Notes
Field notes for ranking internships.
Product decisions, build progress, and the small things we learn while making InternMash sharper.
Performance Note
July 15, 2026 · 4 min read
My thoughts before launching
Before launch, I tightened the voting path: lighter matchup loading, fail-fast database writes, and Redis rate limits for vote spam.
Performance Note
July 14, 2026 · 4 min read
How cached snapshots made the leaderboard cheaper to serve
I found out the first leaderboard was honest but expensive: every request asked the database to sort rankings again. So I rebuilt it around five-minute snapshots.
Problem Note
July 13, 2026 · 3 min read
Why pairwise voting works for internship preference
I kept seeing internship advice scattered across group chats, spreadsheets, and old posts. InternMash is my attempt to turn that messy preference data into a fast comparison loop.
Implementation Note
July 13, 2026 · 4 min read
The first build: Elo, atomic writes, and logo cleanup
I kept the MVP stack simple: Next.js Server Actions, Supabase Postgres, and a small Elo engine with careful vote writes.