Whitepages Software Engineering Intern Reviews

Pros

This past summer I joined Whitepages as a front end engineering intern, and by the end of the summer I was a fully functioning member of one of the Full Stack teams. I started the summer with no knowledge of the web frameworks and architectures that were currently being used. My mentor however, did a really good job of finding relevant projects that I could work on while learning the frameworks. I felt like while I was learning I was still making an impact on my team from day one. Once I was up to speed I began taking on projects like any other full-time team member. I can honestly say at Whitepages I was surrounded by people who were willing to help me improve, and I feel that I made an impact from day one. I enjoyed interning at Whitepages and I have decided to return as a full time employee.

Cons

One downside from this summer was performance reviews. I felt there could have been better communication regarding how I was performing throughout the internship. It was unclear if they thought I was doing well or I could improve until the last week of my internship.

Pros

Of all the internships I have done, WhitePages was the best. The management is so friendly and accessible, they are small in size while taking on big tasks, and I even got to work on projects outside of my scope. Senior managers took time out of their day not only to ask me about how I am doing, but to teach me new things and help me. And the internship program is miraculously designed, with free food and free perks as well.

Cons

Honestly, none (for an intern).

Pros

I came to Whitepages as an intern for the backend mobile team. Prior to my time here, I had no experience developing software professionally, but Whitepages made this transition easy. Throughout the full duration of my employment I found myself surrounded by tremendously intelligent engineers who were always happy to lend a helping hand. Furthermore, the outings and happy hours made the experience as fun as it was educational. Perhaps the best part of my internship was that it ended with a job offer! I'm excited to be returning back to the company in the Summer. All interns were given specific projects to work on over the summer. My job was to replace an existing web service with a new, fully rewritten version. While the service used to handle its demand adequately, it had proven to scale poorly. Additionally, the service had mediocre documentation and horribly confusing code organization. I was to rewrite the service in Scala using Futures for parallelism, design an easy to understand code layout, and improve the documentation. The task was quite large, but its many obstacles opened tremendous opportunities for my growth as a programmer. Over the course of the project I had the fortune of gaining experience with Scala, parallel programming, functional programming, RESTful web services, performance testing, documentation tools, and much more! My time at Whitepages was as fun as it was productive. Every other Friday involved a themed happy hour, hosted by a different team each time. These happy hours were made possible by the kegerator and whiskey bar in the common area of the office. Interns got to take part in intern outings to play mini golf and whirleyball, which is a ridiculous combination of basketball, lacrosse, and bumper cars. Whenever there was a day without an event, the Razor scooters scattered around the office provided a fun way to get around. To any computer science student, I would highly recommend interning at Whitepages. The experience was fun, educational, and paid well.

Cons

My mentor had recommended that I give a number of tech talks while I was at Whitepages. While this wasn’t required, I was afraid to disappoint my mentor, and therefor I accepted the challenge. This endeavor was frustrating to say the least. While I loved the engineering aspects of the internship, these presentation ended up occupying way too much of my time. For a couple weeks I dreaded coming into the office knowing that nearly all my time would be sucked away by these presentations. The main project ended up not being completed as a result. Not everyone will experience this, and honestly I should have spoken up about my dissatisfaction soon than I did. Regardless, it was definitely the biggest con of the experience.