What I Learned From My First Month Working At IBM
Three things to help you make the most of your internship
I started at IBM on May 3. Four weeks and 160 hours later, I’d like to share with you what I learned so far while it’s still fresh in my mind.
Why? Well, when it comes to compounding, it’s the work you put in at the beginning that’ll be the foundation on which you build your future successes.
Of course, this is assuming you’re already working in an internship (another article in a few weeks will be on how to get one). However, these lessons are broadly applicable to starting out in a new role or the world of work.
Read on for the top three things I learned after a month full-time at IBM.
Be Curious & Ask Questions
You know, this sounds pretty straightforward — and it is.
Before explaining exactly how you can put this into practice, let’s first take a look at why this is first on the list.
By asking questions, it shows that you’re willing to learn and get up to speed quickly in the case of onboarding — something that the team you’re working with will appreciate.
This means seeking understanding
Ultimately, being curious is with the goal of seeking understanding.
This has two main purposes.
The first is to understand what projects or tasks the team is working on, as it follows that you’ll be working on much of the same things.
The second — and this is arguably the more important of the two — is to understand the why behind what you’re going to be doing, that is, what’s the overarching mission that is being accomplished here?
You should have clarity around the work you’re going to be doing and be able to draw a line from that work all the way to the impact it will have.
Whether it’s someone using the product you helped develop, a new software feature or fixing a critical bug, exciting research, or even customer support, it is important to have this why to propel you forward after the initial boost of motivation peters out.
How to be curious
Alright, here’s how you can implement being curious and asking questions.
Soak up as much knowledge as possible during team meetings. To effectively achieve this involves being ultra-present and listening.
Working remotely, it means minimizing or even closing other applications and muting your notifications beforehand.
With this surface-level knowledge in hand, ask good questions to both fill in gaps (no one is going to explain the whole product or project unless you ask for more details) and build a deeper understanding of the team’s work.
If there are a lot of acronyms being thrown around, those are the easy questions to ask — but their definitions don’t help much if you can’t understand the project as a whole.
During my first month, I made it a goal to ask 15 good questions the first week, 12 the next, then 8 and 4. That works out to three per day over the first week down to about one a day by the end of the month.
Ask good questions
You do want to be asking good questions because internships and even first jobs often come with some amount of impostor syndrome. Trust me, even though you were hired for a reason, this feeling doesn’t really go away until you start making meaningful contributions to the team.
Rather than give you examples of what not to do, here are some good questions instead.
- How does this product work?
Pretty basic, but helps develop understanding. Can only be asked a few times, if at all more than once so make sure to follow-up until you have all the information you need.
- Why are we doing it this way?
Once you have a grasp on how the team operates (i.e., with Agile methodology), you can begin to ask why they decided to take this specific approach. In my case, for the architecture of a project, the team had Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) that they guided me to.
However, a word of caution with the above question: make sure your tone is openly curious and not questioning or interrogatory. Your role is not to question their abilities, merely to understand the team’s processes better.
- How can I do this better?
One of my favourite questions. In a technical role especially (though can be used after presentations or research in a non-technical role), this question shows that you’re eager to improve and helps you do just that. Follow-up on teammates feedback until you know exactly how to do better next time.
For each of these questions, variations are equally as useful to: understand how something works, why something is being done a certain way, and how to improve.
Bring it forward
This past month, I also took a course on Enterprise Design Thinking — which is the framework IBM uses to collaborate and align teams to solve users’ problems — all while improving customer experiences at speed and scale. To do this effectively you need understanding and you need to ask questions.
The first few weeks are just the beginning and it’s easy for inertia to take over afterward. I’m planing on continuing to make it a goal to ask at least four good questions per week for the rest of my four-month internship.
Doing the same means you’re always leaning into growth and always learning. Understanding is built on the foundation of curiosity.
Ask questions to more people than just your manager and outside of team meetings as well. It can be one-on-one with a colleague, which brings us to the next item on the list.
Make Connections & Build Your Network
People are everything.
During IBM’s Intern Kickoff recently, Paul Z told all of us interns that, “if you have to choose between a manager and a job, choose the manager.”
Even though I learned this explicitly after already starting (I’ve got this covered because my team is amazing!), it is useful for you to decide where you want to work. By going where the people are best, you have more opportunity to grow your knowledge, improve your skills, and accelerate your career.
Book meetings
There’s no better way to get to know people.
Especially virtually, it can often seem as if your options are limited. With no office to go to and team meetings perhaps only once a day, as an intern it’s sometimes hard to make the effort.
“Other people are busy.”
“What if they’re not interested?” and “I’m just an intern.”
Use hesitation as a trigger for action, send the Slack message, the email, or the invite. Chances are, people are willing to help you out (particularly as an intern) and if not, they’ll graciously decline. The best case is potentially a great connection, the worst case is the status quo, and the actual risk is zero.
A good place to start is by asking your manager for people he or she could recommend you talk to and even introduce you both. Make sure to articulate what you’re looking for (i.e., career advice, people skills) so they can connect you with the right people.
For example, you could even ask to meet with your manager’s manager. And no, I’m not saying reach out to the CEO of the company (though Arvind, if you want to chat, I would love to : )
Get to know the team first
That said, it’s most important to get to know your team and manager first and foremost. By halfway through my second week, I had met individually with everyone on my team working on shared projects along with my manager too.
Meeting with colleagues helps to build understanding of the product or project and allows you to more easily ask for help when you are stuck with something down the road — and trust me, you will be.
After going over my manager’s expectations for the internship and asking what success looks like during the first week (do this!), I set up a short one-on-one every week with him to talk about how the week went, what I learned and how I can do better.
As an intern, you’re going to be working with other people. So, you should get to know those people as soon as possible. It will help you feel part of the team and you’ll feel supported knowing you can reach out to them for help.
Another thing, if there’s any sort of informal or casual get-together with the team, you should 100% go. My team has a social hour (virtually) every second week with a bunch of other teams as well and not only is it a good opportunity to get to know your colleagues outside of their work selves, but also to likely get to know people from other teams as well.
Opportunities don’t knock
They whisper.
Some opportunities will present themselves, and that’s great, take them if they interest you. However, most of the time, the opportunities that you seek out are the hidden gems that you end up valuing and enjoying the most.
Let me explain. At a social hour, I was talking with a few colleagues about our favourite books which then lead to being invited to a bi-weekly book club. I read the interesting chapter from The Field Guide to Understanding ‘Human Error’ and then at the discussion I was able to share insights with people who were from multiple teams, further expanding my work network.
One informal social hour with the team and one small conversation led to more opportunity to meet people outside of my team.
What’s more, at IBM, interns are encouraged to complete 40 hours of learning over the course of their internship. By actively asking for learning suggestions from my team and manager, as well as others, I was able to complete 40 hours in only four weeks instead of four months and attend events such as Think 2021 and the Center for Advanced Studies Technical Link Event (CASTLE).
Opportunities often lead to more opportunities.
As an intern, you don’t know what effect a conversation you had or a connection you made will have down the road — and this is true whether you’re in a large corporation or a startup.
IBM actually recognizes this. They partnered with Ten Thousand Coffees to allow all interns to be matched with and seek out mentors over the course of their internship. I’ve signed up and created my profile — now looking forward to being paired up with a mentor!
With that, let’s finish it off.
Work-Life Balance
Set boundaries. That’s it. Period.
Rather than go on and on about the importance of taking breaks, exercising more, and eating properly — you have to first know how to set boundaries.
Here’s what I do.
Depending on the day, I open my laptop either at 8am or 9am.
Since 95% of IBM employees — including my whole team — are still working from home and many have families, our first meetings usually start a bit later in the day, around 10am, when their kids are set up in online school.
Every day, at noon, I close my laptop and move to another room, make lunch and eat.
I’m back with my laptop open at 12:30pm and at 4pm or 5pm, depending on the day, I close my laptop.
Notice how I don’t say “start work” and “finish work” but rather “open my laptop” and “close my laptop”. This is because a open laptop means work and a closed laptop equals not working. All of my work applications (i.e., Slack, email, VSCode) are on my laptop only and not on any other device.
While this clear separation of work and life might be harder to carry through your career — imagine you’re an entrepreneur and there’s a critical issue at 9pm but you don’t see it until 12 hours later , *gasp*— it’s something you may find to be extremely beneficial in allowing you to balance other commitments, your social life, and enough time to recharge.
How to set boundaries
Now, I get that not everyone was sent a laptop (thanks IBM!). Nonetheless, the same strategy can be applied to whatever device you have to do work on and even extrapolated to your personal life as well.
Let me explain. Simply create another user account on your desktop and install all your work applications, login to your email, and use it exclusively for work.
Similarly, for the school year, you can create an account for focused work and the other for relaxing, watching YouTube videos, whatever.
What you’re doing here is raising the energy you need to expend — think of it as an action potential or a threshold — to switch from work to personal and vice versa.
The same goes for having multiple rooms. Even if you are limited to one room, you can have a desk that’s for work, a table for eating, a chair or corner for reading, and so on.
Now, I’m not perfect. Some days I work a bit past 5pm or take lunch a bit later. That’s just what happens when you’re interested in what you’re working on. However, find what works best for you, and maybe use this example as a starting point and iterate from there.
In this virtual office environment that a lot of people still find themselves in, work-life balance and setting boundaries are mostly up to you.
Bonus: How to Stand Out
Whaaat, there’s a bonus?! Yes!!
One question I found myself asking to previous interns — and one that my friends now ask me — is along the lines of “how do I stand out?”
Now, it’s only been a month into my internship at IBM but I’ve been working continuously for the past year.
On top of the three points of curiosity and asking questions, making connections, and work-life balance , here’s one final tip that — if applied under the lens of continuous improvement — can make all the difference.
See where you can exceed expectations, within reason. It could be finding a software bug that was overlooked or completing a task in less time, the 40 hours of learning in a month instead of four, in my case.
Exceeding expectations can be a bit nuanced here as well. Try to find other ways to bring value to your team, whether it’s novel ideas, a way of doing things that you bring from a previous experience, or simply asking if there’s anything you can do to help a colleague or the team as a whole.
Similar to Anne Wojcicki saying that just as your health is the sum of what you do every single day, so is the sum of the work you do each day representative of your performance as a whole.
Hopefully you can learn from my experience, and use something you read to help you achieve success in your internship.
What was your experience as an intern? What advice would you give to someone who is just starting out?
Thanks so much for reading! If you want to stay up to date on my articles, follow me on Medium. You can also subscribe to my newsletter or connect on LinkedIn : )
