Basic Information

  • Name Annie D’souza
  • Curriculum: EE Dul Degree, Spec. in CSP
  • Year of Study: 4th
  • Company/University of Internship: World Wide Technology
  • Year of Internship (eg. ‘23 Summers, ‘22 Winters): 23’ Summers
  • Mode of Internship (Online/Offline/Hybrid): Offline
  • Duration of Internship: 8 weeks

Hey! I’m Annie D’souza, a fourth-year undergraduate pursuing a dual degree in Electrical Engineering and a dual minor in Computer Science and Data-Science and Artificial intelligence. I’m into athletics and Dance and also love reading and watching movies. I’m deeply passionate about artificial intelligence and machine learning and have been intrigued by this field ever since I was first introduced to it.

Pre-internship:

I had a second-year internship in the field of DS & AI and thoroughly enjoyed it. Thus, during the third-year internship season too, I targeted the same field. However, since most of the companies didn’t open for dual-degree students, I also appeared for software company tests as a backup and practiced coding in CPP.

Luckily, World Wide Technology, a data science company, opened up for dual-degree students, and it began! They started off with a simple aptitude test which contained questions to test IQ and comprehension and also your English skills. Out of all the students that appeared for the aptitude test, they shortlisted about 30 students for interviews.

When I found out I’d been shortlisted, I started reading about the company and its culture (the culture here is lovely, BTW) and also prepared ML-centric theory. This mostly included basics like different types of classification and regression methods, neural networks, back-propagation, etc. Also, I made sure I was thorough with all the points in my resume (this proved to be very crucial since they spent a major part of the interviews asking me about things I’d mentioned in my resume).

The day of the interviews finally came. It was a Sunday, and three of the four interviews taken were conducted that day. The first round was conducted by one of their India leads, who asked me basic ML questions like how would you explain the concept of neural networks to a 6-year-old. He also asked me about two easy puzzles and why I wanted to work at WWT. An hour or so after the first round, they released the list of students shortlisted for the second round, which was conducted almost immediately after the announcement. This time there were two interviewers, and the round was morefast-paced than the previous one, mostly covering points from my resume. They asked me if there was anything that I was particularly good at in ML. They asked me in-depth questions about my projects and the concepts I’d mentioned, in addition to more general ML/DL questions. I answered what I could, and for the things I didn’t know, I told them so truthfully. They also asked me for a guesstimate and how interested I would be in data-science consulting.

After what seemed like an exhausting in a good way half-day came the third round. If I had three words to describe this round, they would be ‘fun, fun, fun.’ This round consisted of four interviewers, but they made me feel very comfortable and made the atmosphere light with some humor. It felt more like a casual chat than an interview. They asked me to explain K-means clustering as if I was explaining it to a client company with no experience in data science and asked me to use the blackboard if I wanted to. They asked me a couple of other technical questions and then went on to ask me more casual questions regarding my interest in dance and athletics and opened up the floor for my questions. I definitely left the interview room feeling happy. After some time, I was told that there’d be a short round the next day with one of their senior US employees. That round was also a mix of technical and HR. I was mostly asked about the applications of ML/DL in electrical engineering (since that’s my field), a guestimate, and a couple of other casual questions. Soon, the results were out, and I was slected!

Internship Experience:

Six months later, I came to Gurgaon, and that was the beginning of an amazing two months. The company culture and work are both very attractive. The office itself is very beautiful and comfortable. Also, the people there were very welcoming and accommodating. In addition to doing my own project, I was encouraged to talk to as many employees as possible, learn about their projects, and get to know them personally. Not only people from the Gurgaon office but also employees from outside of India. It was really nice to see the diverse set of projects that go on in the data science branch and also the enthusiasm with people talking about their projects and working on them. Work never felt pressured, and we mostly had lunch together followed by several matches of foosball (everyone at the company was sooo good at foosball, and as the days passed, I grew to understand why they liked it so much). We also had several company outings, including a company dinner, a football match, and a trip to Kashmir. All of these served very well for bonding. Everyone here was always ready to help, and the office was always in good spirits, reflecting the good culture.

After the internship:

All in all, it’s been an excellent and amazing two months here at WWT, and I would definitely recommend this company to anyone interested in ML/AI – They have a great culture, great spirit, and a great work environment. For people targeting roles in ML/AI, no matter which company you’re interviewing for, I’d say make sure your ML basics are strong, and you are thorough with all the points on your resume. When you appear for an interview, make sure you are frank and open; if there’s something you don’t know, tell them you don’t know. Companies love to see students who show an interest in the company’s work culture or the kind of work they do, so make sure you convey that in your interview, and may the odds ever be in your favor (yes, a hunger game reference).