GO-SQUADS Tech 2.0 — Review

This post is about my journey during my summer internship program at Gojek, we call it GoSquads Tech 2.0.

Looking for internship opportunities is a common thing for students, including my campus, Del Institute of Technology. Usually, we would get information on internship programs from our alumni or through the university’s website.

Before applying to Gojek, I had applied to Google Japan but failed. Then I found out about the internship program at Gojek. I searched for information about internships at Gojek on the university’s website but found nothing because no students from my university have ever participated in the program. So I just applied directly to Gojek.

So, because Gojek uses Kalibrr as the recruitment platform. I practiced a lot for the coding challenge. There a lot of topics that I learned, like Graph Theory, Math, and Ad-Hoc Problems. The time limit to finish all the coding challenge problems is long enough, so I used two days to solve all the problems. There are some problems that I solved after a few attempts. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I would pass the coding challenge because the problems were hard. But, thank the Lord I passed the coding challenge.

The second phase is about creating a simple console app within a week. I won’t to tell you the problem statement, but you can see the official guidelines here to finish the problem. So, I forced myself to learn a lot about testing, good git commit, and Object-Oriented Design Pattern and read the Clean Code. These things were very helpful when I worked on the second phase. There a lot of codes that I refactor after reading the Clean Code. I also implemented some design patterns on my code. Thank God, I passed the second phase.

For the third phase, every candidate will get an interview session. The interview is conducted in English. Before jumping to the interview, I looked up common questions that come up during interviews and wrote my answers to my text editor. I also did some mock interviews with my friends and special thanks to Nathan Azaria that offered to do a practice interview session. When the interview started, I felt nervous because I rarely spoke in English. But after a few minutes, the interview I felt more enjoyable and relaxed. And thank you to Devina Indah Christianti who asked me a lot of unpredictable questions.

A week after the interview, I received a midnight surprise on my email, which said that finally I passed all the phases and became one of the students who will join the internship program at Gojek.

Bootcamp

Starting June 25th 2018, Mochammad Alamsyah, Rifki Adrian, Manan Khanija, Kanisius Kenneth Halim, Ferdinandus Richard, Vincent S Bensawan, Vincentius, Achmad Syarif Hidayatullah, Andri SG, Farid Wajdi, Reynaldi Pane, and I join the Mini Bootcamp, mentored by the senior engineer from Gojek Group. During the first week, we learned a lot about core engineering. During the Bootcamp, we also learned basic things that we should be aware of while coding. Not only technical skills, but our soft skill also trained there. Every day, before we start our technical session, we have a speaking drill session. Everybody should give a one-minute talk on any topic. We also write a blog post every day.

The most memorable moment during the Bootcamp is when we stayed at the office until 3 AM to do our task. Everybody was focused on their tasks. We also discussed with others when we had any issues. After finishing our task, we went back to our hotel and rested for a few hours before starting the next session.

After Bootcamp

The week after the Bootcamp was the time for us to do our project. We have three projects that were designed so well by our buddies. We worked in a team and we had two teams. Each team works on the same project.

While working on our project, we applied the Gojek engineering culture. Every person should work in pairs, known as Pair Programming. We also do daily stand up meetings, either direct or written. We also try to use Test-Driven Development (TDD) during work on the projects. To be honest, we did not use TDD on all projects, but at least we already know how to work with TDD. We also had a showcase at the end of our iteration to show our progress.

Our workspace is merged with our buddies, so we can reach our buddies easily if we had questions about our project. We also often discuss with our buddies on something outside our projects. Our buddies also have a sharing session for the interns. Thanks a lot to our buddies, Giovanni Sakti and team, for the knowledge and effort to maintain our internship program.

Usually, after a day’s work, we eat Go-Rengan, a session where we supplying “micin” or MSG to our body. After getting enough supply of MSG, we go to GoPlay and GoGym. Because we often play at GoPlay, we called our selves GoPlay Fullstack Engineers. We were often the last people to go home from the office because we enjoyed playing there.

We’re happy that our Group CTO attended our last showcase. Although he only came for a short while, he motivated us. What I learned from him is that life is about learning, so don’t stop learning.

I wrote this article after completing the internship. There is a lot of beautiful experience during my internship. I hope it can be a new inspiration for me so I can use my last year in college learning what the industry needs because what I learned in college is very different from what the industry needs.

Once again thank you for everybody that help me during my internship at Gojek. You guys are so awesome!

Cappy Hoding!!! 😎