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A little about me, I'm Laxman Desai! A senior UG with a Chemical Engineering major. I spend most of my time coding and building cool stuff. During the summers before my fourth year, I was an IT/ Software intern at Sprinklr (the only non-CS student selected in my year xD). I'm completely self-taught and have not completed a single CS course. Yes not even CS101, thanks to COVID19. Why? I prefer discovering topics organically, i.e. learn something when you feel you need to use it.
Coming to the internship season, I've described my software journey in a detailed roadmap (including my preparation strategy for my Sprinklr intern) over on: https://wncc-iitb.org/blogs/sprinklr.html
TLDR: Remote work, loved the work culture, relaxed work-life balance (Saturdays off, 5-6h tops work a day), very hardworking team, and a beautiful compensation! Also, a high PPO offering rate (above 90%).
The internship lasted for 7 weeks, and was a one-of-a-kind unforgettable experience!
The 150+ interns across India were split across 3 domains (Front-end, Back-end, and ML) and allocated projects. A project was usually worked on by a team of 1-3 interns under the leadership of 1-3 mentors.
Weeks 1-3 were about understanding the company's values, international and corporate culture, and most importantly networking with your co-interns!
My domain was front-end development, something I had a ton of experience with already. To most people (including me before Summer ‘22), working as a Front-end Developer means writing a ton of HTML, CSS, and JS to build what the user sees when they land on a website. I was skeptical initially about wasting my internship doing something that I'm already great at.
The project allocated to me was designing and building support for some custom syntax for JavaScript. This involved parsing ASTs and understanding how for example your React code (JSX is custom syntax) gets compiled to vanilla JS (ES5).
We were allocated 3 mentors who were very cooperative and quite knowledgeable. My mentors suggested an approach that I could use on the project. While my co-interns worked on the suggested approach, I discovered a different (slightly better) approach and was allowed to follow it in parallel. After successfully building the project in 2 weeks, we delivered a presentation to the Senior Vice President.
I would code 3-5h a day from Monday to Friday. Towards the end, the daily commitment went to about 6-7h a day. I had complete freedom with how much time I should put in. At Sprinklr, progress mattered, and there was no micromanagement.
Working at Sprinklr made me realize the immense potential I possess, and that with the right mindset and the right people at hand, I can build and scale anything. A good internship is going to change the way you learn. With the security of Sprinklr's PPO at hand, I plan to utilize every bit of my final year at IITB to build a crypto-based Play2Earn gaming startup.