A day in the life of a Software Development Intern at Bandwidth

My day at Bandwidth usually begins around 7:30am. One of the things I love most about working at Bandwidth is that my work hours are very flexible. I am a morning person, and as such, the morning hours are my most productive, so I try to get in early to take advantage of that.

Once I arrive at my desk, and get everything set up for the day, it’s time to dive in. One important thing to know about Bandwidth is that everyone has important work to do, even the interns. As a part of the software development team, I have projects to work on that add value to the company. Currently, I am working with another developer intern on an end-to-end SMS delivery analysis. I know, it might sounds pretty boring to the outsider looking in, but it has given me an opportunity to learn a lot of different technologies, and allows me to add value to the company.

At 9:30 every morning, we have our daily standup meeting. This is where our whole team gets together on a Google hangout and reports on our previous day of work, and talk about what we hope to accomplish in the next day. The meeting is short, but everyone gets a chance to talk about their progress and get any needed clarifications.

The rest of my morning is spent working on my projects, which means I could be writing code, finding and fixing bugs, or doing research into solving my newest challenge. If I ever get stuck, I have plenty of support to help. I usually start by bouncing ideas off the other intern I work with, and then I have a mentor and a manager who are always happy to give suggestions.

You may have heard, but lunch time at Bandwidth is awesome. In case you haven’t heard, Bandwidth employees get paid to take an extra half hour on their lunch break, as long as they use their lunch break to exercise. As you might imagine, this means there are always sports and games being played during lunch. One day I might find myself going for a nice long walk by myself, and the next I could be playing four-square on top of the parking deck or flag football on the nearby fields. The exercise is not only a great way to break up the work day and reenergize for the rest of the day,  but it is also a great opportunity to meet people from all areas of the company that you normally would never interact with.

Once I get cleaned up from my workout, I get back to my desk ready to finish the day strong. Some days end with triumphs, while others end in frustration, but the challenge is what makes the job rewarding, and that’s why I look forward to going to work every day.

While I have described a fairly average day for me, no two days are exactly the same. There are intern breakfasts where we get to have Q&A sessions with company executives, demo sessions and 1 on 1 sessions with my manager, and many other fun and interesting things throughout the day.

In short, working at Bandwidth is everything I could have asked for in an internship. There is a fun, vibrant, intensely competitive culture, and everyone has the opportunity to contribute and be a part of the great things Bandwidth is accomplishing.

This is part of our blog series written by our awesome Summer 2017 Interns.