By Katie Thompson, the Career Design Center

Parth Upadhyay is a Software Development Engineering (SDE) intern at Facebook on the Real Time Infrastructure team. This is his second internship. His first internship was at Bloomberg in New York City, New York.

How did you hear about the internship/research fellowship?

I heard about my internship from the career fair, after which I applied through ScienceWorks to get an interview.

What has your experience like so far?

The experience has been almost surreal — moving across the country for a summer to live in a completely new place and get immersed in a new group of people and job can make for something monumental. Facebook has been an incredible time so far. The work is interesting, the culture is incredibly open and the people are welcoming and helpful.

Based on your experience(s), would you recommend this to other students?

I would definitely recommend anyone in Computer Science to really consider pursuing an internship for the summer. It’ll be a great experience that will teach you a lot about our field as well as a lot about yourself.

What kind of influence will this experience have on your future?

I think that internships really help you get a different perspective on the stuff we learn in school, as well as a good look inside of real tech companies and how they operate. Working on code in the real world is so much different (and often more interesting) than the carefully concocted examples in school. They also help you better understand what your interests are and give you a chance to see one potential career path in computer science. And getting paid for a summer isn’t so bad either.

If you had the opportunity to do this again, would you? Why or why not?

If I had the opportunity I would definitely do it again! Facebook’s perks and its culture make it a really great and open place to work and having the opportunity to be in the company of the incredible people who work there is something I’d love to do again.