 know that tomorrow will be your evaluation as an intern because I was scared like when I read your project I was scared I was scared for you and for myself I'd love to live here one day hello and welcome this is coffee with smoke and today we have a guest and our guest is Jay Jay is intern here at Amazon and he kindly agreed to join us on our show so this is a first guest of mine I'm very pleased to have you well here's all mine thank you so Jay tell us a bit about yourself so you're an intern here yeah where you're from so I came from Portugal I studied computer science in Lisbon and this summer I spent it all in London interning at Amazon with Rafal as my mentor so you decided to give up your summer in Portugal yeah come in London and known for its awesome weather awesome awesome climate and fantastic beaches yeah like Lisbon so was it hard for you to like decide on the step and all risk I'd say it wasn't hard at all doing an internship at a big company like Amazon is something that I wanted for a long time so when I knew that I got it I just said yes I didn't think twice about it to something that I wanted for a long time and I was sure I wasn't kind of regret it so how do you like London so far do you enjoy it here I like it a lot like London is one of the few cities in Europe where you can find anything that you want be like if you want anything related to art culture very niche specific things London is one of the few places in Europe where you can find it like it's a great place and I love to live here one day you end up getting a better life here if you don't count rent and some services which are much more expensive basically more buying power I think yeah yeah I understand like the whole transition to London and to Amazon was a bit hard like an adventure but at the same time you know how was it yeah it was a shock at the beginning but I think when you come here and you start dealing with the people here you realize that everything's much more chill than what you might have thought about before you actually came basically what you're saying was you are not afraid to deep for to go come to London yeah it's like when you're afraid of things but at the same time your response to being afraid is just like ignoring the fact that you're afraid and going at on and kind of forgetting that you're afraid some people deal with it that way I think this was an experience and I dealt with my fear that way and everything turned out okay so yeah right did you manage a logic accommodation transport of your things by your own or did you have any help I did it on my own so transport of my things I just brought what I brought on a plane so that was easy and the accommodation Amazon referred one student accommodation here in London which takes internees during the summer so I spoke with them and I arranged my own accommodation through them all right so basically no brain error yeah everything laid out for you that fantastic like when I was applying to different jobs back in my time I often heard about this you know notion that interns often do unimportant tasks like brewing coffee running for office supplies back and forth but you've been tasked with something that I would consider difficult for me right when I read your task I was kind of worried that I'm going to be your mentor and at the same time I don't really understand the task in its entirety right and there was a lot of sections that I don't know how to help you with and I was worried that you know you're gonna ask questions I won't have answers so yeah the the project that they gave me was design or redesign these old feature of our product and yeah as you said it wasn't completely straightforward or just fetch coffee yes type of task so this is your what eighth nine ninth week today yeah ninth week yeah so total is 10 weeks and how are you liking it so far so I'm loving it here so when you're an intern you're given a project to work over the summer so you get to design your own feature your own like little piece of something that it's used by thousands of people and you get tons of feedback for from amazingly talented people and you get to incorporate all that and get a lot of help and just grow over the summer probably like I've never liked grown before I'd say don't worry you have plenty of that to come given your experience so far could you say that you learned a lot what have you learned actually here in Amazon I'd say that computer science related things I've learned a lot about code quality about testability making sure things not only work but they work properly and everything is in place for for the future and for other people especially because when you go for yourself or on college projects you don't care so much about that but here is really important and I start to really care about those aspects of my code and I'd say that the thing that I got most from my internship here is actually dealing with other people talking to customers being able to write good documents that other people can understand and what people usually call soft skills are something that you really need and I think they should be as hard as the other ones yes so having that said I think that forgive me but I don't know but I think that in university you don't get really work on design docs or any sort of documentation right this is not a part of no it's mostly you get okay so do these and then you do it and you submit it and that's it so what parts of like the college knowledge is actually important what what parts of this knowledge is helping you I'd say that what you get from college in computer science is mostly the experience of like knocking your head on the table and getting things to work at the beginning things don't seem it seems almost impossible or you can do the things they ask you but after like a week of extreme struggling you came out and you say okay I made these and it works and I think what you get from college is mostly the experience of being terrified and having no idea how to make this thing work and then you're actually able to do it and then you come to a place like these and you get a little bit of the same feeling but since it's something that you've known before and you dealt with and you got past you come here and you're not so stressed about because you know okay I've been in a situation before like I had no idea how to do things than I learned here is gonna be the same no need to panic so stress of or rather fear of ambiguity and navigating around that fear this is something that I've yeah it's kind of important to like understand that oh even if you don't know something there are people that will help you even like direct you into a way like you can reach out and you get the help so let's try this I know it's a hard one yeah so what would you say is the best thing at Amazon so far so I don't have much of a reference because it's my first internship my first experience with the real companies I really can't compare it to other things but I've loved the people I work with the work I'm doing and the work life balance is great the salary as well can't ignore that yeah and the environment in the company I think overall it's great you don't feel over pressure to I think it's a good balance of everything okay good happy to hear that so a trick question what how's surprised you the most in Amazon what did you not expect and it happened or did you have any expectations and they didn't happen again since this was my first internship I literally had no I didn't know what to expect I came in like getting ready to accept things that came my way what surprised me the most I'd say it was mostly how I was expecting a big corporate environment and what I ended up with was like a four-person team and with the same dynamics that I would have in like a group project in school so that was really nice that's great to hear yeah yeah I think that was the thing that that was more against my expectations okay and it was a good thing I think when you come to a place like this you really learn to talk to people to just okay you don't know this all this part of the software works who you talk to rough would be this part of the software they tell talk to someone even if he doesn't know he points you in the right direction you go you speak to them people are super friendly they tell you like okay so explain you what's going on what do you need to do to achieve what you want to achieve and you start learning like your surroundings like that mm-hmm what you're scared at the beginning yeah like it can be a little intimidating but when you get past your fear and I think you're real you realize that you can yeah like because I was scared like when I read your project I was scared I was scared for you and for myself I think it's the thing that talked about you that you gain from college yeah it's scary but you know that in the end you're gonna get there mm-hmm that's great so would you recommend the internship in Amazon to others yeah I would for sure recommend the internship so these three months just flew by they were like super fun I didn't I almost didn't feel like I I was like slaving and working and not being at the beach like it just went smoothly and I'd recommend it to anyone because you get great experience Amazon looks great on your CV either way and the work is interesting you meet tons of great people they organize like a lot of events for interns you can have fun with people your own age as well and at the end it's just a summer well spent and you also managed to make a little bit of money over the summer which is always good as well right so I know that tomorrow will be your evaluation as an intern so I wish you all the best good luck have my fingers crossed and I'm hoping that you'll get an offer because yeah I don't know if you guys know but every internship here in Amazon or at least almost everyone is like finalized with reviewing the project that intern did and you may end up getting an offer from Amazon so that's what I wish to you Jay yeah I wish that as well all right what happens and anything else you want to add no I think that's mostly it I think I cover a lot of things that I myself have questions about before I came so I hope it helps someone was considering it at least right so people shouldn't be afraid of relocation and living and no I mean it's just a great experience like you you grow so much and it's totally worth it even if you're scared just ignore that just go okay so thank you so much hey thanks for joining coffee with small and you just have to reach and yeah don't be afraid I'd say that's the most important thing thanks so much for joining and remember you can always do a comment and subscribe see you in the next one bye cheers and that's usually like a huge spike on yeah so you can tell me the some recorded and they don't have to do the whole thing again actually you didn't but don't worry we have this mic and we'll be able to