Hi there, my name is Rebecca! I used to work at Spotify, and I get a lot of questions about my experience. Here are a bunch of answers all in one place!

My Experience

What was my role?

I had two co-ops at Spotify.

For the first, I was a Web Engineering Co-op, building internal tooling for Editors (the people who curate the Spotify playlists like Rap Caviar, Viral Hits, Big on the Internet, etc). For the first 3 months I worked on a solo “intern project,” and for the last 3 months I worked as part of the squad on squad work.

For the second, I was a Product Management Co-op, working on validating what direction to steer Discover Weekly in.

A note on the co-op program vs the intern program

They are not the same. The co-op program is small (around 10 students generally), runs in the late Summer + Fall, and is 4-6 months long. The start and end dates are flexible, so work with your recruiter if you want to start or end early or late!

As any Northeastern student will passionately tell you, the co-op program is awesome! It takes around 3 months to ramp up starting any new job, and by that time most normal internships are over. With a co-op, however, you get another 1-3 months to do actual work. Feels good!

Did you like working there?

Yes I loved it!

I want to dispel the idea that working for a big name tech company is always a good time. No company is the same, and within a company, no team is the same. My experience was really awesome because both of my teams were awesome!

• I had access to incredible mentorship
• I was exposed to great best-practices
• I felt like my work was really impactful

There are a lot of problems working at big companies, namely:

• there’s more red tape, which can sometimes make you feel trapped and prevent you from pivoting as your interests change
• all the ideas you think of probably have already been tried at least 3 times already (awesome as an engineer, suffocating as a PM)

How was the mentorship?