I’ll be the first to admit: I don’t know how to code. C++ and PHP are foreign languages to me, and my knowledge of HTML/CSS comes from crafting comic-sans-infested petpages on Neopets at age 10 (I’m not the only one!), building personal websites on the late, great Freewebs, and editing WordPress sites for previous employers. But here I am, a Marketing and English double major, interning at a tech company.
Of course, tech involves a lot more than just coding. It takes a village to bring carefully- and beautifully-coded products to market. There’s Product Design, Data, Risk, and Sales. At a company like Braintree, there’s also vigilant Customer Support and dedicated Account Management. And, lucky for me, there’s Marketing.
Despite the fact that I don’t know Python from Ruby, I’ve wanted to work in the tech industry for a while now. Through past internships, I learned a lot about what I didn’t want out of a job: I didn’t want static, staid, predictable work. I wanted a fast pace, constant change, and near-infinite capacity for growth and improvement. During an interview with Braintree, I asked my now-manager to describe a typical day in the life of a marketer at Braintree, to which he was quick to reply, “there isn’t one.” Across all the industries in which I’ve applied, interviewed, and worked, tech is the only one for which that response seems to universally ring true. There is no typical day in the life at Braintree, whether you’re a marketer or a developer or any of the people in between. From support for emerging payment methods to compliance with new PCI standards, our technology requires such quick and exciting change that we’re constantly having to adapt, which is exactly what I’ve loved about everything I’ve seen of this world so far. And yes, I know that it sounds incredibly naive to romanticize all of tech like this -- there’s no such thing as a perfect industry, or even a perfect company. But in my experience doing marketing at Braintree, I’ve felt fortunate to be supported in the department in which I excel while exploring the industry I’m learning to love.
Being a Marketing Intern at Braintree is hard to explain because there’s something new happening every day. In an average week, I could be brainstorming an entirely new international marketing plan from scratch in between crafting customer service tweets. I’m diving deep into Google Analytics to figure out how we can improve our outreach to developers in Germany and France, and I’m snapping and captioning pictures for the Braintree Instagram account. Just as I was assured in my interview, there really is no average day. So while I’ve only been here for six short weeks, I’m already falling in love with the tech industry. And, if it’s up to me, we’ll be going steady for a long time to come.