{"id":353,"date":"2020-07-30T09:21:42","date_gmt":"2020-07-30T16:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/?p=353"},"modified":"2020-07-30T09:23:06","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T16:23:06","slug":"remote-ready-internships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/remote-ready-internships\/","title":{"rendered":"Remote-Ready: How Mozilla Switched to Virtual Internships in Less Than a Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

In late 2019, Tarik Eshaq accepted a software engineering internship at Mozilla for the summer of 2020\u2014and immediately started counting the days until May.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was super excited. Mozilla just felt like the perfect place for me,\u201d the University of British Columbia junior remembers. He was eager to work on Firefox’s Rust components as part of the Firefox Sync team, and he liked that Mozilla was a mission-driven company working to make the internet safer. \u201cI grew up in Yemen and moved to Canada as a refugee, so I was looking for a way to give back to the global community,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

But a few months later, in early March, Tarik was wondering if the internship would happen at all. The first cases of COVID-19 had just been reported in both the U.S. and Canada, and the outbreak\u2019s economic impact was starting to become clear. \u201cPeople were saying that internships are usually the first thing to go, and that was a big fear for me,\u201d he says. \u201cNot only would I have missed out on working for Mozilla, I would have lost several months of work that I needed to help pay for school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three thousand miles away on the campus of Princeton University, Ph.D. candidate Austin Hounsel was in a similar boat. Austin had interned at Mozilla for the first time during the summer of 2019, helping deploy the DNS-over-HTTPS protocol in Firefox, and had been quickly invited back for 2020. This time, he planned to spend the summer doing research on ways to improve the protocol\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt couldn\u2019t have been more aligned with the work I do as a student, and I\u2019d had a great time at Mozilla the previous year. So I was really looking forward to it,\u201d Austin says. But he knew circumstances were rapidly transforming for companies and schools across the country. On March 11, Princeton had become one of the first universities in the U.S. to send undergraduate students home for the semester. \u201cIt was clear everything was about to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within a week, though, Tarik and Austin would discover that they didn\u2019t need to worry. The Mozillians overseeing the internship program\u2014led by Frances Tam, who\u2019s supported by Abagail Duckham and Alana Sungar\u2014were already hard at work from their homes, figuring out how to make all 21 summer internships fully remote.<\/p>\n

Moving quickly<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, we weren\u2019t sure it was even possible at first,\u201d Frances remembers. Mozilla interns had always worked on-site. But she and her teammates also had an advantage: Remote collaboration was already part of Mozilla\u2019s DNA, with nearly half the company working remotely even before the pandemic struck. \u201cBecause we were already so distributed, transitioning interns\u2019 day-to-day work was actually relatively easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The far bigger challenge, though, would be recreating the social and cultural aspects of a traditional Mozilla internship\u2014and building a sense of community. In a two-day sprint during the second week of March, the University Relations team designed virtual versions of every facet of the in-person program, from executive talks to game nights, and developed new events like fireside chats with Mozilla employees who\u2019d converted from internships to full-time roles. To help interns get to know each other, they brainstormed virtual, Mozilla-themed scavenger hunts and a \u201cmeet and treat\u201d series where each intern would get a DoorDash gift card to purchase a \u201ctreat\u201d to bring as they introduce themselves. And to make the summer at home easier for the students, many of whom had no prior experience with remote work, the team tapped some of Mozilla\u2019s expert \u201cremotees\u201d to share best practices and tips.<\/p>\n

By Friday, March 20, Frances and her teammates had an entirely remote program in place\u2014a feat that, according to Ivy Research Council<\/a>, 96% of tech companies wouldn\u2019t manage until April or even later. The following week, as shelter-in-place orders rolled out in San Francisco, then the rest of the Bay Area and eventually the entire state of California, the team shared their plans with managers, mentors, and the steering committee, and then started setting up Zoom calls with each individual intern to deliver the news. \u201cWe wanted to speak with them one-on-one, not only to share with them that the program was going remote, but to check in on how they were doing, and to answer any questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe timing was perfect,\u201d Tarik says. \u201cI think Mozilla let us know what was happening earlier than anyone else. Even among my classmates whose internships weren\u2019t cancelled, some didn\u2019t get any news until two weeks before they were supposed to start.\u201d<\/p>\n

Austin, too, was relieved to hear the program was still on\u2014and especially touched that Mozilla had decided to preserve a planned housing stipend for each intern, to help them adjust their relocation plans and purchase work-from-home equipment. Not only that, the company also provided all Mozillians with a COVID-19 assistance stipend to spend on anything from food to a charitable donation. \u201cThey wanted to make sure we were all still supported, no matter what our situation was,\u201d he says. \u201cI think that speaks to how much they care about Mozillians, interns included.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/b>There they are<\/em><\/p>\n

Smooth transition<\/b><\/p>\n

As Tarik, Austin, and their fellow interns prepared for the \u201cnew normal\u201d of the summer ahead, their managers and teammates at Mozilla got ready to do their part as well\u2014with a little help from Frances and the University Team. \u201cMost managers weren\u2019t worried; they said, \u2018No problem, we\u2019ve always had team members who are remote.\u2019 But we wanted to provide helpful resources, so we created templates and checklists for remote onboarding\u2014especially for the managers and mentors who\u2019d be managing interns for the first time,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Tarik had never worked remotely before, but the first week was enough to set his mind at ease. \u201cOn day one, my mentor reached out as soon as intern orientation was over, and we had an hour-long one-on-one. Then I sat in on a team meeting, my manager introduced me to everyone, and I started scheduling one-on-ones with each of them,\u201d he says. \u201cI have things to work on; we\u2019ve been in constant communication through Slack and video calls. Honestly, it\u2019s been pretty incredible so far.\u201d<\/p>\n

The transition to working from home has been relatively smooth for Austin, too. While he and his manager both worked on-site in Mountain View the previous summer, the rest of their team had always been distributed. He does miss seeing his fellow interns in person\u2014he lived with three of them during his first summer at Mozilla and quickly developed friendships with the entire group\u2014but he\u2019s been comforted to see the thoughtful efforts by Frances and her teammates to encourage those relationships from afar. \u201cThey\u2019re doing a whole host of things to help us stay in touch, and a lot of the same events we did last summer are happening over Zoom,\u201d he says. \u201cIt can\u2019t completely replace being in person, but I don\u2019t know how else you could do it\u2014and of course I\u2019d much rather we all stay safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to a very active intern Slack channel, where people share a few jokes along with the projects they\u2019re working on, Tarik says weekly \u201coffice hours\u201d have been especially helpful in getting to know his fellow interns. \u201cWe can go and spend an hour just chatting with each other and the University Team, or even just work in the same \u2018room.\u2019 That\u2019s been great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learning opportunities<\/b><\/p>\n

Even with careful planning and a remote-ready team, Mozilla\u2019s first summer of fully distributed internships will no doubt offer plenty of learning opportunities. \u201cI\u2019m sure there\u2019s room for improvements, and we want to understand as much as we can about our interns\u2019 experience this year,\u201d Frances says. And, she adds, what Mozilla learns in 2020 could help make future programs accessible to a much wider range of people for years to come: \u201cBecause we\u2019ve tested this model, we may be able to expand to a more global internship program, where things like time zones won\u2019t be an issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, she\u2019s excited to see what Tarik, Austin, and their fellow interns contribute to Mozilla\u2019s mission. \u201cOur managers treat interns like they\u2019re already full-time members of the team. We want the projects they work on to be part of something bigger and live on long after their internships end.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Interested in working with the Mozilla team? Learn more about working with us <\/b>here<\/b><\/a>. <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In late 2019, Tarik Eshaq accepted a software engineering internship at Mozilla for the summer of 2020\u2014and immediately started counting the days until May. \u201cI was super excited. Mozilla just … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":355,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[327152,327149],"tags":[4868,20258],"coauthors":[306191],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}