Roblox

My mentor was very responsive to questions and overall great to learn from. I was able to choose what I worked on, and learned a lot doing so. All Roblox interns I met were working on super cool projects meant to go into production, and meeting them was one of the highlights of my experience. The internship itself was run very well (thanks to Jeanie and Elizabeth - you guys did a really good job, and I know the UR team has been spread very thinly for a while). Lots of swag! For Roblox fans, free premium. The free DoorDash didn't hurt either. Diverse intern class: roughly equal gender ratio (this isn't true of the rest of the company though).

Everything here is related to intern conversion and hiring. If you're not looking for a return offer, no need to read any further. I would tell you the internship experience itself was 5 stars.

However, if you're looking for a return offer, please consider the following (things I wished I had known before accepting my offer):

• Lack of transparency about the intern conversion process: Many interns were not on the same page regarding this, and some managers had no idea how the process worked (or were lying to their interns). I think this is something that should be pretty clear to interns. Since it wasn't, there should be some sort of communication from UR in the future.

• Lack of transparency about intern conversion: I personally was told there would be space on my team to return at the beginning of the internship, only to learn later this wasn't true. Other interns were told similar information about return offers. Apparently, over 90% of SWE interns were recommended for conversion by their managers, but only around 50% received return offers (due to VP-level reviews). This was really unexpected and disappointing for the interns who didn't make that 50% cut despite being recommended.

It would have been much better if I had known about the low return offer rate before accepting my offer. Since I was aiming for a return offer, I would have been better off going with other companies' offers. I'm still kicking myself for not doing that.

• New Grad Referrals: There was an intern event where all interns were heavily encouraged and given time to submit new grad referrals. Looking back, this was a huge slap in the face knowing that 50% of interns would be cut.

In general, I think hiring at Roblox is disorganized, and many questionable decisions are being made with no transparency. Many teams at Roblox (technical and non-technical) seem very understaffed and say they have no headcount, which is surprising for what's supposed to be a growing company.

Please treat interns like the people they are (respect the community). Don't hire interns for teams with no headcount to hire them back later.

I'm sure these poor hiring practices and decisions have lost Roblox many great candidates (I mean "strong yes" candidates).

Most importantly, be transparent about high-impact decisions.