

Mixpanel - Internships. A story. - suhail

Mixpanel is looking for summer interns.<p>In 2008, I interned at Slide, Inc and it was one of the most valuable summers of my life. I went from college hacker interested in starting a company to learning deeply about product design and what it was like to work on a team.<p>That summer I was fortunate enough to work with an awesome PM, Adora (who taught me the essentials of product development) and Max Levchin. I am still not sure why Max ended up working so closely on the product we working on. Our product was new and had the least business value of all the things Slide was working on but it was still exciting. If I had to say, I think he just liked that we worked so hard on it.<p>At Slide, I was determined to work hard. I wanted to know if hard work paid off so I worked from 10am to 12am. It did: Slide offered me a full-time but I declined.<p>At the end of the summer I had huge takeaways:<p>- I knew I wanted to start a company. Immediately.<p>- I knew grad school didn't matter out in California<p>- I didn't realize it at the time but I grew a huge network of fellow Slide people ("Slide" mafia). Some of these people are my closest friends now.<p>- I learned so much about product, working with others, and how real companies "do it."<p>- I learned smaller things like: git, python, vim, etc.<p>- I could've never built Mixpanel without having been at Slide first.<p>If you're looking for a similar experience to my own, Mixpanel can provide this. 
Apply for an internship: http://mixpanel.com/internships/ or jobs@mixpanel.com<p>Sincerely,<p>Suhail Doshi<p>Founder
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endtime
Good luck finding great interns!

I do want to point out the flaw in this line: "I wanted to know if hard work
paid off so I worked from 10am to 12am. It did: Slide offered me a full-time
but I declined."

You might have received an offer doing good work 7 hours a day.

~~~
kunjaan
I agree. I never worked overtime in my internship but was extended an offer.
My review doesn't say how much I worked but what I accomplished and delivered.

~~~
endtime
Yeah, I worked 6.5 - 7 hours a day at MSFT and got a full time offer as well
[1], which is what made me think of pointing this out in the first place.

[1] And left my team happy, having finished my project beyond what they
expected. Plus, those days were short largely because of all the entertainment
stuff MSFT did for us interns. I don't want to give the impression I was
slacking off for the sake of it.

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miguelrios
Wow... you just explained my experience at Twitter. I went from being a future
PhD looking for a fun summer to someone who forgot about grad school and
wanted to stay creating "real" stuff in 4th and Folsom for ever.

Suffice it to say, I ended my internship, left grad school (including a
fellowship by Google via GEM) and stayed at Twitter.

Get an internship, it can change (or confirm) your vision about a career and
your future in general.

~~~
sabj
Great to hear Miguel, sorry we never got to really catch a proper meal
together last summer... (can you guess who this is? ;) )

Let me know if you are out NYC / Boston way.

To chime on on this subject: Several internships at Google have offered
tremendous learning experiences and network-building opportunities, and the
subtleties picked up by immersion in the communities around the SF Bay area -
or wherever you might fight yourself - are truly valuable. Internships are
great, if you are a student reading this - go forth!

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sp4rki
_I wanted to know if hard work paid off so I worked from 10am to 12am_

While I agree that an internship can be a great motivator (or an early de-
motivator for people that chose the wrong career), I don't think this kind of
extreme behavior should be encouraged. I'm not beneath doing extreme hours for
a project, a few weeks ago I didn't leave the office for almost 72 hours to
finish up some polishing of a product because of a sudden client imposed
deadline. I did it knowing that I would then take a few days off and that it
was an extreme measure to a extremely retarded requirement. It shouldn't be
the rule since it can easily lead to tired and unhappy employees, and of
course disgruntled employees who think they are being undervalued because they
don't stay the same time the over-worker does.

If you have a very motivated employee, by all means let him do his overtime if
he really wants to, but there has to be a line where you say "stop, go home".
In any case, have some good luck looking for great interns. I'm pretty sure
you can do wonders for all the new kids that're just starting out.

~~~
true_religion
I don't know if its encouragement but its definitely what he did.

So we can take away one or two things:

1\. His rapid maturity as a developer, and deeply expanded network came at a
cost to time. If he had worked less, perhaps he would have known less people,
been talked about less, and consequently had a smaller network. Also, the
amount of time he put into the job might be directly related to the expertise
he got out of it ("Practice makes perfect").

2\. His type might just be your competition at an internship.

To be honest, while you're young spending 12 hours per day away from home
isn't so bad. In high-school track, we'd regularly put in 3 hours mandatory
after a 7 hour school day, then do one or two more hours if we were varsity.
We were just teenagers.

Now adays, I can't imagine expending that much time on a single thing (school
related stuff in this case), because I have so many competing interests but
then single-minded devotion was the name of the game.

~~~
sp4rki
I never meant to say that the intern should not do such things. I just meant
that it's not behavior to be encouraged on the workplace because it can have
negative connotations that can hurt the social aspect of the team and/or can
cause burnout which will inherently hinder productivity. If an intern wants to
work 12 hours for any reason by all means let him. But if he's doing 12 hours
+ each and every day to basically prove his worth, there needs to be a limit
before all parties come out losers in the relationship.

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suhail
Actual link: <http://mixpanel.com/internships/>

~~~
Retailslave
Quick question,

The link says,

>We think the best way for you to learn about software engineering is to
actually do it

Does this mean that I can apply for an internship without any coding
experience?

Because I'd love this.

~~~
adrianscott
What's keeping you from getting any coding experience?

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davidu
Well written explanation of how internships are amazing. Mine were all similar
growing up.

~~~
veb
Same here. I learned the same things as OP did too. Git, vim etc..

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nickbarnwell
Are you looking only for current undergrads, or would someone about to
transition to university be fine if we have demonstrable work experience and
recommendations?

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nathanfp
Great story Suhail -- a strong testament to not only why internships are
critical in career exploration (something left out of much of the college
experience) but also as to why startups in particular offer such fantastic
opportunities for interns to grow.

From direct access to founders, CEO's, and advisers to being part of creating
products that go live to working long hours in the trenches which creates a
glue between interns and co-workers -- these experiences make startups an
invaluable place to get early experience as a student.

Looking at mixpanel's internship opportunity it looks like it will be just as
standout -- thanks for sharing what a great internship program can offer.

I'd like to post this story up on the InternMatch blog with your approval. We
can also put the position up for free on the site. Feel free to shoot me an
email for a promo code nathan@internmatch.com.

Great stuff!

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bezidejni
Do you accept students with J-1 visas?

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steven_h
Is there any place where it is easy to find high quality summer internships
for students?

I did research at GA Tech when I was working on my Chemistry degree and had a
blast / learned quite a few interesting things.

I would like to do something similar for the CS degree I am also working on
this summer, but it has been difficult to find a "list" of companies offering
quality summer internships.

Could anyone offer any directions?

~~~
samratjp
Keep an eye on HN Jobs - there will be a flood of listings in the coming
weeks/months (there's already one).

And Quora as well - here's one to start with - [http://www.quora.com/Startup-
Internships/Which-startups-will...](http://www.quora.com/Startup-
Internships/Which-startups-will-be-hiring-CS-interns-for-
Summer-2011?q=which+companies+are+hiring+interns)

If you are looking for startup internships, you can pretty much find one at
almost all of them these days (in the Bay Area and probably NYC). Hit up
www.startuply.com for a huge list of startups. Find ones you like, look into
their jobs page or email someone there. The more proactive you are, the better
your chances.

I assume you are complaining about ATL? Even then, I find it hard to believe
it's difficult to find companies here. Go to some networking events, I am sure
you will find plenty of them in Tech Square :-)

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smalter
i did computer science in undergrad and did a summer with an investment bank.
it made me want to shoot myself in the face. so i went to law school to get
out of tech. now i'm trying to do startups, which probably would've been nice
to do all along.

