Day 2 of being an intern: Onward and Forward

1. What are my thoughts?

One of the key takeaways from the second day was understanding the limitations of relying entirely on automation during onboarding. The Telegram bot used to update interns on daily tasks is helpful, but we quickly realised that its effectiveness depends heavily on the quality and recency of the data being fed into it. If the supporting documents are outdated or incomplete, the guidance provided by the bot may also become less accurate. (PS: After a few months in the company, we realised that having a daily meeting is better, since AI hallucinations are eradicated and we can quickly prioritise the tasks we have on hand.)  

This highlighted the importance of traditional onboarding methods, such as reading through past documentation, understanding historical context, and exercising discretion when interpreting tasks and priorities. Rather than relying solely on automated systems, there is still a need for human judgment and initiative when navigating workflows and understanding the organisation.

Another important learning point was the need for prioritisation in a startup environment. Since tasks were assigned rapidly throughout the day, discretionary prioritisation became extremely important. There is a constant need to evaluate urgency, importance, and dependencies while adapting to changing circumstances. This gave me a better understanding of the fast-paced and dynamic nature of working in a startup.

2. What do I like about my second day?

One thing I appreciated on the second day was gaining access to more of the company’s internal tools and platforms. Having direct access significantly reduced the gaps in understanding because I could finally explore the actual systems being used in operations.

For example, I was able to access the company’s CRM platform and observe how operational data and logs are managed. Being able to interact with the tools directly made the onboarding process much more practical and meaningful compared to only reading documentation.

I also enjoyed the level of autonomy given to interns. The environment can feel fast-moving and it encourages independent thinking, adaptability, and ownership over tasks.

3. Business Segment

Through the onboarding materials and internal documents, I gained a clearer understanding of Vatico’s business operations and organisational structure.

From a business perspective, Vatico currently operates as a direct-to-consumer (D2C) beauty brand, while previously also maintaining a presence across sales channels like third-party e-commerce marketplaces. One interesting aspect was seeing how the company tracks and analyses sales performance across these channels. I was exposed to dashboards and reports that showed the breakdown of sales by channel, month-on-month (MoM) sales growth, and the quantity of products sold across different categories such as hair removal devices and rejuvenation products.

I also developed a better understanding of Vatico’s customer profile and market positioning. The company’s customer base consists mainly of female working professionals, although the number of male customers has been increasing. Geographically, a large portion of sales originates from Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) and Hanoi, highlighting the importance of Vietnam’s major urban centres to the business. Another interesting takeaway was the role influencer marketing plays in customer acquisition and sales generation, demonstrating how digital marketing strategies are integrated into the company’s growth model.

Beyond the business itself, I also observed how the company is structured operationally. Previously, there were two people per department, and there are many departments. Now, as the company automates many processes, the size of the company has reduced. The company culture also emphasises passion, critical thinking, and proactiveness.

From a workflow perspective, I noticed that planning is strongly emphasised before execution. Weekly meetings are conducted to align team members, provide progress updates, and coordinate future plans. In addition, tools such as Trello are used to ensure continuous visibility and communication regarding work progress across teams.

4. System Architecture

At Vatico, we view data as a core strategic asset rather than simply a byproduct of daily operations. As the business scaled, we recognised that operational systems and analytical systems serve fundamentally different purposes. Transactional databases are designed to support day-to-day activities such as order processing, inventory management, and customer transactions, while analytics workloads require large-scale aggregation, historical analysis, and business intelligence capabilities. To address this, we adopted a centralised data warehouse architecture that separates operational workloads from analytical workloads, allowing us to build a reliable single source of truth for the company.

Our architecture philosophy is heavily centred around scalability, maintainability, and long-term flexibility. We transitioned from a traditional ETL approach toward a modern ELT architecture, where raw data is first loaded into the warehouse before transformations are applied. This allows us to preserve raw data, iterate quickly on business logic, and adapt our data models as requirements evolve over time. By leveraging the computational power of modern cloud-native warehouses, we are able to centralise transformation logic within the warehouse itself, improving observability, simplifying maintenance, and reducing the complexity of scattered transformation pipelines.

At Vatico, we also believe that architecture should evolve alongside the company. Rather than building tightly coupled monolithic systems, we continuously move toward modular and domain-oriented architectures where different business functions are separated by responsibility. This improves system maintainability, enables independent scaling, and allows teams to iterate more effectively as operational complexity grows. Data is deeply integrated into this philosophy, serving not only reporting purposes but also powering automation, monitoring, optimisation, and strategic decision-making across the organisation.

Ultimately, our engineering direction is guided by the belief that scalable systems are built through clean abstractions, centralised analytics infrastructure, and flexible data models. By combining modern software architecture principles with a strong analytics foundation, we aim to create a technology ecosystem that supports both operational efficiency and data-driven business growth over the long term.

5. What can be improved when it comes to the onboarding process?

There is still room for improvement in the onboarding process, particularly in terms of access management and information centralisation. Earlier access to the necessary platforms and tools would help interns gain context more quickly and reduce uncertainty during the initial stages of onboarding.

Additionally, having more updated and consolidated onboarding documentation could improve the effectiveness of systems such as the Telegram bot. Since automated onboarding tools rely heavily on the quality of their underlying data sources, ensuring that documentation remains current is important.

That said, as access to more systems and tools is gradually provided, the onboarding experience becomes clearer and smoother. I believe the process will naturally improve over time as interns become more familiar with the company’s workflows and operational structure.