About the company
AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph Company) is a multinational telecommunications conglomerate based in the United States. It is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world. AT&T provides a wide range of services, including mobile and fixed-line telephone services, high-speed internet, digital television, and digital entertainment.
Intro
I'm Sujal Maiti, an undergraduate from DSCE, Bangalore. It was an on-campus internship. In this blog post, I will describe the application process, the interview process, and my experience working at this company.
Background Story
As I said, it was an on-campus internship. To everyone’s shock, I had no idea about the company AT&T. Despite being a finance enthusiast, and keen interest in finance and tech, I never heard about the company ATT(although AT&T is Telecom but I keep a tab on US companies)
A funny incident
I remember before waking up in the morning, I asked my friend how is the company and if it a good company, He told me it was a telecommunication company and it was a good company(one of the best & with the biggest market share), and eventually I landed up applying at AT&T.
I had offers from companies like Groww and Polygon but I went with AT&T because of one extremely important aspect. AT&T India gives you the feeling of both a startup and an MNC. In terms of work, it ensures that the learning curve is both breadthwise & depthwise and in terms of comforts, it ensures it conducts team outings, parties etc which essentially refreshes the one.
SELECTION PROCESS
1)Coding Round
I don't exactly remember the OA questions but there were 2 questions,and both the questions were medium -hard level DSA based question.
"Luck is what you have left over after you give 100 percent." - Langston Coleman.
The dice of destiny clicked in my favour and I was shortlisted for interview. It was the 2nd company in which I had applied in my college placements and was fortunate enough to clear the OA.
2) Technical Interview
"Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong." - Peter T. McIntyre
I knew given that I clear OA, I had confidence in myself that I will be able to handle the interview
The way it went was more around resume based. I had read it from past experiences and had asked my seniors about what exactly the company focuses on during the interview and the general consensus which I was able to draw was it’s resume based and fair amount of DSA, at times it goes asking about CS Fundamentals.
I was grilled on my projects, my past internships and languages or frameworks which were in my resume. The interview went smoothly, but here’s a thing, “Luck plays a huge role in on campus placements. I was hopeful but was prepared for the worst as well.
3) HR Round
HR Round was more about behavioural and cultural fit round wherein I was asked about myself, my aspirations and desires etc . HR was extremely kind to share information about the company
GOOD CULTURE AND AT&T - A NEVER-ENDING SAGA
MY EXPERIENCE
I was in CDO (Chief Data Office) of AT&T, India(BU) as a Technical Intern. For the six months of my Internship, I was involved with the India Development & Centre (IDC) team, although I was in CDO. I was working with IDC in CDO’s project. I worked majorly as a Full stack developer.
My role included me to work on the design aspect of UI, development phase of the website, majorly frontend and a bit of Backend as well. I focused on system design as well as building cost effective scalable system, which makes a huge difference in large organisations like AT&T. Honestly , I hated Java (ig I still do) but seniors made my work fairly easier. My mentors for the project were extremely helpful and I have learnt a lot from them. I was involved in Testing the project as well. The thing which I loved about my work is I was able to contribute in the whole development lifecycle through this project. Well, I did encounter multiple blockers as my internship was going through but as I said the best part about AT&T is everyone ensures that one is in the right frame of mind and I got plenty of help from my seniors.
Fun times
“As they say, work hard, party harder”
Freshers Day
An extravagant & fun filled day with different activities ranging from singing, dancing, pulling each other’s legs and of course, food. (As this happened during the initial days, this also helped interns understand each other better and fleshed out our bonds)
Culture defines the growth of the company and AT&T does it pretty well.
Holi Party - Team Outing
(While transitioning into corporate, there’s a dreaded feeling of forced positivity, but this wasn’t one such case - and one that really encapsulated the extent of AT&T’s culture) This will remain as one of the very special moments of my life as I was directly involved in organising the event for the entirety of CDO. There were a series of events which were conducted in order to build up the hype for the event and keep people involved.
The day of outing involved multiple events - right from singing, dancing, swimming, good food, team building activities (& everything you could associate with a little bit of drinks ;))
SLT visit (Senior Leadership Visit)
The world is looking at India's growth story extremely closely. Most of the MNCs across the globe are investing in India (- and this visit was a stepping stone in achieving that goal). The Senior Leadership of AT&T came to India, and this involved introducing them to our traditions (resulting in a beautiful entanglement of cultures, and more importantly, exchange of ideas)
Conclusion
AT&T is an amazing place to ensure a smooth transition from college to corporate. One gets work as well work-life balance is great as well because of the amazing culture AT&T has built over the span of time. Generally, big MNCs are sceptical to adopt new technologies but the same isn’t true for AT&T. It believes in innovation and openness to new technologies including most of the open source ones.