Hi from an Easy Agile intern!

I’m Stephanie, a fourth(ish?) year Software Engineering student at UOW. I like drinking tea and spend much of my time thinking about, cooking or eating food.

After a Siligong.InfraCoders event at the Easy Agile office last year, the team contacted me saying they were looking for an intern. A few steps later, I was interning in my first professional job in my field. For a summer, I had a taste of post-university life: full-time work in software, the independence of adulthood and (almost) no formal studying.

While I’ve been here,

I’ve been growing into my role as a Software Developer. I’ve been a Javascript developer now for exactly twelve weeks at this point, with a mix of Node, React and Typescript and a dash of HTML and CSS. There’s been tastes of back-end, front-end and UI design and I have a better understanding of which parts are for me. Excitingly, I’ve been working on real problems the whole time.

I spent the first half of my internship working on a system to allow potential customers to try our products in a nice, clean sandbox with a demo set up for them. The first version was in production just before Christmas — usable, better than the quick substitute it was replacing, but with plenty of room to improve.

But then,

Just as I was getting comfortable with the little project I’d built and ready to get onto the second iteration, I was thrown into completely different work on other products. Since the new year, I’ve been on different projects every week or two. I’m glad the team works on different products every two weeks because I have learnt so much more by constantly being in new code, with new concepts and new problems.

I did feel less productive when I had to spend time to understand every task but, right from the beginning, the team made it clear that they wanted me to learn. I really appreciate the value Easy Agile has placed on education: I’m always welcome to ask questions, I’ve had lessons on the whiteboard and I’ve never had to be concerned about getting it wrong the first time.

It’s not just software development here,

It’s a whole small business. I’ve had the opportunity to work on technical writing and customer service as well as writing code. Even software development itself is more than writing code: some days we spent as much time reading, reviewing and testing code as writing it. I’ve seen (and been a part of) extensive discussions about how new changes should work and how users could want to use them before we start writing. The development team is involved in customer interviews, support requests and product usage analytics because that’s how we know what to develop: there’s no sense sitting in an office writing code if you don’t know who you’re writing it for.

Field trips

Were one of the surprising benefits of working with Easy Agile. The Siligong community has events on infrastructure code, UX, Javascript, product management and marketing. I got to go along to anything I wanted, even if it wasn’t directly related to my role, and learn new things outside code. While I may never work in product management or marketing, attending Siligong events with people who do has given me perspective that I can use to better understand the whole structure of software development as a business and to appreciate the non-development work other people in the office are doing.

We also went out for ice cream sometimes, and that’s pretty exciting. Not to mention a tour of Bluescope steelworks.

The best news

(to me) is that I’m staying! I’m taking a part-time role now while I finish university, so I can learn while I learn. I still have plenty to learn from Easy Agile. There are development skills that I’ve had the opportunity to observe, like choosing the right technology for a task and test-driven-development practices, that I want to learn by doing myself. Easy Agile are keen for me to continue at university and graduate and I’m returning to university in a few weeks with more experience, more commitment and the support of a great team.

Thanks

To Dave, Jared, Satvik and Rob for teaching me technically this summer. I’d also like to thank Nick and Teagan for showing me the connection between software and people. It’s the people I work for and work with that have made this summer great. I’ve been a very happy apprentice and I’m thrilled to be a part of the team.