From Internship to Impact: 14 Months at Hatch
Today is my last day at Hatch, and before I sign off, I wanted to take a moment to reflect.
I joined in June 2025 as a Product Intern, not entirely sure what shape my internship would take. I'm leaving 14 months later, having touched nearly every part of the company: product, People Ops, AI experimentation, product building, internal operations, and even incident response at a consumer tech startup. That kind of range is a gift most internships don't offer, and I'm grateful Hatch gave me the room to grow into it.
A few things I'll carry with me
1) Shipping something new (and learning what "launch" really means)
I joined right as Hatch was gearing up to launch a new hardware product (Hatch Baby). I got to support beta testing, synthesize research into product recommendations, run competitive analysis, and contribute to the early stages of our AI sleep agent (now Baby Agent). It was a crash course in what it actually takes to bring something to market — beyond the glossy announcements.
2) Making AI useful, not just novel
For a stretch, I partnered with teams across the company — content, marketing, People Ops, and customer support — to find places where AI could genuinely reduce pain in day-to-day workflows. Then I built and shipped solutions alongside them. The best use cases always started with a real person's real workflow, not the other way around.
3) Building the unglamorous stuff that makes everything run
I dug into Hatch's employee onboarding and offboarding processes and built automations that made the experience meaningfully less painful for the humans running them. That work eventually grew into a web of workflows touching nearly every team. It reminded me that some of the best product work isn't flashy — it's removing friction for the people who feel it most.
4) Product craft: PRDs, scoping, and clarity
I wrote PRDs across multiple areas — customer-facing and internal — and helped scope projects end-to-end. One of the biggest lessons: writing clearly for stakeholders is as important as writing code.
5) Actually using the product (and finding edge cases the hard way)
Nothing beats being your own test case. I've broken more sleep-tracking edge cases on our newly released Hatch Sleep Clock than I'd like to admit. But using the product daily made my feedback more grounded and more useful.
6) Staying calm when things break
Helping manage a large-scale live production incident (an AWS outage) taught me more about communication under pressure than any class ever could. I'm grateful the team trusted me to help keep everyone aligned while it was happening.
The people made the experience
The biggest thing I'll take away is the people. Endless thanks to Catherine, who managed me with patience and trust from day one, and to Ann, Jillian, Fiona, Jasmine, Marcus, Ana, Holly, Sandra, Amber, Mike D, Molly, Kimmie, Noreen, Nicole, Natalie, and so many others who let a curious intern into their world and constantly taught me. This internship was shaped far more by the people than by any one project.
What I learned about myself
If I had to summarize what the last 14 months taught me, it's this: I love Product Management. But beyond that, I love being the "fresh eyes" and strategic support behind a company's core functions — strategy, planning, building, and handing things off cleanly from start to finish.
I also learned that I'm a generalist at heart — someone who genuinely enjoys learning new domains, showing up, and getting things done efficiently and effectively. There was a lot of growth packed into these 14 months, and I'm leaving with more clarity and confidence than I came in with.
What's next
As I shared a few months ago, I'm joining Tella on Monday — starting a new chapter with the same curiosity, and a deeper appreciation for what it takes to build great products (and great teams).
To everyone at Hatch: thank you for an unforgettable 14 months.