While not the in-person summer internship that was initially planned to go ahead, Visa did a great job at turning things around in spite of COVID-19, providing a fully online experience that still made the time feel worthwhile. There were a range of activities to get involved with, with scope to tailor your learning to your own interests. I got to meet some great people, both within the team that I would have met on the original internship, and also when collaborating with other interns worldwide on the two central challenges.
I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I felt welcomed and at home from the first day and everyone made the effort to introduce themselves and get to know me. I was given a broad range of real projects to work on individually and as part of a team. I felt like I had a real responsibility and was given the authority to direct my projects and use my creativity to produce new solutions. There was also the opportunity to learn more about Visa as a company- especially through the Intern Summit. A lot of thought had been put into this internship which allowed me to integrate well and feel part of the Visa family.
The environment is great. They have all the facilities. Every day they will provide fruits and snack in the kitchen, they have a game room, ping pong table, etc. And the people there are also nice, which made this internship really enjoyable. The only thing I would suggest is to make sure we have accesses to tools that we may need before starting, otherwise, it took too long to start.
At first it was a little slow working in software development, because it took a long time to get set up and get permissions to access internal systems, but once it got going the work was interesting and fulfilling, and I certainly learnt a lot. The intern summit was definitely one of the best parts of the experience, as it includes an all-expenses paid trip to San Francisco with all the other Visa interns from around the world.
The internship was all-round perfectly coordinated and structured. As interns we got the ability to network and become close peers in the beginning weeks thanks to Visa's Global Intern Summit. Thereafter it was both challenging yet motivating, especially seeing the impact we got to make as interns. It was overall a perfect blend of interesting projects and tasks as well as awesome socials organised by HR. HR also organised Excel and Powerpoint workshops which was very useful!