Why do you believe the Ada program is good for your company?
Zillow
is committed to creating more opportunities for hiring women into technology
roles. Ada is a great partner that produces professional, and technically
skilled women, who have proven successful in a fast-paced, technically
challenging environment.
Can you describe what your intern’s first day looks like?
First
day included some typical company orientation administered by HR. Then we did
some introductions and space orientation. We performed some basic set-up on the
laptop (e.g. Boostrapping dev tools, chat clients, etc.). We went out to lunch
as a team. We had a 1:1 to catch each other up on backgrounds, general
expectations, talk about the internship project/theme, and to set the precedent
for weekly 1:1s. The tail end of the day was getting into the thick of things –
starting to work through some developer “bootcamp” wikis to make changes to
local instances of services.
What has surprised you the most when taking on an Ada intern?
I’m most (pleasantly) surprised by how clear and
determined the expectations have been for me as the manager. In many cases, having
an intern is a loosely defined process. It’s nice to have some expectations
from the Ada program (and from Brittany herself) about what is expected in the
internship without it being too constrained.
What do you find unique about your Ada intern compared to other
interns?
Brittany
is fearless, ambitious, and determined. Other interns I’ve had/seen in the past
treat an internship as a right of passage or even as a foregone conclusion –
they take it for granted. Not Brittany. She wants to be here. She wants to
learn as much as she can. She wants to prove herself. She contributed code that
went to production in her first week with us. She’s kicking butt and we’re very
happy to have her with us!