My Internship Expierence at Hurricane Labs
Backstory
I’ve seen blog posts of interns writing reviews for big tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft. I thought Hurricane Labs deserved one too. This link describes what HL does: Hurricane Labs.I was the only person left without an internship my sophomore year. A group of Baldwin Wallace University (BW) students and I were at the BSides security conference. They were all working at Hurricane Labs, Secure State, and other places. I was the odd one out working at Walmart. I felt envious but reminded myself these students were juniors and I was still a sophomore. I was very late on the summer internship game. I didn’t want to take on an internship until I felt ready. I thought if I did a bad job, I would block out other women. If I did a terrible job I wouldn’t just hurt myself, I’d hurt all the future women trying to get a job at the same company. If a company has repeated bad experiences with a group of people, I think they’d just stop hiring them. This is what I thought back in 2015-2016. I had four years of coding experience + did a high school internship and I still didn’t feel I was good enough for an internship. It’s kind of sad how I held myself back my sophomore year. I managed to wake up late April and applied to OEConnection, MRI Software, and Hyland Software. I interviewed at Hyland. I was rejected from all three places.
I really wanted to work for Hyland. I needed something on my resume to give me a better chance of getting in. I joined the MOPS (MObile Privacy and Research Group) at BW. I also ran my own NCL (National Cyber League) team at BW. I was worried about getting an internship so I had to improve my chances!
My junior year BW had a mock-interview event. Its where employers do pretend interviewing. Sometimes these pretend interviews turn into real interviews. I signed up to interview for OEConnection and Hyland Software. Someone switched up my interview schedule from Hyland Software to Hurricane Labs. I found out about this change less than two hours before the event. I thought HL interns read logs and HL created the product Splunk. Anyways I managed to become a pentest intern after this whole mix-up happened. I would’ve never worked at HL if the mix-up didn’t happen. I’d probably be at Hyland Software right now.
Review
Trust
HL really trusts the employees. Everywhere else I worked the mentality was “Distrust first then trust”. At HL the motto was “You haven’t given me a reason to distrust you, so I trust you”.Perks
The office manager bought vegan food for me. We had free-meal Fridays. The interns were given a phone and a mac laptop. We had a bonus point system going on (points translate into money). I was given an extremely flexible schedule. I could open the office on Saturdays if I wanted to work. You can work up to 29 hours a week. HL is located on Rockside road which is the best location around Cleveland to work. The Christmas parties are fun. The employees get access to a free library. This was the premier internship for any college student.Experience
1. After a few projects in, I wasn’t so anxious about them anymore. The question became ‘Can I get this done’ to ‘When will I get it done’?2. Learned to use the right programming language for the job, not my favorite.
3. Learned how to interact with customers in a professional setting.
4. My database diagram skills really clicked after a project I did.
5. I was forced to use git command line. Thanks! I’m not a GUI noob anymore.
6. I made a PHP website.
7. I became a better pentester, but I still have a long way to go on that front.
8. I created a bunch of Python tools for our pentest environment.
9. I used Python, Bash, PHP and NoSQL for the first time.
10. Dealt with OTR, PGP, SSH keys, Mobile Hotspot, and Duo authentication.
11. Played the role of "Manager of the Tasks" for eight months.
12. I became a more confident programmer.
13. I now look for bad coding practices in my code that could lead to a breach.
13. I didn’t like small-businesses. I wanted to work somewhere big. Big = more people. Working at HL changed my opinion about small businesses.
Downsides
I wish my manager would’ve checked on me more. A “Yo how’s it going? What are you doing?” would’ve been nice. I personally like to have some contact with my manager.Closing
In the Spring of 2017 I had my second interview with Hyland Software. I was offered the internship at my dream company. I chose to stay with Hurricane Labs instead. This says a lot about how HL grew on me. It felt wrong to quit a job I liked. Hyland wanted me to work 40 hours in the summer. I wanted to take 2-3 summer courses at Tri-C. There was also no guarantee I would stick around Hyland Software after the three months were over. I knew I would be at HL until my graduation.Things that impacted my decision:
1. I need to pay my $180 car payments.
2. I want to take Summer courses. This will be very hard or impossible if I intern at Hyland.
3. No guarantee Hyland will keep me. Although they are paying me three dollars more per hour, I’d still lose money.
4. My gut feeling was telling me no. Everything was going right at HL, why quit?
5. I’ll just have to join Hyland as a Developer 1 after graduation. I can do that.
I believe I made the right decision in sticking with Hurricane Labs during that period.
I’d recommend any college student to apply for an internship here.
Advice
Advice Bit #1
“Our careers will always be more important than any specific job or company. Pursuing a career inside a company is not the same thing as pursuing our own careers. Our careers are like staircases and our jobs are the steps” (Mancuso 114).“If we are working for a company where we have autonomy, mastery, and purpose, and the job is aligned with our own career aspirations, then pursuing a career in that company is the right thing to do. However, if pursuing a career inside a company means deviating from our long-term career aspirations, we should probably find another job, regardless how much we are paid” (Mancuso 114).
Look at your current position and ask if it aligns with your career aspirations.
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