My interactions with my internship manager, mentors, and my pod mates



During my explore internship, I worked in a pod of three Explore interns with two Project management mentors, a software mentor, and an engineering manager. As three interns, we have daily team meetings where we have stand-up meetings to update each other on our progress with the project tasks and discuss our goals. Additionally, we have daily meetings with either our software engineering or project management mentors based on the project needs. Then, I have weekly one-on-one sessions with my engineering manager to discuss my weekly progress and strategies for the next week.

My interactions with my teammates, mentors, and manager are both formal and informal. Since I meet with my manager every Friday, we always talk about our weekend plans and discuss topics beyond my project. I have utilized these meetings to learn about my manager’s career trajectory, management style, and Microsoft’s culture. In one of these meetings, I remember requesting my manager for recommendations of full-time employees to have coffee chats to discuss topics ranging from the projects they are working on to how they manage a healthy work-life balance.

Although most of my interactions with my mentors have been formal as we discuss the project management or engineering aspects of the project, there are some meetings where we have talked about my career goals. My mentors have explained what it means to be a full-time roles employee at Microsoft.

During our daily meetings as interns, we always have topics beyond our project. We talk about the intern activities we attend, intern benefits, fun activities we do, schools, hobbies, and career aspirations. Through these discussions, I have learned so much about my teammates beyond them being fellow interns.

The balance of formal and informal interactions with my feature crew has made it a lot easier for me to reach out for help, learn about Microsoft’s work culture, and explore the projects that different teams work on.

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