Say "Hello" to the Class of 2020

Hello, you're joining us here for Say Hello to the Class of 2020. I myself am one of the summer interns and we have about 30 others on the call, as well as Michelle Zatlyn, who is the co-founder and COO of Cloudflare.

And we're going to talk about some of our experiences this summer, how we found the application process, some of the projects that we've been working on, and maybe what we're going to be looking forward to in the future.

And it's a first for Cloudflare TV to have this many people on so please excuse any sort of challenges we might encounter, but hopefully things go relatively smoothly.

And I'll introduce Michelle now and we're going to be taking some questions from the live audience.

If you have any, feel free to email in the link should just be below the screen.

And, but yeah, let's kick off. Great.

Thanks, Greg. All right. Well, good morning. I'm in San Francisco. So good morning to those joining us from the west coast and good afternoon if you're in central time or east coast of the United States and then good evening if you're in Europe.

And if you're watching from Asia. Well, I know it's early morning for you. So thanks for joining.

So excited to be here with about 31 interns, summer interns who are at Cloudflare.

I mean, between all of you, you make up about seven different offices.

So some of you were tied here in San Francisco, others were in Austin, others were in Champaign, Illinois.

We had some of you working out of Singapore, London, New York, and Kirkland, Washington.

And so it's pretty amazing to see what global looks like.

So thanks to all the interns this summer. And this group represents about 11 teams.

There's engineering and some of our new product innovation and technology and security as well as legal, sales, marketing.

So all of you together really span the whole gamut.

And what I love about our internship program at Cloudflare is some of you are in high school, some are undergrads, some of you are doing your MBAs or at law school or pursuing your master's or PhDs.

And so really an incredible group.

And so I want to turn it over to you. We want to hear all your stories.

And the way that we're going to structure the next hour is about, we'll do a piece about applying for a summer internship and what that was like.

We'll talk about that for about 12 minutes. And then we'll talk about what you learned as summer interns and some of your projects and things that surprised you and things that were different than expected.

And then we'll wrap up. And I think this is on the top of many people's minds of you're all students during a global pandemic.

Are you going back to school in the fall? And what does that mean?

So that's how we're going to structure the time. And if you have questions, please definitely submit them.

And Greg, how do people submit questions if they have them?

So there should be an email address just below us in the video player.

And yeah, it should be pretty straightforward. Just email in and we'll field them as we can.

Perfect. Great. All right. Okay, so let's start with how you all went about applying for internships.

So the first question that I'm curious of is, how did you discover Cloudflare?

Why did you decide to apply? All right, I guess I can go first.

A brave soul, Babak. Thank you. Okay, go. Yeah, maybe it was a different experience for me or a different journey.

When I started my PhD three years ago, I started with a project which involved evaluating third party anti-bot services, which is relevant to the bots team at Cloudflare.

But it took us three years to get that paper published.

And I was like, was it really worth my time working on this project?

But then the bots team talked to my advisor saying, hey, we're looking for someone who knows about bots, browser fingerprinting, things like that.

And then obviously, my experience on that research helped me a lot. So I got an interview, I talked with a couple of team members, I'm talking about my project, about what I've learned.

And I think that also, to a great extent, helped me move the project forward at Cloudflare.

So I'm both surprised that that made an opportunity for me.

And I'm also happy to have been working on a project at Cloudflare.

That's amazing. I mean, I feel like there's no better satisfaction of taking something that you're studying in your PhD program, and then seeing a real life application for it.

I feel like that's what many PhD students long for. So that's pretty great that you were able to do that.

Thanks for sharing that. How about another?

Is there another story? So Babak was through his PhD program and his advisor and taking some of the things he was studying at school and finding a practical application, commercialization of it.

Is there maybe another story that someone can share about how they discovered Cloudflare and why you decide to apply?

I think that's definitely one route. So thanks for sharing that, Babak. Is there another one?

Yeah, I think I can go next. Yeah, I'm also an MBA intern. And then the way I knew about Cloudflare was that it was actually our case company on our class.

So actually, one of our class, we learned about Cloudflare early journey for like one and a half an hour just about Cloudflare.

And then it seems like really cool to me.

You know, I mean, the technology and then the culture, the company tried to build at the very early stage.

I think it was like 2010, 2011 that we learned about Cloudflare.

So yeah, I think that this company is really cool. So I want to learn more by doing internship there.

So that's how I ended up applying internship at Cloudflare.

Oh, that's great. Thanks for sharing that story. So there was a case written about Cloudflare from 2011, when we had about 36 people at the company.

So it's pretty amazing. Today, we have over 1300 people around the world and that, you know, Joseph discovered that through his MBA studies and decide to apply.

So it's kind of a reminder for our founder for all of you. It's like if you just get your name out there, people are more likely to apply to be part of it.

So that's great. Thanks for sharing that. How about some of the undergrads?

I mean, so we've heard from some of the advanced programs, PhDs, masters of how they heard about the opportunities.

Is there any, maybe an undergrad or one of the high school, someone in high school, how you decided, how you discovered Cloudflare, why you decided to apply?

Yeah, I'm a undergrad CS major and I had just taken a system programming class.

So I was learning a lot about like networking and a lot of technologies that are like Cloudflare adjacent.

And I ran into a Cloudflare rep and some of the engineers at a career fair on campus.

So I'm imagining that a lot of other interns have very similar experience where I, you know, I went up to the recruiter, I talked to them, gave them my resume, didn't really expect much out of it.

And then got a call a couple weeks later and an email and started the application process.

That's great.

The career fair stands the test of time. That's great. When you were at that career fair, Adithya, did you give your resume to a lot of companies that were there?

Did some stand out more than others? Or was it more just there to learn as a, I'm curious how you approached the career fair?

Yeah, when I came in, I like, I kind of walked through and looked at companies that I've, I had heard of before.

And so I knew a little bit about Cloudflare a lot from the blog, especially because, you know, it's always popping up in Hacker News or Reddit and all the different news sources that I'm like tapped into.

So I kind of went into the conversation with a recruiter with a little bit of background knowledge that I didn't have in a lot of different places.

And I definitely think that helped. It's, it's really cool how, how much exposure that you get to what's actually going on behind the scenes at Cloudflare.

And especially now that, you know, I've interned here, I also see how much information that we go and put back out there when we're releasing something.

That's good. So I have to ask, did you write a blog post this summer?

Or are you going to before you leave? I don't think we're going to get to before we leave.

Christian and I worked on a magic transit project.

And we are about to release that to enterprise customers. But so I think a blog post will be forthcoming after that eventually occurs.

Perfect. Well, we definitely would love for you to author that even if it's after your time here, you're welcome to contribute because showing the work that you've got to do is great.

Good. Thank you. Anyone else meet Cloudflare at a career fair or have an experience about how they got their summer internship through a career fair?

Thanks, Adithya, for sharing that.

But I think there's a lot of people out there that go to career fairs and they wonder, is it a good use of time?

So maybe one, one other story on that?

Um, sure, I guess I can go. So hey, guys, I'm Bo and I'm a undergrad CS major at UT Austin.

And I also, I guess, applied to Cloudflare like through my like career fair connections.

So actually, like before I went into the career fair, I, I'd never heard of Cloudflare before, to be perfectly honest.

But yeah, I walked in and I think the Cloudflare booth compared to the other is that I saw at the career fair.

The thing I thought was like pretty cool was that like, it seemed like the recruiters there were having more like genuine conversations and really engaging with the students, as opposed to like some of the other companies that were, you know, just kind of there.

But I thought it was really cool.

I talked for a long time with some of them. And yeah, like me, I wasn't at the career fair for too long.

So it was really like one of the only, one of the only companies that I applied to when I was there.

But yeah, just a really cool experience talking with, with everyone about like, both like technical stuff and the overall like recruiting process and everything.

That's great. But I think there's a lot of people who can relate to the story you just shared.

If I went to the career fair, I showed up and I left pretty quickly, but saw this one thing that caught my eye.

So that's, I remember from my university days, the same, the same sort of, I went kind of checked a couple things out and then left.

So thanks for sharing that.

I will say that the best part of my job are the people I get to work with.

And so it's great to hear that the, you know, our teammates who were there were engaged and sharing and, and it is amazing what you can do with a passionate group of people.

It's pretty awesome. Good. So we're going to talk about this for a few more minutes, then we're going to turn on to all your summers and what you worked on and some of the things you learned, but just, just in terms of getting an internship and how all of you found it.

Because again, there's a lot of people out there who, who had summer internships this summer that didn't work out.

So there's a lot of people who are thinking about how do I get my next internship?

So thank you to sharing this idea of your advisors. I applied through case studies.

I went to the career fair. I mean, these are really great. And there's some, there's some people on this call who, who, who came back for a second summer internship at Cloudflare.

So maybe you can just share a little bit about why you did that.

And another reason why I decided to come back is my team has some exceptional women leaders that I get to learn from every single day.

And they're truly inspirational and have been amazing sounding boards whenever I'm feeling uncertain, struggling with imposter syndrome, even.

So that's been the main two reasons why I decided to come back.

That's great. And so, and Amisha, that, I mean, the company's changed a lot in the year between last summer and this summer.

Like we were here last summer, we were a private company and, you know, maybe a thousand people and now we're a public company, larger.

Did you notice that? Any, anything different between kind of last summer, this summer, in terms of the company size?

Yeah, for sure. The company has become way bigger than it was back then.

And also the teams have matured a lot. The projects have matured a lot. So it's really exciting to see how people around are planning.

They have a long-term vision.

And now I can like kind of contribute to it and see where it's going. So that's, that's been a cool change.

Good, good. Thanks for sharing that. That's great.

All right, let's, we're going to spend one more minute on this and we're going to turn to your summers and all the things you learned and did.

And so any other last words about why you applied for Cloudflare or how you chose it over maybe another internship you were considering before we move on to all the great projects you worked on and what you learned?

And I want to give anyone else a chance to chime in on, on the application process.

Because again, there's a lot of students around the world that are thinking about summer internships, even they're starting to think about for next summer now.

And so I'm sure they'd love to hear your insights on this.

Yeah, I'm just like my other two cents. I'm Irene. I'm on the engineering team for Boss as well.

And like I think the one big thing that like really stood out to me about Cloudflare was that they were hiring for like with a specific project in mind.

So then I got to call, I got to call with my now manager first to talk about like, is this like a good fit and whatnot, before going into like the technical side of the interviews and meeting the rest of the team, as opposed to like doing like a blank hacker rank and then doing technical interviews without actually knowing like what projects you would you would be working on.

That's great. That's great. And I, it's pretty cool to say I built this this summer, right?

Like you, you contributed a project and it's like I did this, there is something really satisfying about that.

Is that project that you started when you were applying and kind of talking to your initial manager?

Is that what you ended up working on this summer, Irene?

Or did it switch, change along the way? I definitely had like a good, I guess, part in like scoping or like defining like what part of it I would like want to do and whatnot.

So it's mostly like been the same. I guess like as like a sentence or two, it's reinforcement learning system around like the bot, the current like bot management, bot detection of the bots team, basically.

Yeah.

Great, good. Okay, good. Well, thank you for all of us. I mean, I've learned a lot about how to think about getting an internship, the different avenues, there's so many different ways.

And then even if you're considering different opportunities, maybe things to look for.

So thank you, everyone, for sharing all that.

So, so let's spend the next big chunk of time talking about your actual internships this summer, what you worked on, and maybe some things that you're, that you're really excited about or proud of.

So let's start there. Like what are, what's, what's maybe the one of the most exciting things that you've done this summer?

Things are most proud thing that you got to work on this summer that you can share with with the audience.

Hello, my name is Matt.

I'm an intern on the workers distributed data team, and I've been working on the workers runtime this summer.

And it's, it's very cool to, to work on a product where I know that the scale operates on is insane workers runs in every, in every cloud for colo and the amount of requests that it handles is simply mind boggling.

So when a piece of my code makes it into a production deploy, I know it's running all over the world and millions of requests are running through it.

It's pretty exciting to think about. For you, was that is that nerve wracking? I mean, I agree that it is you feel like, wow, I push something and you really touch millions of people around the world, which is incredibly empowering.

Does that kind of keep you up at night to a little bit Matt?

Thankfully, not too much of my stuff isn't isn't I don't think a bunch of my code isn't a hot path.

So I'm not too concerned about it.

But, um, there's there's definitely a, it will be soon. So I'm going to have, I'm going to be thinking about that in a few weeks.

Yeah, no, it's good scale is both an asset, but it's also has a big responsibility that comes with it.

So that's great. Thanks for sharing that it is and thanks for helping make workers even better because you're right, we use it in a lot of things that we do.

So thanks for working on that this summer. And how about somebody else what other exciting projects are really proud of the things that you call your, your parents and say I got to work on this this summer or at the dinner table.

What, what are some others?

I think I can go next.

I'm Sadiq. I'm PhD student at the University of Washington and during the summer I was working with the research group.

And one of the project that I was working on is called oblivious DNS and DNS or HTTPS.

And the idea is the standard DNS queries that happen that many clients and computers make worldwide have this leakage of privacy.

And given how much we as a company care about privacy and about security of our users.

I think this is a, this is a new like contribution that we're making from the research front, which could be like probably in production and deployed to the real world in a few years.

So I'm pretty excited about the possibility of doing something like this.

That's great. I have a saying for that Sadiq.

You got you, you're, you're building the future. Right, you really are building the future and and and we definitely believe in that in that standard and it being distributed more broadly.

And so thank you for doing that. Thanks for sharing that.

That's great. Others, maybe one or two more on this and then and then I'm going to ask about maybe surprises that came to you.

You kind of surprised as a summer intern, but before I definitely want you to be able to highlight your works.

You all worked on such important projects and works. Anyone else, something that they're really excited about or proud of that they got to work on that you can share with the audience.

My name is Christian and I, I was one of the interns on the Magic Transit team with Aditya and Marie and we worked on kind of this diagnostic tool called NetVisor for our for like customer support and essentially it does a distributed trace route.

So it finds out what path of packet takes across the network and seeing everyone's reactions to that was really awesome.

Like seeing customer support say like this is awesome. Like I'm in heaven about us interns like releasing a product was really, really cool to see I have a saying on this one.

I guess I have a lot of sayings. I guess when you build a company for 10 years you end up with a lot of sayings, but and or worked at many companies along during my career, but my saying on this one Christian and you let me know whether this resonates or not is It's great to build a product.

I mean that that feels good, but there's no better satisfaction than someone actually using what you built Yeah, definitely.

And so whether it's an internal customer group or an external customer group.

I think that that is Whether you whether it's a job or you're starting a company.

It's you want to build things that actually people use and move the ball forward that they're like that delight to your users.

So that's great. I love that. You'll, you'll remember those, those, those, you know that for will be forever imprinted on your brain Christian that delight.

Anyone that maybe one more on this, then we'll we'll switch to some of the idea.

But what what surprised you this summer, and then we'll talk about mentorship, but I just want to get I love hearing about all this and it's such a breadth of examples.

Any other maybe one more before we move on to the next surprising things that you learn Yeah, I'd love to talk about mine a little bit.

And so I'm working in what was product strategy, but is now emerging technology and incubation.

And so I've been looking at our imagery sizing product and how we can Help highlight to customers who might find use in this because a lot of the time websites are delivering really massive images down to mobile devices and that bandwidth is just huge and totally unneeded because they're only ever seeing on a tiny little resolution.

So we're looking to identify the websites that this can this can benefit from and As a second part, we're looking to make it easier for them to adopt our product and make it easier to use and configure and and it's been a really exciting project and I've learned a lot technically from how images work on like a really low level and to how the business use cases for releasing a product like this.

But it's also given me opportunity to get involved in other things like I've been learning a lot about web performance standards and things.

And as part of that I'm Working on the web almanac this year, which isn't anything specific to do with Cloudflare, but I've been introduced to people in the industry and I get to work as an analyst and crunching some numbers and things to to write that up this year.

And of course, there are a number of other opportunities within Cloudflare, such as trying to organize the show.

So there's always stuff going on and there's a lot of opportunity throughout.

It's been a really great summer for sure.

That's great. Well, it is, you know, the Internet is amazing. It's connected us in so many different ways and The image growth.

If you just think even the last I mean 20 years, but the last 10 years, the last five years is how people want to communicate with images and the richer like think about People want crystal clear images and that is a technical challenge to make sure that that loads quickly and securely for people around the world, whether you're on your mobile phone.

Or your laptop or iPad. And so thanks for working on that. Greg, I definitely thought you would have said organizing Cloudflare TV.

I mean, when else do you get to be a TV producer and Pretty new experience for me.

I've never done anything like this before.

So yeah, it's been very interesting to learn from It for you.

You should definitely put that on your, your CV, your resume going And fun facts.

It's a good fun fact to Create a story. All right. Well, these, these stories have been great.

And, and again, thank you so much for sharing your work. It feels really good to ship things and ship things that you're proud of and you're excited about.

So thanks for doing that. And, you know, I always love this question because I think you learn a lot from it.

And I always ask people, the first week, but now you're at the end.

So I'm going to come back and ask them, maybe what's a little surprised you this summer.

I think it's a good Good question. I always ask people their first week here during my new higher orientation session.

What are some things that have surprised you And so I've actually never gone to ask at the end.

So now I'm going to ask at the end of your, your time at Cloudflare, what's something that maybe has surprised you this summer.

Yeah, I can answer. Hi, I'm David.

I'm a systems engineering intern on the IP addressing team and And I've just been really surprised at just the quality of the documentation here at Cloudflare and how everyone really values good communication and in hindsight, I don't really know why that was a surprise to me.

I mean, absolutely. Cloudflare has like the best public engineering blog.

I've ever seen As a few of my colleagues have mentioned already.

So, but that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of internal documentation and just how many smart people there are here who are willing to share their knowledge.

And so I've especially being remote during the pandemic.

I'm so glad I'm at a company where everyone is really good at communication.

That's great. Thanks for sharing that David. How about someone else.

Another surprise. That's really great to hear. I think I can answer this one.

I'm Andy. I'm a legal intern and I, I guess I knew coming into Cloudflare that it was an international company and that we have offices and Data centers all over the world.

But what really surprised me is how much international law. I dealt with this summer.

I was looking at Japanese privacy law and employment requirements in Belgium and France and whistleblower laws all over the world.

So it was a little frustrating because I really only had a background in US law going to law school here, but it was really interesting to learn about.

And I think it'll be really useful in my future career too.

That's great. Well, it's, it's a little bit back to what we were talking about before about scale like when you should when when I was saying, okay, my code runs everywhere.

And I said, is that Scale. Again, it's amazing.

But if you learn a lot of things that I think the global nature of a company is another thing where you can kind of read about it on paper, but until you actually live it, you realize this is what it actually means.

And here's where it's good.

Here's where it's hard. You're just like, wow. You really, I thought it was this, but this other part of the world.

It's totally different. And it's kind of against your intuition.

So it's great that you got to see that and get exposed to that so early in your career.

So thanks for sharing that. Any other any other surprises that I'm going to ask you about mentorships.

This is what I always say the elusive the unicorn topic.

So I want to hear about your mentorship. But before we move to mention, I just want to see if there's any other surprises from the summer that you can share And I think I can go next.

And I think one of the, one of the biggest surprise.

I saw it's really like the breadth of things that are going on here.

There's so many things that I've been worked on and Doing my internship. I talked to different people and like her what they're working about.

And that's just like the, the, the knowledge that there is it just, it's just incredible.

And also suddenly I was talking to someone like one of the tools I use on a daily basis, my development work, I would just call it talking to maintain know that I was like, what, that's, that's, that's so cool.

And I just think like the knowledge as David already mentioned before, but there is That's, it was really amazing.

And I learned so much during that time.

That's great. Well, back to the best part of my job with the people I get to work with because they're experts and knowledge a lot and care about what they're doing and I've had a lot of jobs in my life where that's not necessarily the case.

So I don't, I don't take that for granted. So it's great to hear that you had a good experience.

Okay, maybe one more on this. Then I'm going to ask you about mentorship.

I guess I can go.

So one surprise that I have is actually the shop for portion of the beer beer meeting because I, I was like super surprised by the fact that Executives would spend like at least five minutes just reading all the shout outs to like all the employees.

And I think that's actually a really good thing in the sense that it kind of feels a sense of community and kind of like Allow people to express gratitude to whoever that helped them along the way for the projects.

That's great.

Well, and just maybe when just because there's some folks who haven't come to your meeting and heard about the shout outs, maybe for the audience listening, just like a, why don't I, why don't you tell the world, maybe like one sentence two sentences of what you're referring to just give them a little bit more context.

Yeah, so basically, I think every Monday Michelle sent out an email to the whole company just collecting shout outs.

So basically, people can like send in some really short notes saying, hey, this is some person that helped them for a certain project and some of the example includes out to someone who spent Hours like settling that deal and things like that.

And then at the end of the beer meeting, there will be just like at least two sides of her shout outs where the executive just read over everything so people can see who contribute what to the company and then like how people are like kind of expressing gratitude to each other.

That's great. Good job. Yeah, that's exactly right. And, and it's the way that the shout outs got actually I'll tell you a little quick history lesson, then we'll move on to mentorship.

So you can start thinking about your mentor mentor experience this summer.

And whether you were able to find mentors, whether it's inside club or outside club or but The, the, the origin story of shout outs is we do this weekly all hands meeting every week.

We've always done that. We've done that since we were a little Really small and it was actually a product manager on our team.

Someone who used to work on product strategy, which is now called emerging technology team.

This wonderful woman Danny and she she's since moved on from the company and done lots of great other things.

But she had the idea of, hey, be really cool to be able to recognize people like here people really go above and beyond to help each other.

We should be able to find a way to recognize it.

And so it's someone's idea. She wasn't an intern was her first job out of college and we still do it to this day.

And it is really amazing that people around the world can say Thank you to Andy for going above and beyond, or whoever and and and every week people do and I do think it's nice.

I love it. Kind of moment of gratitude.

It's good appreciation. Good. Okay. Well, thanks for sharing all those surprises.

And so I do want to talk about mentorship, because I often find that early in your career.

People want mentorships, but it's like how then the question is, well, how do you find a mentor.

How do you find a mentor. Is it formal informal.

I know, even in my own career. There are a lot of people have had impact on me and that I learned from, but I don't have.

If you said, who's your mentor.

I mean, I don't have. There's not a name that comes to mind. It's more like a group of people that I've kind of gotten to know over the years, but there's some people who really do have mentors.

So I would love. I feel like it's an elusive unicorn really works for some people very well.

And for others, it's a little bit more informal.

And so I'd love to understand, like, what was your experience finding interns or mentors.

You know, early in your career and maybe some tips that you have for the audience.

Because again, I think it's something that people really want to understand better.

Does anyone find him. Does anyone have strong mentors that they really rely on regularly that you can maybe we can start there.

I'm Olivia.

I'm a security engineering intern with the infrastructure security team. And I've definitely found a lot of mentorship within my team, especially with my manager.

And I think by far Cloudflare has has shown the most care in terms of my personal growth.

But it's also nice to see how easy it is to connect with others from different teams and be able to find mentorship there.

And recently, there was actually a there was actually a hackathon within the security team, which allowed me to connect with a lot of different colleagues in order to Have the chance to work on a product that we otherwise would not be able to work on in a regular work day to create new security products for our customers.

And that was a really great way to also Spread out and find new mentorship.

So I think with the same that it takes a village to raise a child Cloudflare is definitely a great village and I'm grateful.

I definitely ascribe to the village metaphor Olivia use that all the time that you can see the hair of my son in the background definitely takes a village.

That's great. That's great. So that's a great example of internal mentorship where on your team and peers, maybe Other people have experience with internal mentorship and then I want to buy also want to spend a moment talking about external mentorship, whether it's advisors at school or people you've got to know because I I do think it's really important topic that gets brought up over and over again.

So maybe we'll let's stick on internal then we'll move to external any other internal mentorship kind of stories that can be shared.

Yeah, I'm Rohan. I'm from New York.

I'm an MBA intern this summer and I'm on the special projects team.

So I feel like it's a team that's very uniquely cross functional And in terms of that I've had lots of internal mentors.

It's getting a chance to work with the infrastructure team on a project with the legal team on a project product on A couple different things.

And so, you know, even within the cloud, we're just like taking a moment at the beginning of a meeting to just Kind of introduce myself as an intern and learn about someone's career and how they ended up in the Cloudflare Where they kind of find their niche in Cloudflare has been really valuable to me and kind of understanding How you can guide your career.

And I feel like, you know, I definitely talked to these people afterwards as well and kind of get their feedback on different ideas, get their feedback on, you know, my own work and then also kind of where I want to take my career.

That's great. That's great.

Maybe just special projects is definitely unique to Cloudflare just kind of like one and his her shout out description and if you're me.

So maybe you can tell the world.

In again one or two sentences like people special Rohan said special projects.

What is that, so maybe just one more sentence on what special projects does that Cloudflare what that team is responsible for.

Sure. Yeah, I would say that broken up in three broad categories.

One kind of being our business in China.

We do a lot of work there kind of own not only in strategy around like the people on the ground and kind of managing those partnerships there.

The other one being like strategic partnerships and technology partnerships.

So beyond like sales partnerships or channel partnerships thinking about different products.

And then the last one kind of being a little bit more nebulous and something that I've spent most of my time on which is M&A and then also strategy for thinking about where we can do potential acquisitions or investments.

In our adjacent technologies or, you know, things that we want to expand into and then also around strategy.

So one of my projects this summer was kind of working on The three year planning.

So the executive team did like a big offsite and they thought about, okay, how do we deal with pandemic.

We need to change our business models.

We need to change how we think about different things. As they go forward.

And so getting a chance to work on those materials and just kind of being really future oriented for Cloudflare and thinking, you know, this is what 2020 is what 2021 going to look like 2022 going to look like for Cloudflare and what are all the different avenues of growth.

That's great. Good job. That's good. You and when both did a great job put you on the spot there and you both.

Excellent. Good job. Great.

Okay, good. Thanks for sharing that. Okay, how about external mentorships.

I mean, so we have some great of course learning from peers and people are willing to help you and answer questions and Which is, which is great.

We all look.

I mean, I think that I hope I wish that upon everyone in their career to be surrounded by people who want to invest in you and make us all better.

And, and, and I feel like I still have that today to which which I really appreciate.

What about external mentorships.

Are there People you follow online or blogs you read or books or people you it could be informal or formal that you use externally that really you feel have really helped you in your career so far.

Any external mentorship.

Hi, I'm Darshan.

I'm a software engineer intern working on cloud for TV. And what I like to do is like I like to go on LinkedIn and Kind of like message people for advice like, you know, how'd you get in this position, you know, what's the best chances you know what I could do to get in those And it's always been, you know, people are always, you know, happy to help answer my questions, things like that.

And that's been always rewarding. Great. That's good. That's great. And and That's great.

Do you tell them that you're a student Yeah, so I just, you know, start out with like a basic, you know, thing like, hey, I would need help in this, you know, what can I do.

And then, you know, most people are free to respond. So it's really good.

Good for you. Good way to take initiative. I we, you know, Matthew and I and Matthew Lee and I started Cloudflare and Matthew and I met at business school.

So we were on a campus students and when we started Cloudflare we email a lot of people asking for input and hey, how do you think about this.

And we used to say like our.edu email addresses were very handy.

You can almost as a student, you can almost reach out to anyone and and So many people want to help students because they want, you know, again, everyone remembers that time and it really is.

Value that.edu and even when you graduate, you can still be a student. Hey, I recently graduated that kind of works for six months after and then you kind of lose that Lose that so good for you, Darshan.

That's good. That's a good, that's a good learning for all of us to for all for students to say, hey, I should do the take advantage of that.

Any other external mentorship. That's a really good one that I'm sure people will be like, I'm going to do that.

And there's probably people on LinkedIn right now doing that.

So, so good. Any other external mentorship.

Again, it formal or informal. I was talking to someone, a founder earlier today in Toronto and he said he found someone It's much more formal mentorship where they meet up with somebody in a different industry, but the head of them in the career and they meet up every month for coffee and he comes with a list of questions and they talk about different things.

And so that was You know, a very formalized kind of mentorship and somebody that he just really liked and got along with and really respected and wanted to And did a good job managing that every month to make the time for the two of them to connect.

So that's another example I heard earlier today, but Any others from here and then I'm going to ask you about what it's been like working remote remotely across so many time zones.

Any other external mentorships.

Okay, well, I'll have one more because I think what what what Darshan said is exactly right.

You can email people within .edu. They could be alumni of your school or just on LinkedIn.

Like, I think that's good for you. Again, this, this gentleman who I was talking about earlier, where he'd set up Found somebody he really respected and said, Hey, I'd love to have coffee with you once a month and just kind of makes it happen and makes it easy for that person and they do and he makes a good use of time.

So they both keep showing up. I think that's really good. One of the things that I found a lot as I've been growing my career is how much you can learn from others online.

You don't even need to know them like because a lot of there's some people who really like write a lot online and you can really learn a ton about You know, just by reading and it can be blog posts.

It can be Twitter feeds.

It can be medium posts, but some people write books. Some people just write articles.

And I do think that I found a couple folks aware where different parts of my career where they really resonated what they wrote was writing really resonated with me and I ended up following them pretty Closely and I felt like I learned a lot.

And so they almost became a mentor to me and they didn't even know me.

And I think that needs a name. I don't know what that needs, but like I like and I know I'm not the only person.

And so I do think that is Under valued resource where it's like you can people just write so much these days and you can really learn a lot.

If you show up and find it and so I have some kind of some of my favorites that I like to follow.

So that's another one I would add, but whether it's like And if you're into AI go find AI experts or business models or tech founders or whatever it is like you just kind of people write really interesting things and and and you can learn a lot from them, even though you don't know them.

Just to quickly jump on that I actually found my internship at Cloudflare by reading Fred Wilson's blog.

He's a Chamber VC at Union Square Ventures and I read his blog for years and I actually saw his blog post about how Cloudflare is expanding their intern class this year.

And that's what got me to apply. Oh, good. That's great.

Well, I mean, that's a great I mean abc.com like they that's Fred Wilson's they blog every day.

He's this really prolific investor who writes a blog post every morning and sometimes are quick and sometimes are long, but it's just, yeah, that's somebody who I'm like, again, now I know Fred, but I felt I read his blogs for a long time before I knew him.

So yeah, that's a good one. Really good one.

So what, you know, we're in a pandemic and all of a sudden overnight. Everything's remote and and we'll see what happens in a post pandemic world, but right now.

Feels like COVID is with us for a while. What's been like working remotely.

I mean, starting a job remotely working remotely finishing remotely like what's that been like how what maybe what are some things that have been wow this easier than I thought harder than I thought.

I'd love to hear some perspectives on that.

I can jump in real quick. Um, yeah, it's actually been a lot easier than I thought it would be kind of ties back to how everyone is so great at communication.

But I think one of the things that has worked well for my team, especially me as an intern is You know, I'm certainly not someone who likes unnecessary meetings, but We have just kind of regular meetings with no agenda, just so we can all be in the same room and talk face to face and just They're optional.

It's kind of self paced, but it's great to still get that FaceTime, even if it's just to catch up with co workers because, you know, you have these conversations and Maybe it doesn't feel like something that's important enough to warrant a meeting, but You still talk through things and are surprised.

Sometimes, sometimes there's some really useful input from other members of the team.

So that's actually worked really well for my team. I think we have meetings like this, like three times a week.

It's been great. It definitely doesn't feel like a time sink or waste of time or anything.

Great. Thanks, David. Thanks for sharing that.

It's good to hear that it's been a little bit easier than you thought. That's good.

Thanks for sharing that. How about others? Easier than you thought? Harder?

Things that kind of made it better? Personally, I find the onboarding virtually worked really well because there's a lot of content to go through when you first get started.

Something like two weeks worth of presentations and reading wiki articles and all this sort of stuff, which is very asynchronous and lends itself really well.

And I think everyone around the world has found the adjustment to working from home pretty difficult generally, but for the type of work that Cloudflare is typically in, the sort of technology and things, it's probably one of the best industries to cope with.

Remote work and things typically tend to be pretty well set up for that type of thing.

So I found that the summer internship as a whole hasn't really been negatively affected generally.

And like I said, the onboarding, in fact, I think was probably better.

And even the people that we're meeting and things are still forming part of our network.

One of the interns in this class is in fact coming up to Edinburgh this weekend.

We're going to go hang out.

And it's just like you're still getting to know everyone and you're still forming your network.

And that's really what's useful out of an internship and one of the most valuable things you can really get out of the people that you meet.

And I think that's all still very much possible. Greg, your comment about onboarding might have even been better virtually.

Actually, we measure kind of the NPS, Net Promoter Score of our new hire classes, because we do do a lot of onboarding, kind of a new hire week or two week program to help get everyone up to speed.

And it's always received very high feedback, but it is higher in a virtual setting.

And whether it's the asynchronous, the not having to get on a plane and fly from Europe to the West Coast to San Francisco for a week with jet lag or having to leave family behind or imagine coming from Singapore, how far that is.

So that is one area where it feels like it has gotten even better. It was good before, but it feels like it's actually has gotten better.

So it's good. Great to hear.

Thanks for sharing that. Any others? Any other what it's like been working remotely?

I mean, we heard it's better than we thought. Both David and Greg kind of said it's better than I thought and I still can build people and I feel like I can contribute and be part of it, which is all good.

Any other maybe a different point of view or a different comment before we move on to?

I want to talk about the last 10 minutes.

I really want to talk about what you're all thinking about during a pandemic post post your summer internships and going back to campus in the fall.

But before we get to that, I just want to see another point of view about working remotely.

And Greg is right. We're so lucky. I mean, technology companies are really well positioned to be remote.

There's a lot of industries that don't have that privilege.

So I do feel like we're really lucky. But that doesn't mean it's easy.

You know, I miss going to the office like I miss seeing people having those conversations while I'm making myself a coffee.

But I'm just curious, other points of view, maybe a different point of view before we move on off this topic.

So just such top of mind for everyone right now. I think two things that have been very helpful is over communication, especially like given the lack of face to face contact, it's harder to pick up on certain subtle social cues.

So definitely having a team in a company where everyone trusts in one another's good intentions and clarifies if there's any confusion has definitely helped a lot with communication and clarity.

And additionally, having an emphasis on the importance of taking time to rest because I know especially with the lack of demarcation in terms of physical work settings versus physical home settings now with remote work, it's very easy to overwork oneself and you know work through lunch and whatnot.

So it's been nice to have other colleagues to place importance on the well-being of individuals.

Yeah, burnout.

I mean, you said demarcation. Olivia, you use such nice language around it, but it is, it is.

Yeah, managing burnout is important. Yes, definitely.

Any others? I saw some other people unmute so I want to make sure I give you an opportunity.

Natalie? I miss happy hour. Yeah, I hear you. I think a lot of people do.

Just because, I mean, I'd love to see my coworkers face to face, but this week, I had just one of those things where it's a little harder to communicate through chat.

And I don't know, I just, I just miss that kind of, you know, afternoon, like, release, you don't have any, any, you don't have to think about work and you kind of like, I feel like it makes work communication easier when you can develop a personal connection with your coworkers.

Yes, yeah, I miss it too.

I miss the coffee hours, the, yeah, seeing people in person. Yeah, I agree.

So, okay, so now your internships are wrapping up this month, and, you know, COVID is still going on, but campuses are reopening, some are reopening, some aren't.

And so our, let me just ask for the group of you here, are you going back to campus in the fall?

Yes, no, maybe, not sure yet.

So, I'm actually sticking around. I accepted an offer to stay at Cloudflare, so I'm not returning to school this fall.

Wow, so are you going to maybe defer or you just said, hey, let's wait and see, I'm going to work for a bit and wait and see what happens.

I'm kind of putting you on the spot. I think I'll go back someday.

I do want to finish my degree eventually, but I really want to do it in person.

I think a big part of the value of the college experience for me is being in person with your professors and with your peers, and I didn't think that the cost of school for remote education was worth it for me, and I thought I would learn a lot more being here.

That's great. That's great. Well, thanks for sharing that.

I'm excited for you to keep working on your workers distributed work.

I mean, really important. So welcome, welcome. And I do hope you go back and get your degree when you're ready, because I think that's also important.

It's also important. It's a cool experience. How about some others? So Matt said he's not.

Are other people going back? I'm sure some of you are. I mean, I saw the latest stats.

80% of students are apparently planning to go back and 20% are deferring or working instead or doing something else, but I'm curious.

Who's going back and maybe what was your thought process?

Okay, you guys can hear me now, right?

Can hear you now. Welcome. Thank you for not giving up. For me, I'm an incoming freshman to university.

I'm going to be doing CS at UC Berkeley. For me, it was a pretty difficult decision to whether to like go to school or not to.

Like the majority of UC Berkeley students are not going to be living on campus this year and will be taking basically the full first semester and possibly the next one remote.

And for me, I wanted like my parents have abundantly expressed their concerns about like coronavirus and stuff like that.

And I'm aware of that too. But like one thing I miss about like school and I also miss about like working at an office as well.

It's just like the day-to-day human interactions with people.

Because like there's just like some sort of magic and like just walking up to someone or like working beside someone just like chit-chatting.

For me, it helps with productivity as well.

Just to like talk with casually with other people, not even not about like work related stuff, but like other stuff.

And that's something that I definitely miss. And like I think for Cloudflare and also for just society in general has adapted pretty well to doing stuff remotely, doing stuff over the Internet.

But having like these small conversations, having these just like random interactions with other people is something that is just really difficult to get to over the Internet.

And for me, that's a huge reason for like wanting to go back to school, wanting to live on campus and like interacting with other people.

That's good. Yeah, I think that a lot of people that resonate.

So you are going to go back to school, Kevin, right?

Just so I understand. Okay, good. Good. Yeah, I'm sure it was a difficult decision.

I mean, it's one of those things where, yeah, it's a very personal decision and a big one.

Good. Thank you for sharing that. Thanks for being willing to share that.

Any other on this topic? Because then I do want to ask all of you maybe what something you maybe learned that will help you as you go back to be students to finish your studies.

But just want to see if there's any other, you know, I think Matt shared his perspective.

Kevin, again, thanks again for being so courageous to do that.

Any other thoughts? Again, lots of people are wondering what's on students' minds.

So I have a group of you here. I have to take advantage of that. I'm Felix, intern in immersion technology.

I'm a rising senior and I'm returning on campus, even though I only have one class in person, which makes it like a very different experience.

But I want to go back to campus to graduate on time, perhaps to graduate school afterwards and also to see my friends again with social distancing, of course.

Good. Thank you. Thanks for sharing that. Was that a hard decision for you, Felix, to make that decision?

So I think one of the more important factors might be that we signed up the lease for our new apartment before this happened.

So that made it easier to decide. Yeah, you felt like you had, you were like, wow, I already, to get out of that, you had already made some decisions that felt hard to unwind, like a lease.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, also a real estate lease is expensive, like rent is expensive, especially with students who typically don't earn budgets like that does change the calculus.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that.

I think sometimes that gets forgotten about in these decisions.

Good. Any other thoughts on this? And then I want to, we have five minutes left.

And I, one of the questions I want to ask all of you is maybe something that you've learned that might help you kind of in the next part of your career.

Because again, obviously you're all destined for great things as students and what you do next.

But any other, any other last comments on this before we move to kind of maybe more personal reflections past COVID?

Yeah. Hi, I'm Priya and I'm a student of University of Cincinnati.

So one thing I'm worried about is not graduating in person.

So I think I'll be graduating in December and I really want to get graduated with the hat and all that stuff.

But I think it's going to be remote this year.

I'm just sad about that. Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. There is something about that cap and gown and sharing with your families.

I'm just curious, your parents, your families, did they have any influence on your decision?

Cause I, when I was in university college, I mean, my, my parents had a lot of influence on me.

I'm just curious. Well, they still do. Let's, let's, let's face it.

But curious if that, if that weighed into any of your decisions, you know, your parents' input.

No. If situation was normal, my parents would have come from India to the US to see my graduation.

That also didn't happen because of this. That makes me even more sadder.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks Priya. Others, any other input from parents where it impacted your decision?

I don't know about if there's any other people in my position, but I'm kind of stuck in the middle.

I don't know whether I'm going back or not. And I'm calling my university every day and asking them questions, but they're kind of, they have no idea.

And I have no idea. And I'm in the US and who knows if I'll be able to go back or if we'll be event.

And it's, and my, I'm at my grandparents' place right now and they need some help from me.

So I'm, it's good for me to be here and they want me to stay here.

But then my family wants me to go. My dad wants me to go back.

My mom wants me to stay. My grandparents want me to stay. It's going back and forth.

And there's a million factors. So I don't know if anyone else has absolutely no idea, but I have absolutely no idea.

But enjoying every day while I'm at Cloudflare and learning the most and getting the most out of my summer, I guess.

But it's certainly, my mind is spinning. Yeah, that's a big, that's big.

Yeah, it's hard. It's hard. It's almost like a little bit of paralysis.

It's like, what do I do? Well, you've heard maybe Matt and Kevin can share you some more about their thought process and eventually you'll make a decision, but you don't have to, you have a few more days to decide or a few weeks to decide, Tyler.

So thanks for sharing that because that's actually, you said it, I think.

You're not the only person feeling that. So thank you for sharing that.

Okay, we have 90 seconds left before we all move on with our day. And this was, let me just say, Class of 2020 interns, amazing.

I mean, I've learned so much and all of you are such inspiration.

So thanks for sharing all of your insights. But maybe we can just end like a rapid fire of what's one thing you learned that you think you're like, I think this is going to stick with me.

And whether it's, hey, communication matters or people, I don't know, can we kind of quick fire round and all of you can maybe kind of just chime in one by one.

I'll try and go through all of them and maybe Greg, you can go first.

We'll try and go through everybody. So just think about like one thing you learned this summer that you plan to stick with you.

Sorry to put you on the spot, Greg, you're getting a cold call, but you're the top left for me.

So let's go quickly. Okay, I want everyone to be able to answer.

Go Greg. A lot of technology, for sure. All right. Awesome. Clement, your turn.

For now for blogging and publishing things, that's really important and I didn't realize that before.

Awesome. Matt, your turn. And Rachel, you're next. Remembering the user.

Yeah, good one. Rachel, your turn. I learned to work with my teammates.

Oh, that's nice. Okay, Tyler, you're up and then Christian, sparks.

Tyler, you're up. I guess building a full working system, and not just focusing on one little thing at a time.

Getting it to work first, basically. Good. Christian, then Kwong, you're after Christian.

Get it out to users. Nice. Kwong, and then Irene.

C-C-P-I-P. Irene, then Wen. Just try things and, like, believe that things, like, with the power of people, I guess, like, we put together and, yeah.

Nice. Wen, then Darshan. Just try to research on difficult things. Nice. Darshan, then Babak.

DevOps works. Nice. Babak. Management skills and team lead. Nice.

All right, Kevin, then Olivia. Learn to communicate with others and unblock yourself.

Yeah. Olivia, you're up, and then Jonas. Jonas, better than perfect. Ah, that's a good one.

Jonas, then Natalie. I think when something doesn't work, hang in there and, like, keep on pushing until you can make it work.

Some good life lessons in here.

All right, Natalie, then Tyler. Sometimes there's no crypto expert, so you have to become the crypto expert.

Oh, there we go. These are very deep.

There's some blog posts in here. I hope someone's going to write this epic blog post of all the things you all learned.

All right, Tyler, then David. How the Internet works.

Yeah, that will stick with you forever. David, then Adithya. Always have a backup plan.

That's true for immigration, people who are foreigners. This is a good one.

Anyway, Adithya, then Felix. The Internet doesn't always work the way you think it works.

Okay, Felix, then Priya. Develop at its gate. Yeah, Priya, then Rohan's going to round us out.

Go ahead, Priya. Documenting the right things.

Ah, yeah, documenting. Good. And then, Rohan, what's yours? There's a lot of stakeholders involved in every decision.

I thought I wore bigger. Yeah, we've got to figure out how not that's the case.

All right, you all, thank you so much.

This was wonderful. I'm leaving inspired, and I wish all of you the best as you finish up your internship at Cloudflare and what you do next, whether it's at Cloudflare like Matt or if you go back to school like Kevin or to be decided for some of you.

You all should be really proud of what you accomplished this summer.

You'll always be part of Cloudflare. So thanks so much for everything, and thanks for having me.

This was really fun. Thanks, Greg. All right. Bye, everyone.

Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you, Michelle. Bye.