Flying Across the World for a Summer Internship

Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of blog posts by LinkedIn’s rockstar summer interns. Today, we hear from one of our international interns Yuan Daisy Gao who is pursuing a Master of Engineering, Computer Science degree at Tsinghua University.

When LinkedIn recruiter Jamie Thai woke me up one morning to give me my internship offer, I officially became one of LinkedIn’s first international interns. This summer, four interns from China and the UK flew across the world to work at one of the most exciting companies in Silicon Valley.

From Left to Right: Andrius Dagys, Yuan Daisy Gao, Hongtao Cai, Haozhun Jin

Here are my observations so far:

A series of “What?!” in the beginning

This summer was my first experience abroad and everything was a pleasant surprise. What?! I go to work by train? Yes, It only takes 11 minutes to cross 3 cities. What?! Mountain View is covered with free Wi-Fi? And the shuttle, which stops at main technology companies in the city, is also free? What?! Cherries here are 4 times the size and a quarter of the price as those in China. Yes, it’s my own slice of heaven for fruits … and ice creams, cupcakes, chocolates or anything sweet that I love.

Company perks that make life easier

LinkedIn makes my life easier by providing perks like chair massages, free train passes and free food so that I can focus on work.

A thoughtfully organized intern program

All kinds of activities are scheduled for interns to learn about LinkedIn. From talks given by VPs who share their professional experience to intern fairs where we present what we have done during our internship to the very impressive LinkedIn Intern Hackday, there are countless learning opportunities.

An open company culture where you can get to almost anything and anyone

LinkedIn is a very open company. Many of our core services are open-source like Voldemort and we have access to nearly all the code to run the website. Whenever you have a problem related to a certain piece of code, you can go directly to the author’s desk and start a friendly discussion. I even got the chance to ask our CEO Jeff Weiner about LinkedIn’s plans for China during a meeting. All this openness has boosted my productivity in helping to build LinkedIn as the way for the world’s professionals to connect and cooperate with each other.

I’ve been here for a month now, and the whole experience at LinkedIn has been amazing in every way. It has indeed been a chance of a lifetime.