My New Internship
A month since I joined AA BI team. I want to write something down here.
Before seeking, I have thought seriously where I should go for my second internship. During the time, I sent my resume to App Annie. The internship position was BI Engineer. BI is short for Business Intelligence. The HR at App Annie contacted me via phone and asked me some questions. Some questions were really technical so I did not answer them well. However, I still got a chance for onsite interview.
Up till now, when I looked back the experiences I am going to tell, I think it is a good lesson for me. The lesson is: Try to seize every opportunity. The day before the onsite interview, again, I carefully read the job descriptions and unluckily found that I could hardly match any skills or experience listed. Firstly, I am not majoring in computer science or even a related one. Secondly, although I have learnt some SQL, my understanding about it was still in very basic level. Moreover, my understanding in data analysis, data visualisation and scripting was also weak, nor did I have any experience in BI tools. Last but not the least, my last internship was doing operations staffs, more communicating than technical. But this was an intern in Engineering! Wouldn't the interview be really embarrassing since I almost knew nothing? Wouldn't it be that they asked me everything and I did not know how to answer? If that is the case, could I contact the HR and cancelled the interview? In fact, at first, I did not want to go because it seemed and doomed to be a failure. But after all, I entangled with myself and went there. It turned our to be a wise decision. App Annie's office is also located at Sanlitun, only several hundreds meters far from the place I did my last internship.
I could not remember much about the details during the interview. Only a few. Two men came first and began my first round. Later I knew they were Eric and Julian. I gave an English introduction to them and they asked me some technical questions. Indeed there were many questions I could not answer. For instance, I remembered Julian asked me the difference between Left Join and Inner Join in SQL Queries. However, I could only told him embarrassedly that I have indeed learnt those differences, but unluckily I have forgotten them. (Beyond the words: Could I use Google? I definitely could answer them if you let me do so!) After almost thirty minutes, they went out. Another man came in and began my second round. Later I knew he was our manager at BI team. This time, after a short introduction, I said initially and honestly that I indeed knew little in technical parts. To my astonishment, he said it did not matter much. And after asking me some questions, he told me that he would assign me some homework and I was expected to present the reports to them the next week. (Almost God's turning!)
Then I went back to campus and received my homework for next week's presentation. Overall, the homework was not really difficult. I needed to extract row data to visualised reports using Tableau. I learnt the Tableau Software during the first two days, and on the third day, I dived deeply into those data. Then I finished the reports and came to give a representation the next week. Then you got the answer, I was accepted.
First Month
During the first months, I did little actual works. Most of the time I was learning. I learnt how our products worked, how to use Tableau, and how to write efficient SQL queries. I also read related documentations and emails. Our team gave us many trainings including the company's products, BI team's mission, our delivery process, as well as Tableau strategies, ETL and data warehouse knowledges, etc.
The SQL we use for works is PostgreSQL. I still remembered the first time I set up RDP environment and opened pgAdmin -- I was dumbed. Where is the database? I asked the manager, rather stupidly, and he kindly presented to me how to use it. At that time I was almost in tears -- That was how exactly database looked like! With tables, views, index, and many... Just like they showed in books! The manager then told me that if there were any other problems with the set up environments, feel free to have a ask.
At first, I was really puzzled in how our products worked and what BI team was actually doing. Now I felt a lot better. I learnt many new tech skills and could deal with many basic problems. A few days earlier I talked with a friend on WeChat. He was very familiar with BI and databases since his works were related to them. He told me a lot about how to understand our BI products and how to systematically learn database systems. I also realised a overall understanding and knowledge in computer science would be important for further works. I bought some books to read.
Our team is really nice. In short time, I know everyone in the team and they are friendly. The working environment is also great. I ended everyday's work at six with no extra hours. Also, the perks were fantastic. We have free breakfast and lunch offered by Meican.com. And free drinks, free snacks, free fruits... I learnt how to use Capsule coffee machines quickly. What impressed me most is the total respect for interns. Nothing is treated different. Interns have almost the same permissions and perks as full-time employees. I am hoping to learn more and write them down further.