8Percent Platform Development Internship Review - 1

Working as a platform development intern at fintech company 8Percent, I directly learned the hands-on development process that's hard to experience at school. Since I had just started becoming interested in finance, I wanted to learn an environment where actual services are built, and in line with that expectation, I started with understanding the service structure and learning Django.

Over 2 weeks, I handled about 5 requests, gradually adapting starting from small fixes. At first it was confusing figuring out which code to fix, but I solved problems by researching on my own and asking teammates when stuck. After making fixes, I experienced the whole flow: running locally, writing Django tests, PR, incorporating review feedback, merging, and deploying.

Through this process, I also felt a collaboration style different from school projects. It wasn't just a matter of uploading code—I had to consider the following elements together.

• Clearly explaining the intent of changes through code review
• Confirming safety through tests
• Also handling operational tasks like QA and DB Backfill
• Being mindful of the actual impact on the live service after deployment

The development team's communication culture was also impressive. Every day, people would write what they did yesterday, what they'll do today, and where they need help in the Slack Stand-up channel, and before lunch everyone would gather to share updates. In the biweekly sprint meetings, we gave feedback on progress, rated our happiness score out of 5, and shared plans for the next 2 weeks.

The way of asking questions was also an important lesson. At first I was nervous because I'd been told not to ask too often, but once I asked after sufficiently researching on my own, teammates explained things kindly, and they would even proactively ask if I was stuck on anything. After that, I developed the habit of recording things I didn't know through Today-I-Learned entries and weekly reports.

There are memorable episodes too. Since it's a security-conscious environment, I had to always lock my laptop when stepping away, and once when I forgot, I received a joking message on Slack that made me keenly feel the importance of security. Also, even for a simple request to convert the decimal points of a regular payment amount into an integer, I encountered a culture that carefully scrutinizes clarity and function semantics—to the point where a fix PR was submitted arguing that floor is more appropriate than .0f in format.