agrawal, a fourth year student of B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from IIT Bombay. I recently completed my 2 months long software internship at HTSI (Hilti Technology Solutions India) and this is my internship experience.
My Experience with Internship Season:
This is the season which is most anticipated by the thirdies. It begins with so much hype, pressure and anxiety. You see everyone busy making resumes, preparing for case-studies, coding tests or interviews, getting multiple shortlists and what not. My intern season was filled with lots of rejections. I saw it all, from not getting a shortlist, getting a shortlist but rejected in the first round, feeling like I would definitely get selected after the interview but not making it etc. I was interested in roles that involved coding but ended up signing all IAFs (even core ones and surprisingly made it to the final round of Dr Reddys but that story is for another day). It was a test of my perseverance but I had friends to banter with, which made it better.
HTSI Selection Procedure:
The procedure was like any other software profile company. It started with a coding test. The test comprised broadly 3 sections- aptitude, 1 coding question, and MCQs related to OOPs concepts. Followed by two rounds of interviews (Technical and HR). The coding question was fairly average. Basic knowledge of DSA was enough to solve the problem.
The Technical Interview round was around 30 minutes long. Most of the interview revolved around my technical project followed by some DSA concepts and then one coding question. Just 15 min after the technical round, I got to know that I was shortlisted for round 2. And this HR round started in a way I never expected. As soon as I entered the meeting and turned my video on, the HR rep said, “Aashwin, I already don’t like you”. I was totally shocked, I didn't know how to respond. After a silence of 5 long seconds, he started laughing very loudly and said, “You are wearing a Barcelona jersey in front of a Madrid fan”. So basically, my t-shirt had a Barcelona logo on it, which I didn’t notice at all being a person who never followed football. This was a great ice-breaker and after this, the interview vibes were very chill.
This was not like a typical HR interview, where questions like tell me your strengths, weaknesses, etc. are asked. This interview was more like a discussion about me, HTSI, and many other things. We spoke about chess, food, and even the education policy of Malaysia (since the HR was Malaysian), etc. This round went on for around 50 min.
Internship Experience:
After 2 years of Covid when most of the internships were WFH, I was destined to live in Pune for my summer internship for 2 months. With nothing but hope and a wish to learn, explore and grow, I arrived on the evening of May 6. We were given 2 days of stay in a hotel by the company so that we get enough time to search for a PG. And honestly, searching for PG was one of the most difficult parts of the internship. We spent 2 days roaming around Pune searching for different PGs and flats. Finally, on the evening of May 8, we had to decide on a PG with average facilities but sadly really high rent.
Anyways, the internship started on May 9. I steadied my nerves and dressed up in formals, hoping this new act in my life would play out just fine, and here’s how it unfolded- “No sir, no ma’am” – had to hear this phrase a lot in the first week. As the HR rep mentioned, the company followed a startup culture with much flexibility given to the employees.
That meant - you manage your own time in the office, come when you like, and call it a day when you want. Above all, there are no cubicles, no defined desks - sit anywhere! And since there are no cubicles, the barriers to communication are none. Go on and approach anyone and have a conversation.
It is said rules are meant to be broken, but what if there are no rules? Perhaps the only rules that were posed to the interns were with the excruciating cybersecurity training on the first day :)
The Project
The first day was full of session after session explaining the core values of Hilti, its history, and culture. Now, it was the time when we will get to know about our projects, tech stack and the team which I will be working in.
Lo and behold! I got the DevOps team!! Never had I imagined that at HTSI or any other company, I would get professional experience in this field. Though DevOps is such a demanding skill in the industry, there are hardly any entry positions for the same. I had zero experience and knowledge about devops and the tools and technologies that are used in it. I knew that the next 2 months were going to be really exciting because I will be learning everything new from scratch about such a demanding field, hence I felt beyond lucky and excited.
I was given technical and exploratory (yes I got two) projects. The tech stack was Golang and Kubernetes (both words I was hearing for the very first time :)). My technical project was DevOps (Kubernetes) Platform Automation. In this, I had to implement an operator for a stateful application. For this, I had to learn about golang, Docker, Kubebuilder, etc. from scratch. My mentor and buddy were really supportive, they understood that I am a total newbie in this field and hence, they always answered very calmly even the type of questions which might sound like “what is 2+2?” to them being a DevOps expert. My second(research) project was exploring Chaos Engineering. I had to prepare a technical document explaining what Chaos engineering is and how HTSI can implement it in their Kubernetes Cluster.
Closing Notes:
It was a once in a lifetime experience of working and learning in such a great culture with such knowledgeable and humble people. This all was possible only because of my perseverance and patience during the internship season.
For a lot of thirdies, the internship season will keep getting frustrating as time passes. The only advice I would like to give is to keep trying and learning with the process. Never give up! I saw some of my friends who after a point stopped signing the IAFs only, this is the worst thing you can do with yourself. Try to grab each and every opportunity you get. Failures will be there, but you will surely be able to successfully grab one which best suits you and it will turn out as one of your best experiences.
Feel free to ping me on WhatsApp: 7747818800
Ldap Id: 190020001@iitb.ac.in