This is what THE INTERN taught me

Oh, clarifying the title is not directed to our interns at HackerRank 🙂 They have all been amazing some who are with us, some who have moved to other companies like Google, Booking.com etc and others who have also started their own companies backed by some great investors like YC etc. Here is the full list – 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018-summer, 2018-winter, 2019-summer, 2019-winter, 2020-summer and yes we also have our new batch starting in December and January. Stay tuned to know our this years’ incoming Stars!
I have been asked endless times on how is the internship at HackerRank (interview process to exit), I shall have one of my next posts directed to that.

However, pivoting back, to this times topic. How many of you have watched the movie “The Intern”.  I watch a lot of movies and I am extremely bad with the names of the actors and actresses etc. What I remember is only the characters from the movies. I love the guy who played the role of the intern in this movie and also his boss (Anne Hathaway- I know her 😉 ). The relationship the duo shares is definitely more than that of an “intern” and a boss.

To come to think of it, a couple of amazing thing that I loved in this movie.

  1. The relationship with your junior/senior: We need to give time to understand each other well. Once that’s built, its pretty cool because now we have that one person even at work who we can bank upon in all our highs and lows. Both can enable each other only for good.
  2. Its never too late to learn new things and also never late to unlearn the old stuffs: Everyday we procrastinate to learn something we have always wanted to. Now is the time. It never will be in the future. Same way, its also amazing to unlearn and re-learn newer stuffs from people around us. Of course, finally it is our choice to do what we choose to.
  3. Strong work ethics: Staying organized, punctual, good healthy life habits are some of the key things to continue with our everyday life. Hard but important to follow.  
  4. I did also love the founder vibes throughout the movie. Its so hard to start and build the company fighting all odds everyday at home and at work (beyond my imagination). Being a founder is tough. Continue to building what you actually started vs continue with the investor expectations, this is tough. Boardroom battles are tough. Take the blame on for everything – What shitty culture has the founder built, or what people have been hired or product not that great etc.- this is tough. Little do we think, all founders would love to build the world class company, all investors would want to take the company to IPO. What is our contribution? 🙂
  5. Love the game of risk: Most of us play safe, I play safe! This movie teaches relentlessly to take risk. The tradeoff is always beautiful. I don’t mean to say we wont see failures, we will but we will definitely enjoy this journey.

You should feel nothing but great about what you’ve done, and I’d hate to see you let anyone take that away from you

One of my favourite lines from the fatherly figure intern- Ben.

If you haven’t yet seen the movie – spend some time and share what you loved about this movie 🙂 I am keen to hear your thoughts!

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