This year, MongoDB welcomed 33 university students to our intern program in Engineering, Marketing and Education. In this series, we'll introduce you to the talented students who are helping us transform development and operations for how we run applications today.
I got to sit down with Jason Brooks, an Engineering Intern on the Internal Tools team.
Where do you go to school, what is your major, and what year are you in?
I go to Yale University. I am a rising Junior and I am majoring in Computer Science.
What is your role at MongoDB?
I am a software engineering intern working on the internal tools team on the MongoDB timeline project. I’m creating a central aggregator for all internal events, helping employees keep track of what’s going on with the projects they’re working on.
How did you find out about the internship program at MongoDB? Why did you choose to come to MongoDB?
I originally heard about it at the Pennhacks Hackathon. One of my good friends also worked here as an intern two summers ago. I really wanted the opportunity to work on an Open-Source Project.
What’s your hometown?
Hewlett, NY, a suburb in Nassau County on Long Island.
Did you have previous experience using MongoDB before you arrived? If so, how are things different now that you work at MongoDB? If not, how did you learn MongoDB and how was the education process?
I had played around with MongoDB before I arrived but I had never used it from start to finish on any particular project. Learning was super easy with the training program during the first week. The best way to learn things is by doing: as soon as I dove into my project I because fluent within a couple of weeks.
Bike or public transportation to work?
Public Transportation, it would be really hard to bike from Long Island.
What’s a typical day (or week) for you?
I spend most of my day churning on my project. Since I’m working on an internal project to be used by the employee base, it’s actually led to many interactions with members of the other teams. Every week I end up meeting with other teams to figure out how we can integrate the tools they use into the timeline project. If a team uses Salesforce, I want to make sure the data they’re using is viewable on the timeline. Towards the end of the summer I’m going to start getting feedback before it becomes implemented company-wide.
What do you love most about MongoDB?
The people: I feel like it takes a certain type of person to be able to work on something that every other product relies on. If there is a bug in the database it could lead to catastrophic problems for our users. We have to not only account for these problems, but the types of people who work here are the kind who will find that bug before it ever occurs.
What’s the most challenging aspect of your job?
As an intern its interesting to come into a company for ten weeks and be pushed into an environment where you have to understand the product in order to implement it before the summer is over. Between learning MongoDB and learning Perl, it was difficult finalizing the skills needed to finish my project.
What do you hope to accomplish while you’re here?
I think it would be really great to be able to push out my project to the entire company. It would be awesome to see a product I created be used by all the employees. Building an entire pseudo-project out from scratch would be awesome.
What’s your favorite Seamless lunch order?
Num Pang. Cambodian sandwiches, didn’t think I would like them when I first tried it! But it's now my favorite!
Name one secret skill you have, unrelated to work.
I was an all-state jazz bass player. I play a lot of Jazz and classical Chello and Bass.
What’s your favorite text editor?
Sublime text is the best.
Kindle or book? What’s your favorite book?
I’m all about the Kindle. My favorite book I’ve read recently is delivering happiness by Tony Hseih, The book is really interesting, a narrative about how he built this company around having the best team and support. Very interesting to somebody interested in following a similar path as him at some point.
Describe your perfect weekend.
Sleeping after coding all week. It’s always nice to get ready for another fun-filled week at MongoDB.
Want to help build the next revolution in database technology? MongoDB offers summer internships and new graduate opportunities to foster computer science talent across the country. Learn more about the MongoDB University Relations program.