[The Intern-view] New to It All, But Never Alone

Growing Into My Role at My First Job

Your first assignment at your first job. When everything feels unfamiliar, how do you figure out where you fit in?

At Nota AI, even interns are given the chance to take on real work and build experience on their own initiative. Of course, no one can be expected to do everything well from day one. When you’re learning to pull your weight in an unfamiliar place, the colleagues working beside you matter just as much as your own efforts.

I originally planned to interview only Jaeyoung, one of our interns. But as we talked, I found myself wanting to hear from one of his teammates, too. Jaeyoung’s team believes that helping new members settle in means building trust and genuine connection, both on and off the job. For Jaeyoung, at a time when everything felt hard, that belief became a source of courage and confidence.

So today, I sat down with both Jaeyoung Heo and his teammate, Jimin Lee. Jaeyoung told me that from his very first days, Jimin went out of his way to reach out and look after him, which helped him settle in quickly. I hoped that hearing the story the two of them have built over eight months would give me a deeper understanding of how Jaeyoung has grown.

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First, What Do They Actually Do?

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Before we dive into their stories, let’s take a moment to introduce NetsPresso. NetsPresso is a platform that makes large AI models smaller and faster, allowing them to run directly on resource-constrained devices such as home appliances, cars, and robots. By supporting the entire process from model development to optimization and validation, NetsPresso helps AI models run efficiently across a wide range of device environments.

Jaeyoung and Jimin are both on the Platform Team, whose job is to turn AI model compression and optimization technology into an actual product: NetsPresso. So what does each of them do on the team? Let’s start with Jimin, who has now been with Nota AI for six years.

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Jimin | Embedded AI Engineer

Hi, I’m Jimin Lee. I’m an Embedded AI Engineer. I develop the modules, device environments, and systems that let us benchmark optimized models across a wide range of devices.

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Jimin majored in embedded systems and first came across Nota AI while job hunting. Back then, before AI went mainstream, most embedded roles had little to do with AI. What caught his eye was that the company worked at the intersection of the two. That was the start of a journey that’s still going today.

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Staying at your first company for six years is no small thing. When I asked how he’d stayed so long, Jimin said:

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Jimin

I think, in the end, I stayed because of the people. There were tough times as Nota AI grew. But even through that uncertainty, I watched everyone, leadership included, keep reflecting on how we could do better and then actually move forward. It made me feel that a good future was waiting for me with these people, and that belief has carried me this far.

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For Jimin, six years at Nota AI came down to one thing: the people he works with.

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So what about the other star of today’s story, Jaeyoung Heo?

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Jaeyoung | AI Research Intern

Hi, I’m Jaeyoung Heo. Optimizing a model means running a lot of experiments to find the approach that fits each situation. Our team is building a system that uses AI agents to search for the right method automatically, and my experiments focused mainly on image model optimization.

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In short, Jaeyoung looks for better ways to optimize models and puts them to the test, while Jimin builds the environment that validates the results across different devices. Their areas differ, but within NetsPresso, their work is tightly interlocked. They’re quite literally inseparable work partners.

Jaeyoung applied to Nota AI hoping to get real experience in model optimization. He expected an internship much like grad school, spent studying and researching algorithms. But once he actually started, things turned out a little differently.

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First Steps as an Engineer

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Jaeyoung

Unlike grad school, at a company it’s not just about researching technology. How you apply it to a product matters far more. What I didn’t expect was how much room I had to take on work and make decisions myself, even as an intern.

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Jaeyoung’s work didn’t stop at being an intern project. Some of the models he optimized were actually deployed on the platform delivered to a client.

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Jaeyoung

At first, it didn’t really sink in. It felt surreal that something I’d built had made it to a client. This was also my first time working at a company as an engineer. Until then, I’d always been the one learning. This time, I was put on real work and produced real results. So for me, my time at Nota AI was my first step as an engineer.

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In fact, Jaeyoung played a key role in the client delivery. When the team was preparing the first delivery, the model files and datasets had to be ready before any optimization experiments could begin. Jaeyoung was the one who handled that work alongside a teammate. It was an essential step for everything that followed, from optimization to benchmarking. On the strength of that work, his internship was extended, and he went on to handle the second delivery as well.

His scope wasn’t capped just because he was an intern. He was given a real piece of the work and trusted to think it through, voice his own ideas, and follow it all the way to the results. That was when Jaeyoung first went from someone who learns to someone who contributes.

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Jimin

Jaeyoung is incredibly meticulous about the work he takes on. I often saw him jump on problems right away so the people working after him wouldn’t be held up. He’s diligent and thoughtful by nature, and that really came through in how he works.

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To Jimin, Jaeyoung was a colleague who understood that his work flows into the next person’s.

Listening to this, I was reminded of Ownership, one of Nota AI’s LPs (Leadership Principles). It struck me that ownership means knowing your work doesn’t end with you, and acting with the shared outcome in mind. In the delivery I mentioned earlier, Jaeyoung’s work was connected to what his colleagues would pick up next. The care and quick responses Jimin remembers must have come out of that kind of collaboration.

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The People Behind a Shaky Start

Not everything went smoothly from the start, though.

When Jaeyoung joined, his department had only just been formed. With everyone busy and on the move, he kept wondering what he could do to actually help the team. Still new to the work, he found it hard to keep pace. He also admitted, candidly, that he sometimes pretended to understand or held back from asking questions because he didn’t want to reveal what he didn’t know.

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Jaeyoung

Back then, I thought no one could tell I was pretending to know things. But looking back, I can see that Huiseong, our team lead, was quietly looking out for me, even in ways I couldn’t see.

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Huiseong reviewed Jaeyoung’s work, adjusted the difficulty of his tasks accordingly, and shared templates and resources from his own toolkit. Rather than handing over answers, he helped Jaeyoung try things on his own, then stepped in with his know-how when Jaeyoung got stuck.

You may remember Huiseong from an earlier Teamblog post. He’s the one who invited his family to the office for his nephew, who dreams of becoming a scientist, in [Wanting to Show 'Uncle's Workplace']. In that interview, when asked how he’d explain his work to his nephew, he said that even the most complex-looking technology ultimately comes down to “breaking a big problem into smaller ones and solving those pieces one by one.” Huiseong himself has moved across several teams, taking on new challenges each time, and said he learned not to set limits on himself by working through daunting problems step by step.

Those experiences seemed woven into the way he guided Jaeyoung, breaking the work into manageable chunks and letting him take them on himself. Huiseong has also said he was shaped by colleagues at Nota AI who shared their knowledge and experience generously. I couldn’t help but think he is now passing on what he once received to his own team.

Now, back to Jaeyoung. If his leader was quietly paving the way out of sight, the teammate right beside him taught him something too, through everyday collaboration.

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Jaeyoung

When we’re in meetings together, Jimin naturally gets a sense of what I’m working on. So there were times he’d take care of what I needed before I even asked. I thought that was really cool. Once I know more, I want to be someone who can see what the people around me need and help before they have to ask.

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When I passed this along, Jimin just laughed and said it had never even occurred to him. It was simply second nature.

Somehow, that made it all the more admirable. As an intern myself, I could relate to how Jaeyoung felt. Jimin’s attitude might just be a given in collaboration. But recognizing that an intern already has their hands full learning the ropes, and stepping in before being asked for help, is a different kind of thoughtfulness altogether.

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Closeness Begins in the Small Moments

When do you feel you’ve grown close to a colleague? Is it after you’ve worked together for a long time? Or is it when you can strike up a conversation without needing a reason?

To me, closeness is when that small moment of hesitation before speaking up begins to fade. Helping each other with work matters, of course. But it’s only once you trust each other and feel at ease that the questions you were nervous to ask become a little easier to voice.

Jaeyoung’s team, too, places real importance on new members building trust and closeness with their colleagues as they settle in. And the way they do it turned out to be surprisingly low-key.

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Jaeyoung

On days we have lunch with Huiseong, our team lead, we get ice cream for dessert. We walk around the empty lot behind the office, eating and chatting. Taking a walk like that every now and then really helps me recharge.

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Jimin

We also have a snack time that brings several teams together. Once a month, there’s a day when the business units present what they’ve built, and we always have snacks together that day. Getting ready to share our results can make me a bit nervous, but the fun of eating and chatting together turns it into a good memory.

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As these small, everyday moments added up, Jaeyoung’s colleagues became more than people he simply worked with. They became people he could talk to comfortably. Familiar faces began to appear in a company where everything had once been unknown, and conversation started to come naturally.

At first glance, this might seem like time that has little to do with work. But I believe these moments play an important role in the work itself. When you’re new, you often hesitate over whom to ask, and how, even when you don’t know something. If it’s a colleague you already chat with easily, isn’t it a little easier to ask that one question? That’s also how a problem you’ve been wrestling with alone can turn into one you solve together.

Perhaps that’s why these colleagues were also part of the reason Jaeyoung decided to extend his internship.

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Six Years, Eight Months, One Answer: The People of Nota AI

Building on his work for the first delivery, Jaeyoung extended his internship beyond its original end date and took on the second delivery as well. When asked why he chose to stay on, he gave two main reasons.

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Jaeyoung

The first was that I liked the work environment and the people. I almost never felt stressed because of anyone. The people I worked with helped me so much that I could focus on the work itself rather than anything else.
The second was that I wanted to see the project I’d started through to the end. Extending meant I could stay on through the delivery stage. I got to watch the deliverables actually go out, so I feel I gained a lot.

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Just as Jimin, six years in, pointed to people as the reason he’s stayed, people came first in Jaeyoung’s answer, too. His colleagues made it possible to immerse himself in the work, and because he was so immersed, he wanted to see it carried all the way to the results. His decision, in other words, reflected both his team’s care and his own growth.

Nota AI opens many doors for interns to gain experience on their own initiative, but turning those opportunities into growth is ultimately up to each person. Even so, it was the colleagues who understood how unfamiliar a first job and a first assignment can feel, and who reached out first, that made Jaeyoung want to bring the project he had started to a close with his own hands.

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Wrapping Up Part 1

If there’s one thing this story taught me, it’s that you don’t have to be good at everything from the start to pull your own weight.

If you’re given the chance to think for yourself and take on challenges, and you can find answers alongside your colleagues when things get tough, won’t even those clumsy early days soon become precious experiences that shape your growth? In that sense, Jaeyoung’s first internship at Nota AI was a time of learning the value of growing together rather than alone, and of discovering what he’s capable of.

So, in the time leading up to the second delivery, how much did the team entrust to Jaeyoung, and when did they step in alongside him? In Part 2, we’ll take a closer look, through Jaeyoung and Jimin’s stories, at how Nota AI builds trust and shares the work.

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