Sofia Titova, a first-year student at ITMO’s Information Technologies and Programming Faculty

There are lots of groups and Telegram channels out there where one can find information about various internships. However, I learned about this opportunity from a friend of mine, Yury Bondarchuk, who did an internship at Facebook last summer.

At Facebook, I was put in a team, responsible for community integrity and user behavior, and was involved in the development of user interaction templates. Now it takes me just several hours to create a new template, while before the internship, it took me about a week. What I especially liked about the internship was a very high level of organization and the transparency of the company’s policy regarding the interaction between its staff.

I now understand that in order to work in a big company, one should not only be a professional but also take responsibility for their product, be ready to do more, go beyond expectations. I think that the most important thing that I learned in the course of this internship is the fact that there are lots and lots of opportunities out there, and that everything is real.

Facebook headquarters in California, the US. Credit: : officesnapshots.com
Facebook headquarters in California, the US. Credit: : officesnapshots.com

Lev Dovzhik, a fourth-year student at ITMO’s Information Technologies and Programming Faculty

In the course of my internship, I evaluated the performance and effectiveness of various models and classifiers. In fact, this internship really helped me improve my soft skills. The thing is that at Facebook, they not only give you technical skills but also pay a lot of attention to teaching you to communicate efficiently and work in a team. What impressed me the most was the way the company cares about employees and maintains a work-life balance.

Anver Khusainov, Information Technologies and Programming Faculty

I learned about this internship from my groupmates. I think that it’s very important to be in such an environment where everyone knows about such opportunities. All the information about internships can usually be found in open-access resources, such as companies’ websites, alumni groups and so on.

Facebook. Credit: shutterstock.com
Facebook. Credit: shutterstock.com

The project I was offered to work on as part of my internship focused on information security. I think that it really boosted my design skills. The thing is that when solving a task, you want to make it perfect and write a neat code, which will be easy to read afterwards. In general, I think that you can acquire the same knowledge and skills at any other company.

What is remarkable about this particular company is their review system. In the middle of the internship, we were given provisional results, which was very useful as it helped us understand what aspects needed improvement.

Facebook headquarters in California, the US.: officesnapshots.com
Facebook headquarters in California, the US.: officesnapshots.com

Nodir Dominov, a fourth-year student at Information Technologies and Programming Faculty

I learned about this internship from my friends and decided to give it a go and apply for participation. In my opinion, the hardest thing is to get an invitation to an interview, as there are so many people willing to grab this opportunity.

I worked in a team specializing in databases, and my task was to develop a debugger. I learned so many things in the course of this internship. However, the most important one, I think, is the experience of working at a big company. I now know what it means to be fully responsible for the product you’re working on and do your job with utmost dedication.