This summer, 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 had the chance to sit down with Walter Menendez who spent this past summer working with our MMS team!
What is your role at MongoDB?
I’m at MMS intern, so I’m building the network operations center.
How did you find out about the internship program at MongoDB? Why did you choose to come to MongoDB?
I knew what MongoDB was because I used it at the media Lab at MIT. They were at our fall career fair and I decided to apply.
What’s your hometown?
Gaithersburg Maryland, but I was born in LA.
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 definitely liked it before I arrived. I learned it before using a relational database model. The education process was nice because it felt like an actual database. It’s different seeing how it works after having a formal education on the database.
Bike or public transportation to work?
I take the subway.
What’s a typical day (or week) for you?
I get in and check my emails. I go on to Githup, pull up my Jira tickets. Lunch rolls around and then I keep coding. Daz it.
What do you love most about MongoDB?
I really like the company. Everyone here seems very intelligent. They have seen some stuff. It’s a very energetic culture. In terms of the product I work on I really like how many things MMS does. I really appreciate going through the codebase and seeing how it all works.
What’s the most challenging aspect of your job?
There are a lot of surprises that come up when I’m coding. It keeps me on my toes.
What do you hope to accomplish while you’re here?
I definitely want to get better at things that work at scale. The MMS has to handle so much data at once. I want to see what its like to work with something that can scale like that. Meeting the other engineers. MongoDB is such a tech-sexy company. The database is hot.
What’s your favorite Seamless lunch order?
Schnippers because I like burgers, and their shakes are so AH.
Name one secret skill you have, unrelated to work.
I do studio portraits and headshots. I also did Taekwondo for a semester. Oh and I speak Spanish.
Favorite color and why?
I like black because I look good in it. And it’s amazing to accidentally wear everything in black. Black is such an easy color to have large amounts of.
Kindle or book? What’s your favorite book?
BOOK! With a Kindle you don’t actually own the book. I like owning the book. The Hunger Games gave me a lot of feels. I also read a lot of poetry by Federico Garcia Lorca in High school. He was a Spanish poet. Rumor has it he was assassinated during the Spanish Civil War because he was gay.
Describe your perfect weekend.
I would wake up at like noon, go work out, go take lots of pictures, and spend the rest of the day on Tumblr. I just want to be on my computer all day.
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. Or apply to be one of our 2015 Summer Engineering Interns!!