Internship at Crowdfire: With great fun came great responsibilites!
About the Author: Arijit Patra from Neotia Institute of Technology Management and Science shares his fun experience at a super cool startup – Crowdfire.
I wanted to make the most out of my holidays, and so I started looking out for internship opportunities at startups. I came to know about Crowdfire through a friend who was an avid user, and later, I got to know more about it through Quora, YourStory, and Super. I wanted to intern with Crowdfire and sent them an email along with my resume. I got a call from them later that day. The initial phase of the selection process was a quick round of telephonic conversation with Manish from the HR team. It was to find out a bit more about me, the course I was pursuing, my availability, the field of interest, and past work experience. For the next round, a technical interview was scheduled with Narendra from the Development team. During the course of the interview, I was asked questions from web technologies, the working of the web, and JavaScript. I also shared my past work experience and GitHub profile and was asked a few questions related to them. Later, we talked about the course I was pursuing, the kind of role I was expecting, and new technologies that I could learn so that I could be better at what I would be doing. No, I could not answer all the questions in that interview, but the best part was that the interviewer explained me the things I didn’t know. I was a little tensed and wanted to get the internship offer desperately. Finally, two days later, I got the confirmation email; it felt so surreal, and I got so excited that I barely slept that night.
It was the first dawn of 2016 when I started the journey. Upon reaching Navi Mumbai, I didn’t face any hassle as the company had already arranged for my initial accommodation. The HQ (that’s what we lovingly called our office) did not look like a typical office; it was one of the most uber-cool places that I have ever been to. I was provided with a Macbook Pro Retina! It took me some time to realize that I was actually at Crowdfire HQ holding a Mac. Soon, I was assigned my tasks; though, I was more interested in watching the stunning view from the 23rd floor! My internship majorly revolved around front end development. During the internship, I created a few landing pages, mailers, and web pages. Also, Crowdfire’s dashboard needed a makeover, and so I was assigned to develop and redesign the new dashboard. The tools and technologies that I mostly used were HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, jQuery, SCSS, Grunt, Photoshop, and others.
The absence of formalities makes it a fun place to work at; at the same time, making one responsible towards their work. Firestarters are cool, friendly, helpful, creative, and crazy people. We used to play cricket and football every week after office hours. Friday evening was ‘Jung Ki Raat’, i.e., Counter Strike night. Celebrations never stopped at Crowdfire, be it birthdays, work anniversaries, or festivals. There’s a welcome ceremony for new comers with the entire team. Last week, we partied hard to celebrate Crowdfire’s 4th anniversary.
The learning was immense during the internship, both technical and non-technical. First of all the advantage of a startup is that the team size is low in number and the whole team is spread out on a single floor which helps you to know what is going on. There was a chance to interact with people from other roles, and everyone could voice their opinions. This gave a chance to learn new things from cross-functional roles. Being an intern at Crowdfire, I got the opportunity to be a part of one of the coolest startups in India, and I loved every minute of it. Every day was another opportunity to learn, to do something new. I learned new things over the period (which also includes riding a skateboard), met awesome people, created things which I had never done before, and got to play a lot. I fell in love with the place. There was responsibility but no pressure. I miss our Crowdfire HQ and the Firestarters a lot and plan to apply for a full-time job in the future. Until then, Cheers! :)
Feeling amazed by Arijit’s journey? Check out these programming internships and unleash the coder in you.
Editor’s note – If you also have an interesting story to share, you can now participate in Your Internship Story Contest 2017 and win cash prizes and goodies worth INR 1 Lac!
