Over the past year, I was fortunate to intern at three companies in the San Francisco Bay Area — Google, Yelp, and Instagram (Facebook) — and to have had the ability to work on my own startup, Fiix. I remember when I arrived at my first internship, with Google, I had no idea what I was getting into or how to be a successful intern. After some time, mistakes, and successes, I finally started to get a hang of things. After a while, instead of people thinking I was an intern, they started to think that I was a full-time employee.

Be transparent with your goals

Sharing your internship goals allows your mentors to help you achieve those goals and ultimately have the best internship possible. It also allows you to set checkpoints and milestones to assess and evaluate your progress over the course of your internship. Sharing your future aspirations makes your team aware of how you want to improve yourself. Great advice and assistance will follow once you become more transparent.

For example, at the beginning of my internship at Instagram, I mentioned to my manager that I had aspirations of becoming a Product Manager. As a result, my manager decided to give me a project which required a lot of autonomy and which allowed me to act as a Product Manager and a Data Scientist in addition to being a Software Engineer. As a result, I gained significant experience as a Product Manager driving the success of a feature, as well as amazing Software Engineering experience developing that feature. In addition, I got a chance to experience some of the work Data Scientists partake on a daily basis.

Make your work visible

There are many advantages in making your team and others aware of your work.

First, it gives others the opportunity to provide feedback. In all of my projects, I made an effort to share what I was working on with the rest of my team, either verbally, through messages, or through documents. This allowed others to give input and suggestions to improve my project.

Second, it allows your team to see your progress, which reassures them you are making a meaningful contribution. By making my work and project visible to the rest of my team, my managers were able to see my involvement with the team and the steps I was taking to accomplish the project.

Third, it helps team members plan for the future once you complete part of the project or the entirety of it. Once I showed my team the progress I was making on my project, they were able to create new projects and tasks which would need to be accomplished once my project had finished. In addition, they were able to get a head start by finding the right resources and theoretical solutions for the future projects.

In essence, making your work visible adds to the cohesiveness of the team.

Reach out to others who interest you

At your company, there are so many interesting people with a multitude of experiences that it would be unfortunate if you didn’t at least try to hear them. I personally believe that reaching out to people who interest you is one of the most important things you should do anywhere you are. In my experience, reaching out to people has opened up different opportunities, has served as a great learning experience, and has given me many insightful perspectives to consider. In addition, it has also helped me figure out how I want to dedicate my time and where I want to be in the next 2, 5, and 10 years.

It might seem intimidating at first to message someone for coffee or a chat, but after a few times it will be a breeze and you will learn to enjoy it. Don’t be shy to reach out to them. People like to share their knowledge and experiences, if you give them a chance.

Try to share lessons learned inside or outside the company

If you are working on a project and implement new lessons and techniques which others aren’t very aware of, consider finding a way to spread that knowledge. Think about open sourcing or internally documenting some of your solutions or techniques. It’s often the case that someone on a different team or different project is coming across some of the same problems you are and are researching ways on solving it.

For example, during my internship at Yelp I was working on creating a smooth experience for pulling down on Yelp business’ cover photos. This project required a lot of research and multiple techniques in order to accomplish the goal. In addition, I also had to turn to an open source project for assistance. However, instead of keeping the new knowledge and solutions to myself, I decided that the broader community could benefit from it as well. As a result, I wrote an article for Yelp’s blog which ended up being shouted out by Google’s Twitter account and many other tech blogs.

Ask for tough feedback early on

One of the best things you can do is to ask for the tough, constructive feedback early on. The sooner you get feedback the better off you will be moving forward. Imagine you have three weeks left in your internship and you receive some feedback which makes you realize that you could have performed at a much higher level earlier on. In my experience, receiving the tough feedback early on has allowed me to be more efficient with my time, be able to make a much larger impact with my projects, and be able to perform at a high level which boosts my value to the company and those around me.

I remember my manager at Instagram giving me some great advice when it comes to receiving feedback. He told me that any feedback received is a chance to learn, whether it is positive or negative. Instead of being defensive when receiving feedback, try to understand why the person is giving that feedback and how you can use that feedback to your advantage.

Try to work with at least three people

I make it a personal goal to work with at least three people on my team. I do this for a few reasons.

First, when you work with many people it gives them a chance to see how you operate and perform. Then, when it comes time for evaluations you have someone to speak about your work ethic and productivity.

Second, when you work with many people you naturally tend to pick up some skills and knowledge your team embodies. Working with others encourages the sharing of knowledge and through this you benefit greatly.

Third, you’re able to solve problems more efficiently. Remember that saying, 2 heads are better than 1. Well it’s definitely true.

Fourth, it’s more fun. It’s fun to be social. It’s fun to communicate with your team and try to tackle challenging problems and issues. Personally, I find it very boring and lonely if you are stuck solving a problem or working on a project all by yourself.

Consider the long-term when working on a project

When working on a task or a project, consider what will happen to it after you leave or after you submit it. You want to make sure that if someone turns to it in the future they are able to understand it and that it’s flexible enough to serve their purpose. In addition, you want to make sure it’s still valuable to the team and the company in the future. While working on a project, try to forecast the future and try to address the most important use cases. If someone wants to use it, they should be able to do so in a smooth manner.

During my time at Yelp, I created an animation for pulling down cover photos on business’ pages on Yelp’s mobile website. As a result, I created software which accomplished this in a smooth manner. However, instead of just writing the software to serve my purpose only, I made it flexible enough that if anyone at Yelp wanted to create any animation which required touch movements on a mobile device, they would be able to do so.

Give feedback to your team

Just because you are an intern doesn’t mean people won’t take you seriously. Teams love it when an intern or a new member steps in to give suggestions or feedback because they are the fresh eyes to a team or company. Also it shows that you actually care about the work you are doing and the success of the team. Don’t be afraid to give feedback. At the end of the day, your team wants to be successful and they value your thoughts.

These are some of the lessons I learned throughout my internships and they have helped me tremendously. Hopefully they can help you in your internships or current work.

Best of luck!

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