My Favourite Moments as a Twitch Intern

Hey friends, my name is Maria and I’m a Software Engineering Intern on the Memberships Team at Twitch. Unfortunately, I’m reaching the end of my four-month internship, so I wanted to reflect on my favourite moments with my team, the intern class, and from building out my project!?

Hopefully this helps you better understand what it is like to intern and work at Twitch. And I'd love to learn more about your favorite summer internship moments, so leave a comment about your experience!?

“My favourite ship is friendship”

I don’t think any company’s culture can compare to Twitch’s. If you live and breathe internet culture, love slack emojis (I even call them emotes now because I’m fully converted to Twitch speak), and are a pretty funny person then you’d do well here. Even if you’re not funny yourself, I promise you’ll be thoroughly entertained. The people here are insanely witty and smart and sometimes even I—someone who can watch lectures at 2.5x speed—can’t keep up with how fast chat is going.?

When I first joined my team back in May, I was nervous. As a friendly, but also really introverted person, I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to interact with my team–especially remotely. I remember being invited to a bunch of team meetings on my first day and having no idea what was going on because half of the words they were using were acronyms.?

I asked a teammate what one of these acronyms meant, and after realizing that a new person was in their midst, every single acronym mentioned thereafter would be explained by one of my teammates in chat. Even though all of this information was overwhelming at first, the fact that my teammates cared about my understanding showed me that this internship wouldn’t be so scary after all.?

The team adjusted for me and for any other people who joined, and were SO welcoming. Everyone wanted to help me, and this entire time I felt like I could ask anyone on my team, and other teams, any questions I had.?

Now I’m just gonna list out some of my most memorable moments with my team because there are just too many:

• My teammates forcing/pressuring/encouraging me to “demo” my tech design doc in my first demo meeting.?
• Talking to Cody about fantasy books and then an epic thread of everyone’s favourite sci fi/fantasy book recommendations began (I wrote them down so now I have 5 years' worth of reading material. Thank you.)
• My mentor and manager calling me A MACHINE because of how fast I was going through my project. Honestly, they boosted my ego too much.
• Responding to the apparently classic icebreaker question my team asks: “What’s your favourite ship,” with “I don’t have one,” and consequently triggering certain people. But if you asked me that now, I actually have an answer ?? .?
• Always bringing up how great Haikyuu is whenever we talk about anime to bother Helen (a hater of the best volleyball anime). And just anytime we were talking about anime.
• Literally every team standup, demo, or retro because I always look forward to any team meeting.

“Am I the one making us lose?”

At the beginning of my internship, I decided to join the intern activities committee to help plan events. The first event we suggested, obviously, was to play games. And the one that seemed the most in-between video games and party games was Among Us, so that’s what we played. I personally still love Among Us because my group of friends that I play with are very good at manipulation (I don’t know if that’s actually a good thing, but it’s fun to play with them). So don’t hate on the game, hate on the players you play it with.?

That event was what actually made me realize that even though most of the other interns are gamers, they’re WAY too nice — except for Dylan who marinated me and then killed me. He became my enemy after that day.?

The intern class was pretty big, so I didn’t get to meet everyone. But, we did have weekly randomized group calls that I always enjoyed, because it’s fun hearing about what other people are working on and learning more about them.?

Sadly, I think out of all the games we played in our weekly intern games, and the bigger events like virtual escape rooms, I was usually on the losing team.?

It’s just that not speedrunning escape rooms and also guessing cards without any clues in Codenames are just MUCH better experiences if you ask me. But for anyone who was on one of my teams, I’m sorry that you had to deal with me being so chaotic but I hope you still had fun.

“This project is like NG+++++”

This summer I was working on building a full-stack feature. I’m almost done and I’m going to present it next week during our Kappastone Consortium!?

This project has definitely had many ups and downs for something that in theory should have been easy. But even though it had its challenges, I learned so much from this experience.?

I wish I could show a picture of how it started vs. how it ended because those would be VERY different.?

My team even calls this the Dark Souls NG++++ (a game that gets harder every time you play it) project because at every step of the way it somehow got harder.?

But through all the highs and lows, the celebrations and the pivots, that I have gone through this summer, I can say that I only survived (and also really thrived) because of the people around me.?

My mentor Charles has always been there to answer my questions and to make sure that I’m not struggling on my own. He has been the best mentor I could have asked for and that’s a fact. To be surrounded by people who believe in you and who support you makes a whole universe of a difference. I was so supported by Charles, my manager Richard, and all of my teammates.

So, thank you to all the people who helped me this summer, who talked with me, who gamed with me, and who made me feel like part of a community. You’re all the best <3