Intern Nikki helps developers find performance trends
Nikki Kapadia, a student at Toronto Metropolitan University, spent the summer of 2023 as a software engineer intern with the Sentry Performance team. We asked her to share a little about what she worked on and why she chose Sentry for her internship.
Helping developers identify performance trends
During my time here at Sentry, I had the pleasure of being on the Performance team. The Performance team specializes in the Performance section of the app. Our main focus was finding ways to display performance statistics to our customers in a way that would allow them to monitor performance changes. During my internship, I worked on the Performance Change Explorer. This is a feature that extends from the Trends page in Performance. To summarize, Trends allows users to see which of their transactions have regressed or improved. The goal of the Performance Change Explorer is to provide users with suggestions as to what the cause could be. I was able to work with some of Sentry’s internal APIs to get information such as metrics, durations, errors, spans and profile functions.
I was able to be a part of the project from start to finish. I was given an open ended project description from which I had to construct a project plan. During the planning phase I had the opportunity to consult all members of the team for suggestions, best interests and general inspiration. The project plan was presented to key stakeholders and then I got to build the feature from scratch. I got to set my own milestones and work towards an end goal. This entire process was new to me but I’ve grown to enjoy the idea of setting milestones to match my own pace.
As my internship is nearing its end, I am grateful for the experience I have gotten here. It is unlike any other internship that I have done. It feels good to have worked on something that customers will use. I want to give a huge kudos to the Performance team because I could not have survived this internship without them! They were always willing to explain concepts to me and answer any questions I had about the product. Thank you Sentry for giving me this unique opportunity!
Why Nikki chose Sentry
In all honesty, LinkedIn! I came across the job posting and applied because I thought the concept of Sentry was really cool. It checked all of my boxes; it was a tech focused company whose product is used by many developers worldwide. I worked at another company before Sentry that actually used Sentry. During my time there, I got to learn the baseline of Sentry’s functionality and I was genuinely intrigued. I went through the interview process and to my surprise I got an offer! During the interview process, I got to see a sneak peak of Sentry’s culture which enticed me to start my Sentry journey!
About Nikki’s time as an intern
My Sentry internship was truly a unique and enjoyable experience. On my first day I was welcomed by my team and everyone in the Toronto office. Every person I talked to was very inviting and was genuinely interested in learning more about me. My team was always open to answering my questions and reassured me that learning the ins and outs of the team’s work takes time. Everyone in the office was fun to talk to during lunches and happy hours.
The internship program at Sentry allowed me to work on something impactful that I could call my own. I, with the help of my team, was able to make a plan for my project execution and then got the opportunity to build it. I enjoyed the fact that I was in control of what I was doing because that isn’t an opportunity you are always able to get during an internship. I was fully immersed into the day to day of any normal Software Engineer and was doing hands on work pretty much my entire internship.
The intern coordinators (shoutout to Stephanie) were always available to hear our questions, concerns and random daily conversations about miscellaneous topics. They set up a number of introductory workshops and meetings for us so we had the skills needed to succeed in the internship. We had halfway and end of term check-ins where we could voice any opinions that we had about our experiences. They also helped us get in touch with the other interns and get to know each other!
Overall, my internship experience at Sentry was one of a kind. I’ve met a lot of people during my time here and learned so much through them. I have also had the opportunity to expand my technical knowledge from working on my project and listening to the suggestions or tips that my team members gave to me. I got the full collaborative working experience by sitting right beside my team members. I’m grateful that I got to meet the interns (even if it was virtually) who celebrated all of our wins throughout the internship. All of these components enhanced my experience and made it memorable :)
Make sure you check out some of the openings we have here at Sentry for internships and full-time positions.