Intern First, Win Later: How Two Internships Shortened My Path to Senior Dev

If you’re wondering why I haven’t written for a while, it’s because I picked up a new client. It’s an enterprise client with a massive codebase and plenty of challenges - SQL query performance, caching etc. Work eats a lot of energy, but I’m determined to save some for writing and sharing what I learn. Bear with me.

Most devs sleep on internships.

They chase job titles, skip the hard reps, and stall for years, looking for perfect opportunities.

I didn’t.

I took two internships (one of them was unpaid) and used them to leapfrog tutorial hell, land my first dev job, and build the foundation that took me to senior.

Here’s the tactical path I took, why it worked, and how you can steal it.

1. Say Yes to Chaos Early

My first internship was unpaid.

I worked on messy legacy code, debugged things I barely understood, and barely knew what Git flow was. I knew almost NOTHING in a sense of basic practical work.

The impostor syndrom hit me hard.

But that chaos taught me more in a month than any course ever did. I had a chance to work with experienced people. Whatever advice I got from them was a pure gold at that time.

Professors can’t tech you that in school.

Forget about money for a moment. What you’re really after is exposure to reality. That’s where the compounding starts.

2. Stack Small Wins Fast

Internship #2? Same story, different company - but this time I was sharper.

First of all, having experience from the previous internship was my green card for getting into the 2nd one.

Future bosses will look at you differently if you have some free/unpaid work in the past.

It shows you’re serious - not just another applicant.

I knew how to ask good questions - and who to ask?

I started owning features.

I saw how teams actually ship.

I worked longer hours in order to get the work done and learn the topics I struggled with. And trust me every topic was a new for me at that time.

That 6-month grind (3 unpaid, 3 paid) turned into my first dev job.

3. Use Internships as Leverage

Most see internships as temporary. I treated them as systems training.

Every bug, PR, and ticket was practice for senior-level thinking.

I built my own “WTF log,” used senior PRs as study guides, and learned to debug like a pro.

Start Here:

• Apply everywhere. Volume wins early.

• Take the unpaid one if you must - and commit hard.

• Track every feature you ship, every bug you squash.

• Don’t just code - reflect, explain, ask questions.

Internships aren’t beneath you. They’re your fast-track.

CTA:

If you're early in your dev journey, write down this question:

Then act accordingly.

📩 If You’re in That Fire Now - Here’s What Helped Me Climb Out

You don’t need 100 more hours of tutorials. You need a system built on real pressure, not perfect theory.

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