Sonar Team Spotlight: Shyam
This week, the Spotlight will be on one of our fine interns – meet Shyam, an engineer here at Sonar and a New Jersey native! Shyam is a senior at Carnegie Mellon studying electrical engineering. Outside the office, he likes to play and watch basketball and soccer.
Hey Shyam! Hope you’re enjoying your summer in the city. Your major sounds really interesting – what sort of stuff do you do in electrical engineering?
In school, my main academic focuses are semiconductors and nanofabrication. Semiconductors are what all computer chips are made of and fabrication refers to actually making these chips and all the physics that goes into that.
Neat! So what brought you to this internship?
I was interested in working at Sonar because I wanted to see what startup culture was like. So far, I really like it here. I actually think I’d like to work at a startup once I graduate.
What do you do here at Sonar?
I work on data analysis, which basically entails coming up with ways to better understand how our users behave and what they’re trying to get out of our app. I program the algorithms that we use to do this analysis. This is actually my first programming job, and so far it’s been a fun, interesting experience.
That sounds pretty cool. How do you use Sonar outside of work?
I try to use Sonar whenever I’m out. For instance, when I’m at a bar, I’ll open up Sonar and see if there’s anyone nearby that I might know. I haven’t used Sonar to approach anyone yet, but it’s still interesting to see who else is at my location.
What’s your favorite thing about interning at Sonar?
I really like the open atmosphere. No one has cubicles or private offices. The Sonar office is just one open space, which I think helps stimulate creativity and productivity. You can talk to anyone you want at anytime. The setup is great for bouncing ideas off of others.
I agree, the office arrangement of Sonar is pretty sweet. Thanks for interviewing, Shyam! One last thing before we wrap up – as a fan of both basketball and soccer, what were your thoughts on the NBA finals and the Euro Cup?
I was upset with both results, actually. I’m not a fan of the Miami Heat, so I was disappointed that they won. And I was rooting for Portugal to win the Euro Cup. Both tournaments were fun to watch, though!
