I started my career at VNG, the first ever unicorn of Vietnam(company which is worth a billion USD). Today I want to share that experience with you.
I joined the famed fresher program in May/2021. The interview process includes 2 rounds, the first round is a multi-choice test to select hundreds out of 1600 applicants, and the other round will be on VNG campus, which will select some tens out of hundreds. The interview process is extremely structured. It is focused on basic knowledge and algorithm skills. I am proud that I got into the program(I also registered for the program in my junior year but didn’t even get through the first round :D)
I joined Zingplay Game Studios(yes, the s is at the Studios not in Game, I don’t know why) which is the largest income stream of VNG. The program lasted for about 3 months and I was assigned to a team with 3 other members. There are two parts to the fresher program. First, freshers will be trained in both technical skills and soft skills. Soft skills include communication and presentation. Technical skills are about coding, clean code, and how to build a game from end to end. The first part is generally not graded and not counted towards your final grade. The second part is important, every team needs to build a game which seems really overwhelming to me at first.
The project will be structured in 3 builds. One build will include a set of features. After each build, it will be sent to QC engineers to get it tested and receive a bug report. At the end of the program, every team has to present their project to an assessment board including all mentors from every team.
2 weeks in, the COVID-19 hit. Everyone is told to work from home which is a huge obstacle to our freshers where we don’t have instant support from the mentors. We had to meet up with mentors in the morning and in the afternoon to update on the progress.
I started my full time job at Zalo in September/2021. A recruiter contacted me and after three interview rounds I had a full-time job. My team includes 8 people, I was a backend engineer writing APIs for advertisement systems. I didn’t really know what I wanted to work on before I joined I just stumbled on that(when you are new you just don’t). The advertisement business happened to be the second largest income stream of VNG. In retrospect, having the experience to build the biggest ads player in a country is a great experience for me where I can actually have a chance to implement and contribute to the systems that Vietnamese people can use. The most memorable project that I was responsible for in the backend was the fast-transfer feature which basically changed how our customers topped up their accounts. My last project before I left was also very interesting which is encrypting sensitive information stored in relational database tables.
At Zalo(or at least in my department), everyone is very big on climbing mountains. Before I joined, they had already climbed the highest mountains from the very North. I had a chance to climb Lao Than and I absolutely loved it.
Joining VNG definitely makes my resume look better. Particularly when coming fresh out of school you don’t know what to expect. I don’t think there is any other company in Vietnam that takes care of their employees better than VNG. I often told people that the company constantly increases the lower bound of employee experience. The company’s 18th birthday is absolutely stunning. I’m glad that I started my career at VNG. I had made many lifelong friends there.