My internship experience at a startup vs an enterprise

After nearly a year since the last blog, I am back and still an intern (maybe senior intern). What’s great is that I got the chance to explore multiple working cultures and environments in such a short span of time. Even though it’s only a few months in each of these places, there were notable differences between them that inspired me to make this blog.

A little backstory

My first internship at Bosch ended with the classic “no headcount” story. After that, I moved on to be a DevOps intern at CODE LEAP, a German IT consulting startup, and later at NAB Innovation Centre Vietnam, the tech hub of National Australia Bank. From CODE LEAP’s fast pace to NAB’s well-defined structure, the shift was eye-opening.

Interview process

The startup’s interview process can be summed up in one word: fast. Each step was about a day or two apart, and I got the result just a day after the last round. Smooth and professional. The bank’s process, on the other hand, took more time with multiple rounds, each spaced out, and even an online coding test (which felt a bit odd for DevOps). Still, it made sense given the number of applicants they receive.

Workplace experiences

The general vibe

CODE LEAP was full of energy, I felt it right from my first day of joining. HR guided me around the office and introduced me to everyone there. During lunch, food will be ordered as a small welcome party and you introduced yourself again to the whole company. It was fun. On a regular day, the office always felt alive: being a small team, you’d see people huddled in meeting rooms brainstorming or collaborating right at their desks.

NAB, on the other hand, was a lot more organized and a bit distant. My entire first day was spent in a meeting room with other interns, learning about NAB’s processes and all the different departments and teams. There was a pizza party afterwards, but it was just us interns hanging out together. On a typical day, plenty of things were happening across the organization, but they were less visible. You’d hear about projects and changes rather than see them, unless they directly involved your team.

Pace and workload

I think it’s obvious that CODE LEAP moved at a faster pace. New projects and even new people seemed to pop up every other week, so there was always something fresh happening around the office. I got pulled into multiple projects at once—an ERP system cloud migration, a game development project, and even an AI-related one—on top of helping with pipeline improvements. Switching context between all of them was definitely a challenge, and the workload could feel quite high, at least in comparison with NAB. OT-ing was not encouraged at CODE LEAP but there were times where I had to stay late go get things done so it wouldn’t impact the project.

NAB felt slower and more measured. Instead of juggling projects, I was mostly doing SRE-type work—system maintenance and reliability tasks. If there was an issue with the Kubernetes cluster, it would get reported to our team, and I’d step in if it was considered suitable for my level. Most of my work revolved around Kubernetes—probably 90% of the time—which made things more focused and manageable, but also less flexible. The workload could be quite low when there weren’t many issues, but whenever something urgent came up, it quickly flipped. Constant troubleshooting and back-and-forth with other teams could stretch for hours or even days. During one specific case, the group chat had over 40 people in it from like 5 or 6 different teams.

Freedom vs process

Although policies and processes existed at CODE LEAP, most of the time they didn’t get in my way—or to put it better, I barely felt their presence. You could pretty much install anything you wanted on the company laptop; one guy even installed League of Legends and played during lunch (lmao). If another team needed some DevOps work and I was free, I could just drop a message in their group chat and jump right in. It was that simple and flexible.

This is where NAB really shined—they had a process for pretty much everything. To access GitHub or any internal service, I had to submit a request that might go through several approvers. If you were unlucky, it could take up to a week. Switching teams meant raising new requests for permissions while revoking the old ones. This was exactly why for difficult issues, I had to collaborate with different teams with necessary permissions to resolve it. Policies were also strict: you could only install software from NAB’s own portal, and anything else would be blocked 95% of the time. They even blocked Google Translate for some reason, lol.

Learning and growth

Both companies had very clear training plan and expectations for the internship. You would also have weekly meetings for feedback and retrospect. I can’t share much more but you can “trust in the process” with this one.

I learned a lot at both places, and honestly, there was plenty of room for growth in each. At CODE LEAP, I could pick up new tech quickly since projects came and went so fast. At NAB, on the other hand, I had the chance to go deeper into specific tools or areas—Kubernetes being the biggest one for me. That said, it wasn’t black and white: I still picked up new tech at NAB, while CODE LEAP gave me opportunities to sharpen my Terraform and documentation skills.

People often say startups are better for interns since you get to do more, touch production early, and all that. That isn’t wrong, but for me, the differences weren’t huge. When you’re just starting out, almost everything feels new, so growth is inevitable no matter where you are. I think only a longer stay would really show which environment pushes you further in the long run.

People and culture

And of course, the people side of things felt just as different as the work itself. At CODE LEAP, the team was small and close-knit, so it didn’t take long to know everyone on a first-name basis. Most people also came to the office regularly, so you’d bump into your teammates every day and have plenty of face-to-face interactions.

At NAB, with so many departments and teams, it was more professional and structured—you mostly interacted with your own group unless there was a reason to cross over. On top of that, the hybrid setup meant you didn’t always meet your teammates in person; most conversations happened over chat or calls. I’m not that much of a people person, so either way worked fine for me.

In terms of office, I mean… NAB was objectively better. Huge space, large monitors, an abundant pantry, and close to a Metro station—a big yes for me. Plus, being in the Ba Son area meant having one of the best views of the whole city.

Wrapping up

So that’s been my tour as an intern across a startup and an enterprise. Two very different flavors of work, both worth tasting. I wouldn’t say one is better than the other—it’s more like comparing coffee and tea: depends on what you’re in the mood for. For me, the mix of fast-moving chaos and structured calm was pretty eye-opening.

I’ve finally graduated from “senior intern” status and moved into a full-time role this September. Being an intern was fun—mostly because I could break things without too much guilt or worry. Still, I’m excited to see what stories the next chapter will bring. Until then, that’s my two cents.