When building out our internship program at Cockroach Labs, we wanted to be intentional about how we would support up-and-coming developers, bring in fresh ideas, and create a funnel of amazing new grads to Cockroach Labs. It’s been five years since we hosted our first interns at our headquarters in New York. As the company has grown, so has our engineering internship program. Our general philosophy around interns may be different from other technology companies: we assign real work that applies to the next releases of CockroachDB and CockroachDB Dedicated. Our interns understand that their work affects our company’s roadmap, gain a sense of what working at Cockroach is like, and build relationships with engineers on their team and leadership members.
Planning for our Internship Program
From our People team to Engineers to Leadership teams, many people and teams make our Engineering internships run smoothly. A few months before our interns start, our People Development and Engineering Operations team sync on available teams that our interns will be able to join and potential starter projects, as well as who their Roachmate will be. Check out this blog for some of our recent internship projects!
Your First Month
They have a specific project they work on, mini-projects along the way, attend weekly team meetings and 1:1’s with their roachmate and manager! This ensures that our interns are set up for success from their first day - meeting their manager and roachmate and having an in-depth introduction into the codebase. A roachmate is similar to what other companies would call a mentor, but we had to put our own Cockroach Labs spin on it! This person is paired up with them to help them with their transition to the company, introduce them to other teammates, and a go-to person as they work through their projects. To create a holistic view of CRL, how the business works, and to understand how the teams work together, they also go through company onboarding like all of our full-time employees.
Transparency and Feedback
We know that Roachers perform at their best when we communicate openly and honestly, so this is something we make sure to do with our interns throughout their internships, especially at their midpoint check-in and end of internship sync. At the midpoint of their internship, we have their roachmate submit feedback on how they are performing on their projects, their interaction with the team and include any areas to improve on throughout the rest of their internship. This is also an opportunity for our interns to give feedback to their Engineering teams and People team.
End of Internship
The internship flies by! A few weeks before the end of their internship, each of our interns does a final presentation to our Engineering team about their final project and about their time at the company. The projects our interns work on will impact our team’s day-to-day, upcoming releases, and it’s an opportunity to showcase all of the great work they’ve done the past few months.
If you’re passionate about shaping the future of databases and working with some of the brightest minds in technology, keep an eye out for our Fall 2021 internships coming in April!
Interested in checking out our jobs? Visit our careers page to see if there’s a role for you.
