Computer Science & Software Internship Story: Meta

Naman Bansal
Computer Science & Software Engineering

Where did you intern?
I did my internship at Meta Inc., in their Seattle Office.  

How did you find and apply for your internship?
Honestly, I got an email from the recruiting manager asking if I am interested. I do not know if they saw my LinkedIn or personal page, but it was a lucky break for me.

What was the application process like?
The application process was very smooth, and they were very accommodating. They asked to suggest a time for the interview as per my schedule. We settled on a date, but I got really occupied during that time. Thus, I requested them to move the dates later on and they kindly agreed to it. So, I had my first round of two back-to-back interviews.  
Based on the interview, I knew that I would go to the next round. But I was planning to take a long break (~20 days with no internet connectivity) right after my first round. Thus, I told them that I would be going on a break and would not be able to respond if they decided to go ahead with the next round. Thankfully, they again agreed to it. Later on, I was asked to choose five teams (in decreasing order of preference) out of a list of teams for my final team-matching interview. Two of the teams interviewed me for the final round and I got the news within a couple of weeks.

Tell us about your internship experience. What types of tasks and projects did you engage in? Was there a particular project or part of the experience you learned the most from?
My internship was mostly about training machine learning models. So, all the way from data collection to implementation to training and finally, deployment. It was nothing new and much more challenging for me. The tricky part was to learn their internal tools quickly which many times did not even have proper documentation. Plus, the only help you had was within the company since no one really used those tools outside.  
I am particularly proud of one particular thing that I learned over time. They were using an internal framework that was quite abstractive and really hard to debug. I spent a fair share of time banging my head against it and spent a lot of time on it. However, this turned out to be a great exercise in the end and I became quite good at it near the end of the internship, so much so that I was able to help a couple of other employees from other teams who were also using the same framework.

In what ways did this internship help you prepare for your next destination after Auburn?
This was my first industry experience after coming to the USA and was a huge confidence booster for me. It further validated my progress and helped me realize where I need to improve going ahead.

In what ways did your coursework or other experiences at Auburn prepare you for your internships? Are there specific topics or skills you learned from classes that you put into practice on the job?
It was more of a software engineering-based internship. So, I was not required to use much of my research knowledge during the internship. However, what my friend taught me came really handy while dealing with large codebases. So, in a way, the fact that I had to work on large codebases during my research itself, really helped me.  

Do you have any advice for other students looking for internships like yours?
I always find the DSA round to be quite challenging and honestly, unnecessary but this is the standard across the industry. I never feel confident in this round. You always feel that you need more time to prepare and thus, delay your application itself. I had a similar feeling this time as well and turns out, I could do it. I would acknowledge that there was a definite luck factor involved as well. So, just apply even if you are not confident.