12 months Internship at Texas Instruments, Germany
1. Pre-phrase
“I will be working in a big corporation and change the world with it” – this is what I kept telling everyone on my first year in JAMK. Now I am one step and month away from graduation, writing this blog post from my flat in Germany, during the lunch break.
2. About TI and my role
For the last 11 months, I was working as an Intern in the Pricing Department of Texas Instruments. TI is one of the world’s biggest semiconductor design and manufacturing companies that develops analog, ICs, and embedded processors. Even though the company is based in the USA, its EMEA headquarters with almost 1500 employees is located in Freising, old town half an hour drive from Munich. The official language in the office is English, and speaking German can be just a good advantage to find your way in the area. The office is full of international employees from all over the world, as the tasks of each of them include daily communication with stakeholders in various countries.
Figure 1 The Main Entrance
Pricing team in TI is part of the Finance and Operations department, responsible for the execution of the pricing process for the major customers of Texas Instruments. From the first day, I was warmly welcomed
by the team, got my laptop, and saw my desk in the cubicle with 3 other colleagues. From the first day, I had started intensive training to learn about the company, department, and my future tasks. Training included weekly sessions with my manager, shadowing the team members, while they work, and active practical training with current interns in the department. Even though I started to do the first tasks in the second week, I kept attending training for 2 more months.
Each employee, including interns, in the Pricing team, has multiple responsibilities, which makes work interesting and never boring. First of all, my main responsibility as an intern was to actively support the team in daily tasks, such as pricing small customers, taking ownership of the distribution email inbox, including answering distributors’ inquiries regarding quoting and resolving complaints, helping colleagues with analyzing massive data sets. Besides that, 5 months of my internship I was working on four projects with other two interns to optimize the working processes in the department by developing new tools for efficient data representation. Besides the pricing related tasks, every quarter I was training new members of the team– interns, rotators, new hires.
In the fourth month of my internship, I became the team member with the tasks similar to the full-time employees and had a chance to develop further in the role by taking more responsibility. I was trusted to cover the automotive accounts of Germany and become the Pricing Specialist responsible for those on World Wide level. This role included daily quoting with matrix pricing, orders pricing, and compliance checks, working annual RFQs, and loading Price Agreements. I was in daily contact with TI sales teams located in the USA, Europe, and Asia to support them with pricing offers for customer’s new projects, helping to win against competition and resolving all issues appearing. I was reporting directly to my manager and actively involved in the daily escalation process to the Business Unit located in the USA.
3. Additional training
Besides being the part of the pricing team, I was highly encouraged to participate in numerous internal training showing the work of other departments in Finance and Operations, as well as have a glance at the engineering side of the company together with other students in TI. By the end of my Internship, I was aware of global operations of the company, how they are done and controlled, as well as expanded my network to the employees and management team in other departments.
Figure 2 Employee Initiatives’ Day
4. Interns Initiative
TI is paying a lot of attention to the work environment and involvement of the employees in the community. Therefore, there are lots of Employee Initiatives that focus on various topics, like career development, networking, new hires support, equality, ecology, and so on. In the first month, I and 3 more interns decided to start our initiative, which was targeted to unite all the interns and organize their life in TI and outside of it, so we can take the maximum from our internship and time spent in Germany.
Figure 3Intern Initiative Committee
For an overview of the activities we were hosting, we were focusing on three types of events: Afterworks, Day Trips, and events within TI. Our main repeating activities were weekly Intern Lunches and Ping Pong sessions after it, afterworks twice a month, Tour to the Fab factory, Welcome presentations for new Interns once a quarter, and various networking events.
Besides that, we have organized quite a lot of day trips to different places in, a big weekend trip for skiing to Innsbruck, F&O Experience sharing (each intern of F&O gave the presentation about his position and department to others), Christmas meal, leavers meal, ZOO day, and participated in Employee Initiatives Day.
Figure 4 Day Trip to the Alps
Participation in the Initiative committee was a great opportunity to establish a strong connection with HR and people from all departments in the company, as there were more than 60 interns in almost all parts of TI.
Figure 5 TI Interns Christmas Meal
5. Let’s sum it up
By the end of the year in TI, I didn’t just become the professional in Pricing role, but got the vast knowledge about the semiconductors industry, expanded my network, and had the best time in Germany with other interns and employees. I would definitely recommend the internship in Texas Instruments to JAMK students, as this is a great opportunity to have an international exposure, experience work in the International team and practice all the skills gained during the degree, and at the same time have a great time in Bavaria!
Figure 6 Weekend Trip to Innsbruck
Author: Sofiya Lyulyu