Ask the Interns: Brandon Lim

Pictured above (left to right): Lindsey Nguyen, Grant Parton, Brandon Lim, William Guyette, Garrett Rodriguez

What inspired you to join Delphix?

When I was first looking for a summer internship, my goal was to join a company that would allow me to get hands-on experience. What really impressed me about Delphix was its impressive portfolio of clients and the impact it’s having on driving faster innovation for some of the largest and farthest reaching businesses around the world. Delphix supports 30 percent of Fortune 100 companies, and the Delphix platform is truly transforming how their engineering teams deliver data to create better products and services for their customers. I know what I built this summer at Delphix will make an impact on those customers.

What project was your internship focused on?

No engineer enjoys waiting for their tests to finish. During the past 3 months, I worked on parallelizing Blackbox, Delphix’s internal testing framework. I began by writing a Python command line tool that launched simultaneous remote test runs. These parallel test runs were split up from much larger test runs that ran run on separate virtual testing environments. I ultimately incorporated the tool into a Jenkins pipeline, so parallel testing could be further integrated into Delphix’s testing infrastructure and make it easier for other developers to use. As a result, I enabled tests to take half the amount of time, which allows developers to test new features or bug fixes faster. Tests that used to take a full day to run can now run in a few hours.

What is the biggest challenge you faced and what did you learn from the experience?

What challenged me at first was the sheer size of Delphix’s codebase. Through school and side projects, all the software I worked on prior to my internship was relatively small, so I always understood every aspect of what I was working on. At Delphix, there is so much code and so many contributors that I was worried I would get lost in it all. With that said, after my first code push, it was satisfying to know that I contributed to such a large project with big impact.

What key skills and/or experience have you gained from your time at Delphix?

My biggest gain was learning how to review code. At this company, everyone matters. The core values, including “Foster Trust,” aren’t just words on a wall —  they’re values the  company truly practices. Even as an intern, I was given enough trust to review other engineer’s code, and my feedback was often applied to the next revision. By the end of my internship, I completed around 100 code reviews. Reviewing code has made me a better engineer. I understand how to write clear documentation. This process has also helped me acclimate quickly me to Delphix’s large codebase.

What’s one thing you wish you knew before starting the internship?

I wish I joined Delphix’s Toastmasters chapter earlier — it was only half way into my internship that I decided to join! Toastmasters is an international organization that enables members to practice their public speaking and conversation skills. Through weekly group meetings, I was able to network with employees throughout the company while improving my public speaking. That’s what you call a win-win!

What is one piece of advice you would like to share with future interns?

Don’t be intimidated. Don’t be scared to dive into a massive codebase. Just because you’re an intern doesn’t mean you can’t ask questions and get better. You should also make the time to meet people across the company and try something different things, whether it be joining Toastmasters or a board games club. (Yes, Delphix also has a board games club) Also, enjoy your internship! I really enjoyed “Interns Week”, when the east coast Delphix interns visit the Bay Area. There are fun activities planned, this summer we completed an escape room!

Your secret talent is? 

I can juggle three balls! I learned after a week of watching YouTube videos. I like to think to myself, “If I learned how to juggle in a week, I can do anything, including successfully completing my internship at Delphix!”