The capstone project has yet to really take off. So far we’ve only chosen teams/project ideas and set our team standards, but tomorrow I am finally meeting with my team face-to-face (well, via Zoom at least). We will discuss our project plan, and we’ll finally start setting concrete details for the project. That being said, I’ll probably have more to talk about capstone-wise in next week’s blog post.
This week, I want to talk about my pivot in careers. Upon beginning this program, I immediately knew that I needed to start looking for internships, seeing as that would be a great way to gain industry experience and the easiest segue into a full-time job after graduating. Since I started this program in January 2021 as a full-time student, I missed the very critical Fall 2020 recruitment cycle. Although not impossible to snag an internship in Winter/Spring 2021, availability is much lower. Since I was also planning to graduate in one and a half years, time was of the essence. Therefore, the minute I could put this program on my resume, I started applying to internships (okay, so I might have started applying a tiny bit earlier than that).
Lucky me, though! I received several interviews for software engineering internships right away! Aaaand I bombed them all. I guess my one month of CS 161, CS 225, and Leetcoding was not enough to pass interviews. Who would’ve thought? I had almost given up on my internship search when I got an interview from Facebook for a Technical Program Manager (TPM) internship position. Although not a software engineering role, I was not going to pass up a chance to work at a tech company like Facebook. After three rounds of technical interviews, including a coding interview and a system design interview, I got the job! It wasn’t a coveted software engineering role, but I would still be working in a technical capacity with software engineering teams, so that would be great experience. I initially saw this as a steppingstone to working as a software engineer. I began my internship in June 2021 the Monday after finals.
My official role was Technical Program Manager for Feed Infrastructure. Essentially, I was a TPM in the organization that develops and maintains the infrastructure that delivers media to your Facebook and Instagram feeds. This may seem like a pretty nebulous description, but that’s exactly what this position was at first: nebulous. It seemed like I was thrown in the deep-end. Here I was, an intern two quarters into a computer science degree, telling veteran software engineers what to do and how to do it. It was terrifying! Throw out any corporate cliché, “hitting the ground running”, “drinking from a fire hose”, etc. and that was me. To be honest, it was incredibly stressful at first, and I had to fight my imposter syndrome at every turn. But I really grew into the role, and I began to love what I was doing.
Some time ago, I started to have doubts about how long I could work as a software engineer coding my days away. Although I find programming enjoyable, I felt like I wanted to work in a technical capacity but not deep in the weeds. I wanted to work on the bigger picture. And my summer as a TPM intern gave me exposure to a whole other career path that seemed to fulfill those desires. That’s why I accepted the return offer for a full-time TPM position with Facebook.
So I began my career as a mechanical engineer and began to pivot to software engineering. But life had other plans, and I ultimately ended up pivoting to technical program management for my first post-program job. Who knows what other career paths the future has in store for me?
Okay, I do. I’m already eyeing a pivot to Product Management, but that’s for a later blog post.
