Workday

Challenging problems to tackle on all fronts. Developing on Workday's unique and powerful technology stack requires a deep understanding of software engineering and the stack itself. Even front-end development here is unlike what it is at other companies. They use custom rendering engines to populate the browser screen, which is cool.

Everything is Java-based, and OO skills are a must. This could be a con for some.

Everybody is very welcoming and friendly.

There's a laid-back atmosphere that encourages good work. Full-timers are happily willing to help whenever you have questions. I can think of multiple people who really cared about my learning experience on top of the work I was getting done. I cannot be more thankful for this.

Intern events to get interns excited about the company are well done. They are not too pushy, and people have genuine fun.

There's nice housing for interns right next to the Pleasanton office.

There's sweet backpacks to keep, swag, etc.

• Minimal official training for newcomers.

Interns start the summer off by picking a project and spending the first few weeks getting familiar with the codebase while working on that project.

It would be very helpful if the team had a structured boot camp to cut this initial phase down to a couple of weeks.

The closest thing I saw to this was high-level overviews of Workday's unique tech stack in the beginning. The rest was sort of ask-as-you-go.

However, I noticed something like a boot camp being set up for incoming full-timers towards the end of the summer, so my experience may be outdated.

• I noticed a few intern projects made available were doomed from the start.

For example, one of the projects had a point of contact who was in Germany, so any roadblocks took much longer to work out.

Caution when choosing projects should make this a non-issue.

• Limited snack options, but an amazing coffee machine makes up for this.

• That's it!