This summer was unlike any other. With the pandemic, there was uncertainty about whether our internship program would be possible. After some major work across multiple teams, we were beyond excited to (virtually) welcome 11 summer interns to the neighborhood!
Typically, our summer internship allows our interns to spend their summer fully immersed with their teams at our Nextdoor HQ in San Francisco, learning and developing key skills that will (hopefully!) set them up for success over the course of their careers. However, this year, things were a little different and we needed to get creative. Although virtual, with support and guidance from our wonderful mentors and the flexibility and great attitudes of our interns, we had a fun and unforgettable summer.
Our interns play a crucial role on their teams and are involved in projects that create real impact, some shipping out their first piece of code within their first two weeks. We work closely with each intern to define their areas of interest and match them with a team that will align well with their career goals.
Along with their projects, our interns get 1:1 mentorship, participate in a variety of fun summer events, and meet with each member of our executive team.
Interns meeting with co-founder, Prakash Janakiraman
Our goal is that each of our interns leaves with more than just some branded swag after the summer. We hope that they’ll sharpen their technical skills, gain real-world experience, develop personally and professionally, and ultimately, leave with fond memories of each other and the Nextdoor team. Despite the virtual nature of this summer, we’re confident that we achieved this.
And with that, let’s get to know our Summer 2020 Interns!
Why did you choose to intern at Nextdoor?
“Right from the first interview, I was really struck by the honesty and compassion with which everyone spoke. You got a real sense that everyone here wants to improve the product to facilitate a kinder, more equitable digital space. Everyone I met in the process was kind, wicked-smart, and a great designer. I also knew that there was a real opportunity at ownership, even as an intern.” Chanel Kim, Product Design Intern – Design Team
“Coming into this recruiting cycle, I was looking forward to working at a high growth startup with an amazing engineering bar. While interviewing for Nextdoor I had a really great time, and I decided that this experience was indicative of a phenomenal culture that this company has carefully cultivated. I could not have been more correct, and have thoroughly enjoyed meeting such passionate people who are trying to make positive changes within communities!” Ruban Rengaraju, Software Engineering Intern – Infrastructure Team
“Nextdoor’s mission and purpose resonate with me. I really value community and kindness, and it’s amazing to work for a company that places these two values at the forefront. I love how Nextdoor not only prioritizes these values in their product but also in its own community.” Iris Chow, Software Engineering Intern – Feed Infrastructure Team
In a few sentences, describe the main project you worked on this summer.
“My main focus for this summer was reworking the notification center for the web platform. I have implemented a visual redesign and separated notifications into sections on a time basis so users can more easily view their recent notifications. A new feature I have been working on will allow users to receive notifications in real-time, which I am really excited about!” Angela Pan, Software Engineering Intern – ME Retention Team
“To keep our members safe on our platform, I built a browser redirect service that decreases exposure to potential fraud and misinformation.” Bilal Lafta, Software Engineering Intern – Neighborhood Vitality; Trust & Safety Team
“I worked on content understanding for the content ranking team so we can understand our content data more comprehensively and deeply. We explored using embeddings to represent texts and capture the meanings. I compared performances of different state-of-the-art embedding methods by benchmarking on different datasets and models as well as analyzing their latencies. I also got the chance to deploy some models to production and performed testing on them.” Sabrina Luo, Software Engineering Intern – Member Experience; Content Ranking Team
What was the best part about your internship at Nextdoor?
“Nextdoor opened my eyes to the possible positive impact I can have with my career. I loved meeting so many people that are passionate about making the world a better place, and it was inspiring to learn how I can use software engineering to contribute towards a cause I truly believe in. While I learned so many technical skills, the most important thing I’ll take away is the life lessons and advice I gained from other Nextdoor employees!” Cidney Wang, Software Engineering Intern – Local Identity Team
“The Meet the Leads (Nextdoor’s leadership team) sessions where the interns got to hear everybody’s career stories were really insightful! It was interesting to listen to how they ended up joining Nextdoor and it was a great opportunity to learn how Nextdoor functions as a company at all levels.” Danny Lee, Software Engineering Intern – Local Discovery Team
What impact did you feel like you had on Nextdoor?
“I was able to immediately work on delivering a feature for our ML training and serving client. From there, my team trusted me with building out performance monitoring from the ground up, and I spoke with various model owners to gather feedback and tailor the service to their needs. This will provide visibility into how our ML models in production are performing over time and whether they need to be retrained.” Richard Huang, Software Engineering Intern – Core ML Team
“I wrote a SPICE (our decision-making framework) to provide detailed explanations and context to the project I worked on during my internship. By sharing this SPICE, I was able to educate a significant portion of the company on gender identity, gender expression, gender variation, and the importance of pronouns.” Ari Fromm, Software Engineering Intern – Neighborhood Vitality; Connections Team
“I hope I was able to bring an interesting perspective to the company! It was really cool working on a team dedicated to driving growth and I am excited about the work I did contribute to the efforts of the Growth team.” Maansi Manchanda, Software Engineering Intern – Acquisition & Activation Team
As our summer internship program came to an end, we hosted an Intern Showcase where our interns presented their projects to the entire company. Like years past, it was filled with great ideas, thoughtful questions, and lots of smiles. It was the perfect way to end our remote internship program.
Feedback from our Head of Engineering, Antonio Silveira
Join us in applauding our wonderful interns for their contributions this summer and for sharing their personal experiences! If you’re interested in our internship program or full-time opportunities, be sure to check out our careers page for more information!
