When I asked for quotes from our current interns on the team, here is what they had to say:

“Why are you wasting time writing a post.” — John

“I’m debugging here.” — Samantha

“For Pete’s sake Antonio, it’s 3 am in the morning.” — Tyler

Jokes aside, our current (and past) interns absolutely love their experience in our team at IBM.

In order to make this as clear as possible, I’m going to explain things in a FAQ format.

Q: What are the requirements?

You must be:

• Based in Canada;
• Legally allowed to work in Canada without a sponsorship;
• Enrolled in college or university.

Q: What roles are available?

• Software Developer (4 months) (Closed, as we received 400+ applicants for this position.)
• Software Developer (8 months)
• Data Scientist (4 months) (Closed, as we received 400+ applicants for this position.)
• Data Scientist (8 months)
• UI/UX Designer (8 months)

Apply by clicking on the links above.

Q: Can I apply for more than one position?

Yes! For example, if you are fine with both 4 and 8-month development internships, you can apply to both positions.

Q: How many positions are available in total?

We are hiring 10 interns in total.

Q: Do I have to be enrolled in a co-op program?

No. Despite what the job postings say, co-op enrollment is preferred but not required.

Q: Is this going to be a remote position?

It’s hard to predict the future when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic. These internship positions will definitely start off remote, but there is a small chance (for the 8-month positions, at least) that you’ll be required to go back to the office when it’s safe to do so. The office is located in Markham, ON, Canada. If it comes to that, at the time, out-of-province students will receive relocation assistance.

Q: Who are you looking for?

We are looking for enthusiastic students who are passionate about technology. In my experience, the most successful candidates are resourceful and will employ all tools available to succeed in their job (including mentorship and support from our senior developers and data scientists).

Q: How big is the team?

We currently have about 20-25 people on the team, divided for the most part between data scientists and developers. Half of our developers and data scientists are interns, so we put a lot of emphasis on growing interns into fully qualified developers and data scientists. Most of our full-time regular team members were interns in our team at some point in the past.

Q: I don’t have all the skills listed in the job posting, can I still apply?

Think of the “preferred” skills listed as a wishlist for the perfect candidate. The perfect candidate might not exist, however. So apply if you have an interest in the job and you have at least one or two of the required skills listed.

Q: What’s the hiring process like?

• You apply for one or more positions.
• If we think you’re a good fit, we’ll schedule a 30-minute web interview with me and one of my developers (or data scientist for the Data Science positions). This is a technical interview. You won’t be solving algorithmic puzzles or anything like that. Sample question: What are some of the differences between GET and POST requests?
• If you do well in the first interview, you’ll be scheduled for a soft skills interview with me and my manager (an IBM CTO). This interview is even less stressful than the first one. It’s mostly about getting to know you better, your interests, ambitions, etc. Above all, it’s an opportunity for you to learn much more about our team, what we do, and for you to ask questions freely.
• If you did well in both interviews, we’ll inform HR that we want to proceed with you. So the rest is just paperwork.

We don’t have a whole lot of time. May is coming fast. So if you are interested, seize the opportunity and apply now for an internship at IBM! I look forward to speaking with you.

The post Get an Internship With My Team at IBM appeared first on Programming Zen.

This is an amazing opportunity if you meet the following requirements:

• You are legally allowed to work in Canada.
• You are enrolled in university or college.
• A start date in May for 16 months (or in September for 12 months) works for you.

I’m certainly biased, but I believe these are some of the best tech internships you can get in Canada.

We treat interns as peers and invest in their development. Previous interns rave about their experience and how it enabled them to grow professionally.

The best interns often end up coming back to us as full-time employees upon graduation. So this is a great way to get your foot into the industry.

Apply for the internship positions

Please use the following links to apply for the position. If you think you qualify for more than one role, feel free to apply for more than one:

• Back-End Developer
• Front End Developer
• Cognitive Data Scientist

If you want to speed up the process, after applying, send me an email with your resume attached.

How the interviewing process works

I will review all the applicants and select the most promising ones, scheduling a first video interview via web. This interview is with me and, usually, one of my developers (or a data scientist in the team, depending on the position).

We will ask you about your past experience as well as some technical questions. There will be no brain teasers or anything like that. The interview will last between 20-50 minutes.

The questions I tend to ask are foundational in nature. I might ask you about the difference between GET and POST requests, or 400s and 500s HTTP status codes, but not what 508 is used for. You don’t need to brush up on your Algorithms and Data Structures book either.

If you don’t know the answer, we change the subject. I’m hoping to surface your strengths during the interview, not drill you on your weaknesses.

As far as technical interviews go, this will likely be one of the least challenging and stressful you’ll encounter.

After this first interview, the most promising candidates will be invited to a second web interview with myself and my manager (an IBM Director). This second interview is much more focused on your interests and ambitions.

It will also be an opportunity for you to ask questions and learn more about our team and the work we do.

What we value

We love to have a diverse pool of interns.

If you are an amazing coder with weaker communication skills, that’s alright. Less technically strong but are an amazing communicator? That’s great. If you are keen on teaching others difficult technical concepts, we have room for you, too.

We value all the skills you can bring to the team, not just your ability to code. Above all, we value attitude and passion over raw experience.

If you are looking for a great internship opportunity, give this one a chance. I look forward to working with you.

The post IBM Summer 2020 Internship Positions appeared first on Programming Zen.

If you are interested and you meet the requirements below, feel free to email me at cangiano@ca.ibm.com with the subject “Joining your team“. I will make sure to forward you the link where you can apply as soon as it becomes available.

The eligibility requirements are:

• You are legally able to work in Canada;
• You live in, or are willing to move to, Toronto, as the job will be located in Markham, ON.

As long as you meet those two hard requirements outside of our control, you get to toss your hat in the ring.

Why should you join the team?

Although our team is unabashedly part of IBM, we tend to operate more like a startup within a larger company than your typical team in a mega-corporation.

It’s a fun, chill team of people who collaborate together and get a lot done. We hail from Russia, Italy, Korea, India, Jamaica, Canada, Brazil, China, Peru… you name it.

Our team is mostly a mix of developers and data scientists, though overlap does exist depending on the project. I can proudly say that everyone is brilliant and brings a unique viewpoint and contribution to the team.

Two things I love about the team is that we treat everyone the same, regardless of whether you are an intern who started yesterday or a seasoned member of this group. It’s not a team of “yes people”. Our manager loves nothing more than good counterpoints to his arguments.

I also love that what we do matters. For such a small team, we make a huge contribution to IBM’s overall results. More importantly, we change lives.

We’ll discuss the specifics of what we do with the candidates during the interviews, but for now, suffice it to say that we are focused on helping people build the skills they need to thrive in the 21st century. Data science, AI, and blockchain all very much included.

What kind of technologies do we use?

We are not dogmatic. We have the freedom to use the best tool for the job, no matter what that is. As a result, we end up using some pretty cool tools and open source technologies (we also contribute to open source).

We use SCRUM and, depending on the project, we tend to use Ruby, Python, Elixir, and JavaScript, rather than Java or C#. For JavaScript frameworks, we tend to like Vue, but again we are not dogmatic, and also have a couple of projects in React.

We face some challenging scaling problems that require interesting solutions, so we tend to use state of the art DevOps tools and containers whenever possible (e.g., Docker, Rancher, OpenShift, etc).

The interview process

Unlike certain other mega-corporations, you are not going to go through 6 rounds of gruesome interviews to land a job.

You’ll formally apply at the link that will be provided to you. Your resume will be considered along with those of the other candidates who also applied. The most promising candidates will be invited to take part in a first technical interview with myself.

Those who fare well will proceed to a second interview with me and my manager (or possibly someone else from the team). Both interviews are essentially conversations. The first one is technical in nature, the second one is more business-oriented (to evaluate interests, ambitions, learn more about what we do, ask us questions, etc).

The good news is that you can put away your algorithms and data structures book. I haven’t asked tough algorithmic questions in almost a decade. I found that technical conversations about past projects with more open-ended questions are a better gauge for talent. Either that or I have been extremely lucky, because out of the dozens of people I have selected over the years, there were virtually no disappointments.

Beside explaining code you might have on GitHub, you can expect questions like, “Could you explain the difference between a GET and a POST request?” or “What’s the difference between an inner and outer join?”.

Instead of asking you what the 413 HTTP response code is for, I might ask you to tell me what the various classes of HTTP response codes are for (i.e., 100s, 200s, 300s, 400s, and 500s).

You get the idea. If the candidate is more experienced, the conversation can then go deeper and the questions can naturally become more challenging. But I’m not going to ask you to write down Dijkstra’s algorithm on a whiteboard.

Who we are looking for

As I said in the beginning, we have a few positions available and quite a bit of flexibility. We are looking for people who can program, solve problems, and get stuff done, rather than specific languages or a set number of years of experience. We have room for talented juniors as well as experienced seniors.

Full-stack skills are welcome, but people who specialize only on frontend, backend, mobile development, data science, or DevOps are more than welcome to apply as well.

Email me if you qualify and are interested in this position. I look forward to hearing from you.

The post Join My Team at IBM appeared first on Programming Zen.