The Internship: I Had Recess At Work
By: Kylie Jue, Stanford
We asked our summer interns to describe their experience working at CodeHS. This three post mini-series will explore their real thoughts about what it was like to read, write & code.
Whenever I told my friends and family members that I had recess at work, they always looked surprised. No one could speak to a similar work experience. From Jenga to Dance Dance Revolution to Exploding Kittens (the card game), the entire CodeHS team would take a thirty-minute break every Wednesday to have fun together. But recess was only one of several activities that defined my work experience at CodeHS this past summer. The internship not only allowed me to further my skills as a software engineer, but it also provided me with a community of passionate people working toward a common goal that I cared about.
CodeHS was my first time working “in the industry.” I had very little experience in web programming and no prior experience in Python or Django. However, by the end of the summer, I was comfortable coding in JavaScript and Python and had familiarized myself with Django, AngularJS, GitHub, and several other tools and frameworks used by CodeHS. I was treated not as an intern, but as a company engineer — both going through code reviews and also performing code reviews myself. I had the opportunity to design a feature from scratch (an autograder for web programs) and saw my project get pushed to the live site. I was able to have a direct impact on CodeHS’s users.
One of the main reasons that I was able to learn so much over the course of ten weeks was the company’s open and collaborative community. I was welcomed on my first day by a handwritten card and was immediately paired with a mentor on the engineering team whom I could ask questions. I also checked in regularly with Jeremy and Zach, the company’s co-founders, to ensure I was making progress and enjoying my project. Through one-on-one coffee chats and daily communal lunch breaks, I had the chance to get to know each of my coworkers beyond the workplace, and Cindy, the Chief of Staff, even planned an Intern Day Out for the four interns to explore the city and get to know one another.
CodeHS is tackling the issue of computer science education in a way that most edtech companies are not. They are spreading computer science not only through teaching programming but also through teaching people how to teach programming — a task made possible by the diverse group of people working at CodeHS. My coworkers were some of the most dedicated people I’ve met, and I would not have wanted to spend my summer with anyone else.
About the Author:
Kylie Jue is a junior at Stanford University double majoring in Computer Science and English. She is an editor for the The Stanford Daily and enjoys Hip-Hop dance. Her preferred language to code in is C++.
