In this edition of “A day in the life of an Intern”, we spoke with two of our Interns, Satakshi Garg, Go Dev Intern, and Balaji Naidu, SRE Intern, about their journey at Civo and how you can do the same. This series aims to provide you with an overview of the different roles we have at Civo and what advice our team has.
What has your journey with Civo looked like?
Satakshi: During my interview, I was asked about my approach towards learning a new technology. This question made me instantly decide that Civo was the right place, as in earlier interviews with other organizations, all they were concerned with was what I already knew (rather than how I would approach tasks). Ever since I have joined the team, people have been super friendly and helpful, making it feel like a real team working together.
Balaji: It's been slightly more than a year since I joined Civo, and so far, it's been a fantastic journey with a lot of learning opportunities every day. I initially joined as a Security Research Intern and then transitioned into a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE). With my role at Civo, I am always learning new skills and getting to apply them straight away.
How did you come across Civo and the position you applied for?
Satakshi: It was in April 2022, I was about to start my Summer Internship with Amazon when I came across Civo. At the time, I was looking for organizations that offered remote job opportunities, with a global pay system, and a constrained work week. Civo didn’t have any Intern opportunities at the time, however, I applied for the only job opening of a Go Developer. To my surprise, Andy (Civo CTO at the time) contacted me the following day asking if I was interested in an internship or a full time role. My interview was then scheduled with Andy the following day for a Go Developer Intern position!
Balaji: Before joining Civo, I had a keen interest in cybersecurity and cloud security specifically. I had followed the cloud-native space for almost 4 months at this point and knew about Kubernetes and different cloud-native technologies. When I found out about some of the exciting things that Civo was working on, I wanted to join the team in a security role. When I checked the careers page, I noticed that there were no open roles within this team, but I still submitted an application anyway. I filled out some details surrounding what I have done so far and what I am looking forward to, and to my surprise, I got a response from Andy within a day.
What does your typical working day look like?
Satakshi: The work culture at Civo is extremely flexible, which is very important for me. I start my work day at 4:00 PM and begin my evening with the daily standup call, before connecting with my team members. After a few hours, I take a break for my dinner, evening walk, and some family time. I then finish off the rest of my work and any outstanding tasks before signing off for the day.
Balaji: Working in a remote company has a lot of benefits such as being able to start my day at a time suited to my schedule. Typically my day starts with looking at alerts followed by a standup call, where everyone gives an update on what they have been working on. At this point I can pick up tasks from a shared board, or the team lead will assign me a task to work on. I spend the rest of the day doing research for this task or collaborating with senior engineers to complete the task. Along with this, I help our customers in the community slack and resolve some support issues reported by customers.
How does your team work together in a global business?
Satakshi: Our team has people from different countries and different time zones, however, everyone is so helpful that they are ready to help even if it’s 10:00 PM. There was also a time where I was finding it difficult to understand one of my team member’s because of different accents. Despite this, they were so humble and typed it out for me so that I would understand what they were saying. This is just one of many examples of what Civo people are like.
Balaji: Being a global company, Civo has employees in different timezones, which makes it easier to get help from someone. Usually a lot of discussions happen on slack threads, this means that if there’s something critical happening, we can catch up at any point.
What have been some challenges you have faced in your role?
Satakshi: There have been a range of challenges on the technical front, but I look at them at a learning opportunity. An example of one of these challenges was when I worked on an Object Store project, it was working fine on my local system, but failed the tests on git. It took really long for us to realize that it was just a minor issue because of the Go version we were using.
Balaji: When I started working for Civo I was in my pre-final year of university. This meant I was working with people who had 10+ years experience, which felt intimidating initially. The team were so kind they never cared about answering simple questions and helped me unblock from some silly issues.
How have you found the 4-day work week has impacted your role?
Satakshi: The 4-day work week has had a major impact on my work productivity. Initially, I never worked well during a 5-day work week at other companies. Now, my 4 days are spent productively, allowing me to work with more efficiency because of the proper refreshment I receive in the remaining 3 days.
Balaji: A 4-day work week is one of the best things about Civo. 3 day weekends have helped me complete my coursework, focus on my academics, and go on long walks to explore some beautiful mountains (I recently completed the Kumara Parvata Trek in South India).
Do you have any advice for someone who wants to become an Intern at Civo?
Satakshi: If you see a position come up, don’t even give it a second thought, just apply. You would love the people and work culture at Civo which will help you to grow every day. Besides this, the flexible work culture will help you in managing your university and internship well.
Balaji: Explore most of the domain while you are still in the university, as this is when you have a lot of time. Take this time to think about what types of problems you find interesting… If you prefer developing new features in a more structured environment, you’re probably better suited to becoming a developer. However, if you want the flexibility to choose projects to work on low-level problems relating to reliability, scale and efficiency, then SRE is probably a better fit. All you need is to be enthusiastic and curious about learning and solving problems.
What makes your role at Civo special?
Satakshi: Before joining, I had no prior experience of Golang, however, when I started working, it didn’t feel like it. As I mentioned earlier, the team is super helpful, and not just my Go Team, even other team members help me out when I need it. I am enjoying my work and love solving Go issues (especially if they involve the Civo command-line client).
Balaji: I really enjoy this type of work and being in my final year of university I get to work with a lot of new and sophisticated technology with some of the smartest people in the industry.
Want to learn more about joining our team of interns at Civo? Check out our careers page for more information on our latest roles.
