“Take the time to understand the whole system”: Internship advice from students

Happy National Intern Day! To celebrate, we asked some of our students and alumni to share insights and advice from their time in the field.

Each of these three studied in the computer science degree program, but followed their interests in different directions. Their internships allowed them to explore their professional goals.

Zhiping Li

Computer Science ’26
Internship: SDET at TikTok

What did you like most about your internship?

First, personal growth: I gained extensive technological knowledge and valuable hands-on experience, particularly in testing related areas. It allowed me to bridge the gap between theory and real-world practice.

Second, network growth. I built strong professional relationships, becoming good friends with my colleagues, mentor, and other team members. These connections have greatly expanded my professional network.

And third, the food at the office was amazing and free! I probably gained about ten pounds in five months. The on-site gym was also free, which made it easy to balance work and health — at least in theory!

What advice would you give to future interns?

Set up a long-term goal for yourself, and plan smaller goals to reach it. Make sure the goal is achievable. Then record what you did and check it bimonthly, monthly, and weekly to see if you are on the right track to achieve your goal. The main goal never changes, but you need to adjust the small plans when needed.

Zhixi Xu

Computer Science ’26
Internships: SDE Intern at Amazon, and SDE Intern at Meta

What was a project you enjoyed at one of your internships?

During my internship at Amazon, I worked on the last-stage ranking system for Amazon Search. I developed a data indexing pipeline for the company’s RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) platform, which powers LLM-based search services.

What advice would you give for future interns?

Don’t wait to understand everything perfectly before contributing. Ask clarifying questions up front, then start making progress on your project quickly. Managers appreciate interns who take initiative and deliver incremental results.

Abdullah Basarvi

Computer Science ’27
Internship: SWE Resident at Angel Intelligence Labs

How did your experience shape your future career goals?

This co-op showed me that the work I want to build a career around sits right at the intersection of full-stack engineering, AI, and real product thinking. Getting to design and ship an AI assistant that understands and protects a creator’s well-being, across a Next.js app, an API, and a LangGraph agent, made me realize I’m most motivated when I’m not just writing features but making thoughtful judgment calls about how technology should actually behave for the people using it. It’s pushed me towards a future focused on building human-centered AI products end-to-end.

What’s one thing you are proud of accomplishing during your internship?

My internship is about building the intelligence behind Angel, HomeAngel’s AI assistant for content creators, so that it actually understands a creator’s whole world — their tasks, calendar, mood, and content performance.

I’m proud that I took the burnout-adaptive feature from a simple “you’re overloaded” warning to a genuinely smart system that reads a creator’s real capacity — their mood, workload, and energy — and rebalances their week without ever blindly dumping tasks onto the next day or nagging them. It taught me that good engineering is as much product judgment as it is code.

What advice would you give to future interns? 

Don’t just build what’s asked, take the time to understand the whole system and the user behind it, because the best work I did came from asking, “Is this actually smart for the person using it?” and being willing to push back with a better approach. And don’t be afraid to dig deep when something breaks; tracing a bug across three repos taught me more than any feature I shipped.