Internship Experience at Sprinklr

“After due evaluation of their performance in respective projects, we are delighted to share the results and extend a Pre-Placement offer to the following student(s) from your campus…”

On reading my name on the list, I ran to my parents and shouted with the brightest gleam in my eyes, 'Job lag gayiii!!!'

They were so happy!! Their eyes said it all.

It started almost a year before, back in August 2022, when we learned about the online assessment date for Sprinklr. Everyone was serious enough to skip classes, meals, bathing, and everything else to work on LeetCode problems day in and day out. I too used to sit in my friend’s room practicing LeetCode problems (in the transit campus far away from the LUXURY of G block).

I was (am) not a coding guy and had lost interest in Competitive Programming or Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) much earlier. However, in the ten days leading up to the online assessment, I managed to solve about a hundred medium-level LeetCode problems. Considering that I had little interest in DSA or coding, this meant a significant achievement for me. I had never even considered the possibility of joining Sprinklr in my wildest dreams, as its reputation was to recruit only Candidate Masters or Masters on Codeforces, and I had hardly attempted three questions since creating my account. I had always thought that maybe I would get into some company later.

The test date arrived.

I was not able to perform well. I completed just a single question out of three. The second was just 80% done. Many of my friends completed two questions. I was not getting selected.

BUT I DID!!!

Probably because of my high CGPA (9.92 at that time), or the fact that I had done the first in five minutes, or perhaps (most likely) because of other interests highlighted in my resume.

What interests exactly? Many, that I built over the years.

At one point, I was passionate about software development, particularly during my time at the RISHA lab led by Dr. Sridhar Chimalakonda. I crafted a tool and authored a paper on it, alongside creating a Chrome Extension as part of the lab. Subsequently, I ventured into Cyber Security and Ethical Hacking and subscribed to TryHackMe, where I actively learned a lot of things about computers and participated in CTFs. My intrigue extended to networks, an essential facet of Cyber Security, leading me to extensively study it. While studying about hardware related attacks, my fascination then shifted to Computer Organization and Architecture when I joined Dr. Raghavendra Kanakagiri's Parallel Computing Lab for some time. I immersed myself in latest cache and memory-related research during the summer of 2022, and read a bunch of papers. As these aspects were intertwined with the OS, I delved into OS functions and assembly language code. Even Quantum Computing seized my curiosity briefly, inspiring a week of dedicated study. As you can see, the interests varied and I made sure that all of them were reflected on my resume. Maybe this gave me an upper hand.

The interview rounds for me were quite different. While others were being asked about difficult DSA related problems, I was being asked about caches and networks, primarily because I had mentioned them in my answer to ‘Tell me about yourself.’ The interviewer and I bonded over the fact that we both had watched YouTube videos of ‘Onur Mutlu’, the God of Computer Architecture. I was confident and precise when I spoke. It is very important that you clearly articulate your thoughts, no matter how nervous you are!  The HR round was short and quick. By the end of the day, I had secured an internship at Sprinklr.

In February 2023 along with the internship letter, I was provided with a long list of pre-reads. I was a bit nervous about the competition out there. But everything turned out just fine.

We were given accommodation and complimentary food and laundry. Our orientation talks went for the first week and internship work started soon.

I was asked to study Java on the second day itself and by the next week, I was assigned my first project. I was required to write a script to automate the process of sanity check of backend clusters after any new release. I learnt Selenium technology as a part of this process.

The most important lesson that I learned from my manager was to “solve problems, and not avoid them.” Whenever I would go to my manager to show my work, I would end up with double the workload. He would point out and say that I was using workarounds instead of actually solving the problem. This taught me to improve my work every single day. The important thing was that I had to update my mentor and manager daily. Even missing a single day would have had a negative impact on my performance review.

During the fifth week I was asked to study MongoDB. Later on, I was asked to switch and work on a Microsoft Teams Reminder Bot, designed to remind people of specific tasks at regular intervals. Whenever I faced any problems, I had to solve them myself; the manager and the mentor were too busy to help me. Sometimes my fellow interns would help, but most of the time, I was on my own. This was my entire work at Sprinklr. As for the anxiety I used to have, it gradually faded over time, and I started to enjoy my time in the office.

We used to have weekly floor fun events at Sprinklr. These activities included singing competitions, dumb charades, hula hoop fun, Chinese whispers, popping balloons, and more. One particularly memorable event was the 'Mango Eating Competition’.

The time flew swiftly. Over those eight weeks, I experienced a wide range of emotions—stress from work, happiness from solving problems, excitement from events, and much more.
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I would like to highlight another important point that I will remember forever. I had visited the office on 12th May 2022, ten days before the internship started, as I was looking for PGs or apartments to live. I just met Pranjal Sharma, my internship scout and exchanged greetings. The reason I highlight this is because she remembered it till the end of the internship, and gave me an award just for that! She said that it was because of my excitement to work, that I came to office much before the internship, and met her. According to her, that showed my dedication to work, and must be awarded. I was just speechless.

We submitted our laptops the next day, and the internship finally ended. To celebrate our last day, my friend Yashwardhan and myself went to an escape room. It was fun. We had even managed to win a gold medal. Yay us!!

That was my last day of internship, and last day in Gurugram.