We succeed or fail together. And at Dell, a supportive environment rich with tools accelerates innovation, and that starts with the engineering internship program.
Presenting the Best
When Kanrong Yu (above), a Master’s student majoring in data science, found out she would be presenting her visualization model about the prediction of product error rates to the vice president of her division, she was excited for the challenge.
Her manager asked if she was comfortable presenting, offering to help her with some practice runs. When word of her presentation spread, colleagues who weren’t even involved with her project sat in on her practice presentations to offer tips and suggestions.
“They gave advice on how I could better present my ideas. They asked questions to challenge me,” Yu said. “Everything they did helped me better prepare to be more confident during the presentation.”
In addition to presenting her research to the vice president, Yu also worked on natural language processing, a very cutting-edge text analyzing technique to help analyze consumer problem summaries. The analysis enables Dell’s development teams to better modify products.
From Software to Systems
Britney Pierce enjoyed her second internship with Dell in summer 2016.
“I had the same manager this year as last year and I really enjoyed his leadership and the team that I worked on,” Pierce said. “Returning for the second time, my manager actually gave me an opportunity to work as a systems engineer instead of a software engineer, even though I’m majoring in software engineering.”
She was grateful that her managers enabled her to explore an area of engineering outside her academic studies, gaining valuable industry experience.
Experience Guides Career Path
Derek Nalodka, an industrial engineering major, was hired on the IT team.
“I was pretty unsure of the work I’d be doing because I don’t come from an IT background,” he said. “But, my project aligns very well with my background and through this experience I’ve learned that I love working with people, I’m a strong communicator, and it’s pushed me into the direction of trying to eventually become a project manager.”
Nalodka really appreciated how responsive his coworkers were, remarking he’d typically get responses to emails within the hour.
“It’s extremely impressive given Dell’s size, to be continually pushing forward at the speed they do and to be constantly getting work done and moving on to the next thing,” he said. “I think Dell’s culture stands alone, it should be something that other companies want to model.”
Dell salutes all our engineers as we celebrate Engineers Week February 19-25. We’re accepting applications for our 2017 internship program now.
