Intern Blog: "Achievo Love"

This post is from our Intern Blog series where our summer interns write about their experience working at Achievo.

Intern Profile: Name: Chia Lin School: UC Berkeley c/o 2012 Major: Psychology Position: Sales & Marketing Intern

"Achievo Love." That is what you would call it here. Instead of saying we have good "company culture," it'd be more accurate to just call us a family. Nestled away in the heart of Milpitas, California, the Achievo Corporation Headquarters houses a dozen or so of us. Ranging widely in age groups, we are almost like generations in your family tree, though some of the ones closer to the top might beg to be blissfully ignorant of the fact (ahem). It is because of this structure, though, that we've naturally developed a warm and laid-back way of caring for each other. Burn your hand, and our lovely Mary will conjure up an aloe plant to cool your aching flesh, but also to warm your heart. Got car troubles? Ellis will make sure you get home safely. Hungry? We've got a fridge full of ice cream and a cabinet full of treats. The abundance of store-bought snacks aside, some of us even regularly bring in freshly picked fruit from their backyards, home-made cakes, and other delicious decadents aimed to, as our boss tells it, "fatten us up."  How very fatherly, right?

Now, if that's not enough to get you grinning, get this: this job isn't only about working either, it's about learning. Oh, bosses always say they want to help you learn, but how many actually carry that through? Dig deep into your memory and try to remember, didn't your internships always seem to involve busy work and massive amounts of confusion? Well, at Achievo, that's not the case (okay, maybe a bit of confusion).

Ask me what I do, and I'll be able to recount for an hour the kinds of "stuff" I do here as an intern. Ask me how, and I'll talk for two. Ask me why, though, I might just go on for forever and a day. I can go on because at Achievo we are encouraged to ask "why" we do what we do and we are pushed to understand why. In an environment where those more experienced than us act as mentors, I let my curiosities run wild. How many of you have ever been afraid to raise your hand to ask a question during class? You, you, and you. Well, good news,  you won't be intimidated here. On top of the technical knowledge I've gained here, the most important realization of all is that it's okay to ask questions, that it's endearing to ask for help.

Now, I can be annoyingly pedantic about how great the company outings and lunches are, how good the food is, how much I've learned on the job--but nothing beats the one word that sums up this internship: growth. After only a short month, I've opened my eyes to the corporate world, not just in my realm of Sales & Marketing, but also to interpersonal skills, networking, global economics, outsourcing, technology, software, venture capital investments, you name it, and even got some helpful life advice on the side. I've finally grown to appreciate my resources, and actually take advantage of it fully. And hey, the free lunches are pretty darn cool, too. ;)

I'm lucky I got the job, right?

Chia Lin
Sales & Marketing Intern, 2012