Altara's first two interns shipped 436 PRs combined, hired under full-engineer standards
BenBlaiszik · x · 2026-10-02
Altara co-founder Evan Tuecke wrote a long post about the startup's first two interns (@lukgpt and @justinhouu), who combined for 436 PRs.
- The roles opened while Altara was still in stealth, drawing hundreds of applications; candidates faced the same technical assessment as full-time engineers, and the team was prepared to hire no one — they wanted interns owning real problems end-to-end, not isolated "intern projects."
- Luke revamped foundational agent infrastructure and later gave a talk in San Francisco (types 200 WPM; once woke at 4 a.m. after dreaming up a microservice architecture and presented it at standup).
- Catherine demoed their work to customers within the first week; Justin built a hydroponic vertical farm in his garage in middle school.
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