Disclaimer: These are my experiences from being a Pandora software developer intern in the summer of 2019. All opinions expressed are my own, and represent no one except myself.

I recently spent the last summer of my undergraduate program as an intern for Pandora Media in Oakland, CA. I gained a lot from my experience, and I’m writing this post to detail the application process, the lessons that I learned, and the company culture. My goal is to be a helpful resource for those who are considering Pandora as an opportunity for employment.

Applying/Interviewing

The application process was easy to navigate, and throughout I never felt lost or out-of-the-know about my application status. In the fall semester of my junior year in college, I already had an internship under my belt. I had worked as a software engineer intern for a defense contracting company. Entering my senior year, I knew that I wanted my next opportunity to be in an industry in which I have always wanted to work: tech. In the beginning of the semester, I created an internship spreadsheet where I listed different companies for which I would consider working, and Pandora was one of them. It’s the perfect intersection of music and tech, two fields that I love dearly. One of my criteria for an internship was to work on a product I’m familiar with, and Pandora is a product that I remember since I started developing my own taste in music.

In December I reached out to a University Recruiter through LinkedIn with the intent of scheduling an informational interview to discuss the Pandora internship program and get insights about the company culture. They were extremely responsive, and within a week we had a phone discussion about the interview process, benefits, and other necessary information I needed prior to my interviews. A couple days after my call with them, I had two technical interviews with engineers on the team that I would be working for. Those followed the typical technical interview format: I learned about their roles, answered some general computer science questions, and answered a couple coding questions. After I got through that successfully, I had an interview with the manager, and that was also an enjoyable experience. We spoke briefly about backgrounds, and she asked me questions regarding what I wanted from an internship experience. Later that day I got a call congratulating me on getting the offer!

Culture

My official first day was June 3, 2019, and the office gave me a fun vibe. The first day at Pandora consisted of meeting other interns, sitting through presentations about what it meant to work at Pandora, and having lunch with my manager for the first time. There were some amazing aspects of the office that I enjoyed and took advantage of.

Pandora utilizes an open office space. At my previous internship, the cubicles were so high you could literally walk into an office space and not see one person in the room. At Pandora, everyone has a desk, but the desks are connected in clusters. Also, there is no tall wall separating everyone from one another. A major plus that came as a surprise to me was that my manager sat two desks away from me, and my mentor sat right beside me. This made it extremely easy to ask questions, and I could always get in contact with them quickly if I needed anything. Since the office space was pretty open, I took advantage of taking my work with me to different floors and really exploring what the building had to offer. Pandora’s office is beautiful. The decor really embodies what I thought working at a music company would be like. There are a lot of musical references — conference rooms named after the Beatles, rock stars, and country music stars.

The people really make the company here, and I had great encounters with everyone I came across. I never felt like I was asking a “dumb” question. The engineers on my team were so willing to help whenever I hit a wall. Even if they didn’t have the answer, they guided me until I came to a solution.

Project

I really loved my summer project. I was an intern for the Recommendations and Search team. This team is responsible for the algorithms that determine what the next song in your listening experience should be, as well as providing the best search results from your query. My summer project was to create an internal tool for the engineers on my team. It involved migrating Java Servlet Pages (JSP) to Java API endpoints. I also gained experience in React because I had to develop a UI with which the developers would interact to pull the necessary metrics they’d need.

Advice for Future Applicants

1. You’re not going to figure it all out in one day. In my opinion, a good manager will give you a project that is big enough to challenge you while also being relevant to the needs and goals of the team or greater organization. In my experience I put a little too much pressure on myself to quickly figure out the solution for any task assigned to me. Create a game plan/timeline of your project with your manager or mentor, and figure out the speed you think would be appropriate for you to follow.
2. Networking is essential, but do it at your own pace. A common theme for an internship program is the networking opportunities. To make networking simple, find ways to connect with others based on shared interests and similarities. Find employee resource groups that you can be a part of. Go to company events. Get to know other people in your intern cohort (very essential — gives you insight into what others around you are doing and you can find common interests through that). If you are more introverted and the idea of sending a lot of meeting invites to different individuals is daunting to you, then talk to your manager about things you may potentially be interested in and see if they can suggest people to whom you can reach out.
3. Get a big picture of the company. This is especially important because as an engineering intern it can be really easy to get caught up and have tunnel vision on just the technical aspect of your internship. Attend varied meetings and have conversations with people in different company functions to find out the challenges the company is facing from their perspective. Also talk with engineers on different teams to find out what they are working on. This especially helps because you will then start to think of your project/role in the company from a system perspective and gain an understanding of the importance of your addition from a bigger lens. You will learn the current state of the company and have a sense of where it is headed.
4. Document everything! Throughout the internship, I ran into many issues and bugs that I didn’t have the skillset to solve, so whenever I received help I wrote in detail the problem and how it was solved. This became extremely useful as I progressed through the weeks and was able to quickly troubleshoot similar problems. Aside from documenting problems, journaling can be great for gathering your thoughts, noting down pieces of information from meetings you attend, and tracking progress throughout the span of your time at the company.

Above all else, make an active effort to enjoy your time and take in the full experience. The internship is a fairly short time in comparison to working full time, so this is a perfect chance to get a snapshot of what your career path could look like. Make sure you’re trying to enjoy every bit of it.

Since I work at a music company, here is a playlist of songs that I loved listening to while at work this summer. As an intern I got free Pandora Premium for the summer so I used it to make playlists. I added some songs that I had already loved and utilized the “Add Similar Songs” feature to put in some new tracks that I may have overlooked. That was cool because the songs that were added fit the theme of my playlist, which is a collection of summer jams and hype songs that can get me through any day at work.

I hope you have an amazing time, and godspeed on your internship journey!