Memories from Advanta

All the way back in fall 2018, at the beginning of my sophomore year, I was able to sneak through with some fairly easy coding questions and get my first paid internship at Microsoft. Getting that internship validated all of my hard work during my freshman year and the summer after – those weekends spent cooped up in my dorm fumbling my way through Django, or the long summer days at King Soopers spent ruminating about how I’d reach the optimal time complexity on a Leetcode problem that always seemed to involve arrays and integers.

More than anything, saying that I was going to be a “Microsoft Intern” made me feel special and like I was one of the best. You know those Microsoft hoodies that they gave out during the internship interview? Yeah. I was wearing that at my university on a daily basis.

The rest of my sophomore year, I was pretty much on cruise control, daydreaming of how much I’d learn, how ripped I’d become (the gym there was supposedly remarkable), and how much smarter I’d get. At the time, I was working on a drone delivery startup (what else do you expect from young CS students who “want to change the world and make a lot of money”?) where I had been losing motivation and taking my foot off the gas pedal. My hope was that the internship would give me life and help me push through on the startup. My mindset going into the internship is this: I’m going to work my ass off and get that return offer, and I’m going to get a drone to fly and follow me. I’m not thinking about having a great time, going to cool places, and meeting lifelong friends. It’s ALL about the grind.

When the time finally came to fly to Seattle (Redmond) for the internship, I was pretty hyped to explore what main campus had to offer. Not that hyped because I’m going to work on something – work or startup – all the time, though. The food there was excellent (thanks to Mod Pizza) and I expected the same for the rest of the stuff on main campus. I don’t remember when, but somewhere before the internship, I was told that I’d be working from “Microsoft Advanta”. I was too lazy/excited to look into where this Advanta place actually was, and just assumed that it’d be on main campus.

Day 1 arrives, and all of the “starting date May 20” interns meet up for orientation in Building 92, or the building of Microsoft that you take your loved ones to for showing how cool the campus is (including a nice picture by the person-sized logo). I’m quite overwhelmed, and quickly realizing that I should’ve been doing more socializing during college so far. Luckily, I meet one guy, Tianyang, who attends CMU and is also in this weird Advanta place. Turns out, Advanta is not on main campus. It’s in southeast Bellevue, where families settle down and kids frolic on the nearby playgrounds.

After orientation, I head back to my hotel, tried to work on my startup (but got distracted by how awesome the 2019 NBA playoffs was shaping up to be), and decided to check out Advanta.

Here’s the very first time I saw Advanta:

It disappointed me compared to the liveliness of main campus. It felt like one of those ugly offices that your parents tell you they worked at in the ’80s where drinks and coffee weren’t free and people worked like crazy.

My project was the global search feature for our product, Dynamics 365 for Talent, which is a platform that allows recruiters for companies to easily search from their talent pool. The product, which was on its way to being scrapped (I didn’t know this at the time), didn’t even have a nice search bar to look up jobs and candidates! I felt pretty awesome knowing that I was working on an important feature!

The next day, I got my office and supplies, and the work started.

It became hard to hate Advanta as I got into the groove of things at work. The office, while ugly, wasn’t that bad inside. The offices were fairly nice, the people were SUPER helpful, and the food was surprisingly good. Almost every day, I’d order a sandwich. Whole wheat, turkey. Toasted with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, swiss cheese, and mayo. The lady who made sandwiches there memorized my order AND would make a point of giving me extra turkey because I really, really, really wanted it.

Sure, the location of Advanta was quite isolated (a 15 minute drive from main campus without traffic, which is rare), and I’d miss quite a few intern events on main campus, but I was happy with what I had. Frankly, I wasn’t interning that summer to have fun. I wanted to grind and level up and become a better version of myself, all of which I associated with the “Mamba Mentality”. Advanta felt like me that summer. Doing its own thing and being pretty happy overall. Sometimes, I wonder why I liked Advanta so much. I think it’s because it was the location of my first professional internship, and I spent A LOT of time there.

Thanks to Tianyang, I luckily had been introduced to some new friends in Advanta, who roasted me for my guarantees that I was confidently making during the NBA playoffs. They were awesome people. One of the people who I really connected with was Akshat, a CMU undergrad who joined me in the Mamba Mentality. Together, we hit the gym, and he introduced me to cricket, which to me felt like a harder version of baseball. I grew to really appreciate Akshat, and a year later, Akshat invited me to join his startup because of our shared grind. I also met Gio, my office mate, a rambunctious Jamaican dude who gave me energy and life even late at night.

The first half or so of the internship was fairly smooth. I’d show up to work at 9:30, finish at 5:30, head to the gym for 2-3 kinda inefficient hours of cardio, lifting weights, and heated basketball, then head back home ready to work on startup stuff. But I’d be tired, and more often than not I’d be watching NBA highlights instead of working on a drone. But there was some progress, so I was happy.

Kawhi Leonard brought my work productivity down a lot. But his 2019 playoff performance was unreal and I’m glad he beat the Warriors.

The second half of the internship started with me realizing that my midpoint demo actually was the “1-5th done” demo. I had finished the part where my new search bar look pretty, but there was nothing behind the curtains (the backend was non existent). I began to slowly realize that I would need to put some more effort into my project to secure that return offer. There was a major issue though – I had a “YOLO” approach to engineering that caused me to spend extra time on testing because I wasn’t cautious enough (I also applied the YOLO mindset to research, but sometimes your ideas end up being pretty good. It also gets you into trouble sometimes too).

This began the real grind, the one that I didn’t really sign up for. At the same time, my current mentor had to take some time off, so a SWE II (at the time) named Deepika stepped up to the plate to mentor me for the backend portion. Deepika and I had that “Telugu Connection” – my mom and she are Telugu, so I used that fact as a point of connection between us. Whether or not that connection actually led to us being close, I don’t really know.

Anyways, Deepika was brilliant and an amazing mentor. She taught me good engineering practices, kept things fun and lively, and gave honest feedback. If I messed up, she would directly call me out on that, which I really appreciated. To this day, she is still my mentor.

Even though I had Deepika helping me out along the way, I was in trouble because of my inefficiency and poor estimations at work. At a certain point, the “work 9-5 on weekdays” became “work a LOT each day and work on weekends”. Working in Advanta on Saturdays was fantastically demoralizing because a). I’d rather be enjoying life (at the time this would’ve been startup work) and b). I had an office away from any windows. Working on weekends feels like your life is put on pause and work takes absolute precedence.

Working late with Gio

Looking back, inefficiency was the real killer. Many times I have worked late after the internship have been caused not from a high workload, but because of low efficiency.

Finishing the project at the end of the summer was one of the most relieving days of my life. I felt like a freed prisoner ready to have fun – except that the end of the internship was near. I presented my final project in 10ish mins (as compared to my grotesque amount of hours “working”), and it was over. The last few days in Advanta were spent on cloud nine, doing nothing and connecting with friends that I had spent less time with during the grind.

It was hard to love Advanta during that so-called grind. But the reality was that my own doing turned Advanta into a prison. When my project was over, Advanta felt like it contained a key moment in my life – the moment I realized that I could work like a dog day and night and be fine the next day. In fact, this realization translated well into my next endeavour, research, where you can get sucked into rabbit holes galore trying to figure out how to properly execute a robotic manipulator trajectory.

Covid hit in 2020, so my next internship was remote. No Advanta.

In 2021, when I moved to Washington to start work at Microsoft as a full-timer, I intentionally rented an apartment within a few minutes of Advanta because I was expecting to work there every day. I didn’t need the Seattle life or even downtown Bel-le-vue life at the time.

Bad news: work was remote till around March-April, when I started to enter Advanta. Man, I didn’t like remote work though. I get that Microsoft is remote friendly, but I’d rather connect with people in real life instead of over a computer screen.

This time I arrived in Advanta, it was desolate. It didn’t have the “wow” vibe that it did as an intern. This was probably because the rose-tinted glasses go away when you’re a full-timer. But the nostalgia is still there.

Awesomely, a few people showed up to office around that time, I was going through a bit of a rough patch, and going to Advanta felt like a haven because it felt familiar. The food was still good, and the offices were still there. I met some cool new grads, who would routinely school me on the table tennis table (since then, that number has increased).

Work was a bit of a blur then. As summer came, intern season was arriving; only this time, I was on the other side. Advanta began to regain its old charm and liveliness, where people would be consistently showing up. The interns were awesome. They brought me back to when I was young (lol) and full of life. They curiosity impressed me and I loved their new perspectives on things.

From here, frankly, the only way to describe this era of Advanta is through pictures (this is good because it means it was fun. Of course I’m not taking pictures while cooped up in the office to midnight as an intern):

Advanta was like this when I first went in person. Still better than working from home in a cramped apartment.

Sunset-ish at Advanta. Stunning.

Vibes and easy money

It was easy to get people to come to the office with donuts

We surprised my mentor Deepika with a cake and baby rocker before she had her baby. She had no idea that this was coming, and this is one of my top 3 favorite moments in Advanta ever. Can I be the godfather?

Fun times with interns.

Another team event – this time without donuts.

Advanta is divine. What other buildings on Microsoft come close to this?

I played this girl named Heather in ping pong in April 2022 or so and she beat me so badly – we weren’t even playing a game – that I thought it would be funny to say that “I’m training to get my revenge on Heather.” Needless to say, I never did get my revenge. She demolished me in December in front of a packed crowd with the result being 4 Instagram stories broadcasting my defeat. AND I wore my old research lab’s shirt for supposed good luck. Not wearing that shirt again.

Advanta has many flavors and this is one of them.

Advanta Afterlife

I ended up meeting some fantastic people through Advanta. As intern season was wrapping up, new full-timers began showing up on the scene and a group began to form of new grads who get lunch together. The group grew beyond the lunch crew, and we ended up having the best work party (sorry other new grad Microsoft parties, Advanta people are more awesome).

A lively conversation in Advanta

The Mixed Menaces

Some people I want to mention:

Jessie “Juicy J” for being mature beyond her years and very smart (thanks for carrying us at the intern puzzle hunt)

Shikha for giving brilliant advice and being relentless

Bradley for being witty and cool because he’s from San Diego (Tacos improve people there)

Heather for ending my career in ping pong and ending my “revenge tour”, but also being curious and funny #enemiestofriends

Goodman for being wholesome all-around and a finisher of his food

Dhruv for barely beating me in ping pong even with training (ok yeah he’d beat me now easily, but my ping pong career is over, remember?)

Jocelyn for teaming up with me as the “Mixed Menaces” (half A half B people) and making a cinderella run in the Advanta table tennis tournament

Aadesh for making memeories together and introducing me to Mayuri (its 3.9 stars rating is fake news)

Prannav for being down to do a lot, including a Pacific Highway trip

and more.

– Matt