A Taste of Working Life @ Borneo

Aditya Ghosh — 5/30/2023 — 3 Min Read

Lunch at Din Tai Fung with the team in Singapore

Today marks the end of my 5-month Internship with Borneo Data.

Borneo, named after an island in Southeast Asia, is an exciting Privacy Automation and Data Security startup. The company offers a unified platform for its customers that supports them in ensuring continuous compliance with data privacy regulations such as the GDPR and protection against data leaks. In our increasingly data-driven economy, one of the biggest challenges for any company is the prevention of sensitive data mishandling, leaks, and privacy breaches, regardless of industry. When dealing with such challenges, the work done by firms like Borneo becomes vital.

Stepping into the company’s Singapore office each day has taught me new perspectives and introduced me to some highly skilled individuals. The office, by the way, is a great coworking space on Orchard Road. Personally, working can be so much better when the environment is right. Having always admired startup culture, this has been my first taste of such an environment. Despite the arguably increased responsibilities of setting and fulfilling your deadlines, the freedom to work at your own pace (and place) sells the idea!

One of my first projects at the company was working on Borneo’s Open Source initiative. The objective was to empower contributors and data professionals to engage in fruitful conversations about the Data Privacy space. The initial stages of my internship involved rethinking the website, which required an overhaul to improve user experience. Along with a Product Marketeer, a Frontend Engineer, and a Developer, I was part of a team that implemented various changes across the site. In this process, I used my existing skills on a real-world project, which felt greatly rewarding.

However, the challenging aspects of the project taught me even more. One of these challenges was familiarising myself with the Gatsby.js framework, which I often spent hours debugging with another colleague. Spending time on the project and implementing frequent changes developed my confidence in writing code using this framework, which can create high-speed websites efficiently. Whether redesigning website sections, conducting keyword research to improve SEO, or monitoring site metrics using Google Analytics and Search Console to understand our successes and shortcomings, I developed several invaluable skills. Our work as a team resulted in better site navigation, which made it easier for visitors to find source code and avenues to join the Open Source Community. This community, connected through a Slack workspace, is growing steadily, with members regularly interacting with each other upon running into issues. Part of my work in recent weeks has involved shadowing a senior intern in solving some of the issues raised in the Slack Community or on the GitHub repository. We have been collaborating to add or update Python code to include functionality based on user requests.

After the website relaunch, I monitored our Google Analytics, Search Console, and GitHub pull requests for a few weeks, noting which of our changes were successful. This data was recorded and presented in a dashboard that I generated every month. We captured increased site visits and saw growth in repository clones and Slack members, which supported a case for us to replicate our work this time on the Borneo website and product. We mapped our most successful changes onto the Borneo website, including SEO optimization and an inbuilt blog using Strapi (an Open Source CMS to go alongside Medium, used previously). In addition, this time, our approach involved detailed market research that helped us understand the right strategies.

Working life can be stressful. Having to balance a week’s worth of work and part-time university assignments while pursuing my non-academic interests is something I’ve slowly learned to manage better. Nonetheless, I embrace this change, for it’s motivated me to challenge myself in new ways. I’ve been a “Data Analyst and Market Research Intern” for the last five months, but the scope of my learning has extended well beyond that title. Extracting know-how from industry experts and trying to mimic their work ethics has been fruitful real-world training. In addition to these technical skills, the soft skills of communicating in a team, presenting ideas coherently, and even motivating and exchanging knowledge with my colleagues were the invaluable skills I had the opportunity to work on.

Next, I have University in August to look forward to after a most rewarding and inspiring experience. Grateful!