Internship Spotlight: Staying Motivated and Trying Different Things

Tell me about your internship! What are your responsibilities? What projects are you working on over the summer?

I have one intern project, which is normal across Amazon. I am under Elastic Container Service (ECS) Insights, ECS is one of the services that Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides. We get the metrics from customers, then it goes to their cloud watch, which is similar to their metrics platform where they’d see different metrics and logs on their services. My project is essentially handling things if there are any issues with publishing those logs, if the service is down, or some outage. All those logs in those hours would be lost. I am working on a system that saves the logs that would be lost and backfill them later once everything is settled. My tasks are based on the project which is broken down into two-week periods. 

What is the most important thing you have learned thus far?

A big thing here at Amazon is diving deep and figuring out the problem yourself. Try different things in different ways before asking for help, because you want to make sure you have done your research and tried different options before asking someone else.

How did your school work prepare you for this role?

The general computer science classes at the University of Minnesota will get you generally prepared, such as data structures and introduction courses. CSCI 3081W: Program Design and Development was a good one, because it introduces you to GitHub and general project management stuff that we do here at Amazon.

How did you become interested in computer science and what are your specific areas of interest?

I have always been into computers as a kid and I’ve always been comfortable with coding. Coding was something that I picked up in middle school that I thought was interesting. When I was thinking about college it was always the number one option for me. General software engineering, such as creating products and building things, is what I am interested in. Artificial intelligence has always been a cool thing for me and making computers think has always been something that I find interesting.

What are your future career goals? How has this position impacted your goals?

My future goal is to get more experience in software engineering. If I do go full time here that would be great, because I would love to work at a company like Amazon. If I do stay another year at the university, then I want to explore other opportunities as a software intern for other big tech companies. 

What advice would you give to someone pursuing a similar internship in the future?

Stay motivated because the market is not the best and it is very hit or miss. People get opportunities randomly. Stay motivated and hopeful, doing your part of the work. Additionally, make sure your resume is as polished as possible and prepare hard for any interviews you do get, and hopefully one will end up working out.