From First Day to Full-Time: Lessons from SoT Alumni at Trade Me

From Summer interns to full-time Trade Me team members - Aorthi and Hannah’s journeys are a great example of where a Summer of Tech internship can take you. We chatted with them about how they got started, what’s changed since those first days, and their best advice for new interns preparing for their own career beginnings.

What internship were you originally hired for through Summer of Tech? 

Aorthi: I was originally hired as an Intern Full Stack Developer in Trade Me Property.

Hannah: I was hired as an Intern Full Stack Developer in Trade Me Jobs, working within the B2B team (helping job advertisers use our platform).

What is your role now, and how is it different from your internship role?

Aorthi: My role now is Senior Full Stack Developer in Trade Me Motors, but in October I'll be transitioning to a completely new role where I will be joining our Platforms team as a Senior AI Engineer. 

Being a senior means I get to take on a lot more responsibility, get to work on the bigger picture instead of focusing on a single piece of work at a time, and I get the chance to mentor others. It's been awesome to grow my skills over the years and I still carry the lessons I learnt during my internship with me! 

In my new role as an AI engineer, I'll get the opportunity to grow Trade Me's AI capabilities and community and help our engineers build quality AI applications, I'm super excited to specialise further into the AI space!

Hannah: I'm now a Junior Mobile Developer (iOS) in Trade Me Property B2C, which is very different context - my background is in full stack development, but I have been working on a personal project in mobile which helped me to transition into this role a month after my internship. I work across our two mobile apps, Trade Me and Trade Me Property, with a focus on improving user experience and platform stability across the Property app.

What was the most rewarding project you worked on as an intern?

Aorthi: I got to work on the premium search cards for property. My first time working with angular, and its super cool to think people are still looking at the search cards I helped to build all those years ago.

Hannah: I really enjoyed helping the support team with technical issues in production - it was rewarding to be able to directly help Trade Me Jobs users and make their experience better on our platform.

What helped you successfully transition from an intern to a graduate role?

Aorthi: The biggest thing is not being afraid to put my hand up for things I didn't know how to do. I went out of my way to seek pieces of work that I didn't even know how to begin, and I'd be honest with my team and ask if I could jump on that piece of work to learn. 

Then I'd be proactive and reach out to the seniors in my team to ask them where they would begin with something like this. It was important to not ask them how to do something, but more ask about how they would figure out how to do something.

Hannah:  Beyond making connections in Jobs and expressing my interest in staying on beyond the internship, being open to different kinds of technical roles beyond my internship role was helpful. Once the team knew I was interested in mobile as well as full stack, that opened the door for more opportunities!

What challenges did you face in making that transition, and how did you overcome them?

Aorthi: Realising that just because you're no longer an intern, it doesn't mean you are immune to feeling dumb I think I thought that I'd magically know everything by the time I transitioned to being a grad (or thought I was expected to!) and it felt disheartening at the beginning when I felt like I was still struggling with things that felt basic to the intermediate and senior devs in my team.

Turns out, that was VERY normal and you absolutely aren't expected to know everything even when you're no longer an intern! Getting comfortable not knowing things and figuring out how I best learnt and developed my skills were the best ways to get through this.

Hannah: There was a big learning curve involved in familiarising myself with the mobile codebase and learning the Property product after being used to Jobs. I was also learning a new programming language from scratch (Swift). 

What's helped my learning most is asking lots of questions, taking on tickets which expose me to unfamiliar concepts/parts of the codebase, and taking time to learn Swift through small-scale projects (HackingWithSwift has been an especially helpful resource).

What was your biggest learning moment or challenge during your internship and the start of your grad role? 

Aorthi: The first time I broke production! I felt so bad and stressed, and then everyone in my team was SO lovely about it and they explained to me that it was totally normal and these things happened. 

They also told me it's good to break production from time-to-time, that means you're doing something meaningful and taking some risks.

What is more important is having systems in place to notice it and restore your application quickly, and making sure you reflect and get learnings from that mistake. I have since broken many things and led many incidents, and each time I become a stronger dev from the experience!

Hannah:   A big but important challenge has been being comfortable with what I don't know - gaining familiarity and confidence takes time and it's expected that you'll need a lot of support to get there. When you onboard to an intern role the learning curve can be overwhelming, so being kind to yourself and trusting the process is important.

How did your Summer of Tech internship set you up for success?

Aorthi: It gave me the chance to try an actual job and see how building software looks in the real world. I wasn't sure I wanted to go into a technical role at the end of my degree, I thought I'd move to consultancy or something outside of tech. However, getting hands-on experience in my internship made me realise how much this career pathway had to offer and I realised how much I enjoy the work.

Hannah: It gave me super valuable exposure to how the development lifecycle works here and gave me the opportunity to meet people from all over the company. Getting to work on a production codebase was an experience I'd never had before and it really opened my eyes to how a large-scale platform operates and all the things you have to consider when making changes to it. My team treated me as one of them and that collaborative participation was so invaluable for learning how to work with other developers, test analysts, product owners, and the customer experience team to name a few.

How can students make a strong first impression during their internships?

Aorthi: Be proactive! Don't just get in there and do the tasks assigned to you, put your hand up to do things that take you outside of your comfort zone and make the most of connecting with people at the company you're interning at. So many people in the industry are happy to sit down and have a chat with the interns at their company, don't be afraid to ask and make that connection.

Hannah: Be fearless and excited to take on new challenges - lean into the excitement of the whole experience! Learn as much as you can, ask lots of questions, and spend time with everyone in the team you're part of. They'll all have differing but very valuable perspectives which will broaden your experience. In your first couple of weeks once you have some familiarity with your role, set yourself some goals for the internship. What do you want to get out of your experience? Have a bit of a plan in mind and chat to your team about how you can achieve your goals in the timeframe.

What should students & grads in the Summer of Tech programme focus on going into next year?

Aorthi: Figure out how to make your passion shine. Whether that be through personal projects, reflecting on projects you've done for assignments, or how you connect to a company's product or values.

Hannah: Building projects is a great way to show prospective employers your knowledge and initiative to learn. Spend time working on a project in a language you're interested in, and practise talking about it with others so that you can confidently speak to it during interviews and networking events. Plus it's fun to build something and show it off! I'd definitely also recommend attending hackathons and working with your peers on projects together. Showing that you know how to collaborative with others is super valuable in the industry.