For the three months that I’ve worked with Vincit as a Software Developer intern, I’ve learned more as a developer and grown more as a person than I could have ever imagined. These experiences, coupled with the outstanding company culture, have provided me with insight on my future career and my future as an engineer.
Coming into this internship, I had just finished my Junior year at Arizona State University in the Barrett honors college. This wasn’t my first internship, but it was my first internship that involved front-end development. Before I joined Vincit, I had worked almost exclusively in back-end technologies using C#. So, coming into Vincit with no significant knowledge of front-end development was a daunting idea at the time, but I knew that interning with Vincit would help me achieve a more full-stack developer background. However, I could not have predicted the warm welcome that Vincit gave me!
All of my colleagues were so nice and helpful that it felt almost as if I were already a full-time employee working there on my first day. Seeing others want me to succeed was something that I really appreciated and it also helped me fulfill my goals that I had set out for myself. One of these goals was to improve my front-end development skills, which I achieved with the help of my team, Pioneer Landscape Centers.
The Pioneer Landscape Centers project was built entirely with Typescript and NextJS, and to put it simply, I was not versed in either of the two technologies. I basically was coming into a project with no experience working with a tech stack that had been built upon for almost a year! I was a bit anxious, but Jody, Elli, Ricky, and the rest of my teammates were crucial to my learning process. I started being assigned tickets, writing simple bug fixes, and when I got stuck, I had my team right there to push me in the right direction. This process helped me learn Typescript and NextJS so much faster than if I would have attempted to on my own because of the constant support and belief in me.
Now, I am able to write my own full-stack applications, which is crazy for me to think about considering I have only really done front-end work for three months! Any type of project, whether it be my future portfolio website, or some social website I want to create, is now more about me being creative and coming up with the idea than it is trying to learn new skills, and for that I am grateful.
Although, Vincit did not just teach me technical skills. I found myself learning how to speak and communicate with colleagues from different departments more so than I had at my previous jobs. I also found myself easily making friends and learning about their hobbies and careers. It became something that I was really comfortable with and that ultimately led to my success as an intern.
This enabled me to explore more of Vincit because I wanted to, not because it felt like a chore, and this led me to find a club of colleagues studying for their AWS Developer Certificates. Joining this club and listening to head developers explain their AWS experiences while simultaneously preparing to take the test as a group was a really fun and engaging way to learn, and it has encouraged me to continue taking the AWS course even after my internship is done. This aspect of Vincit is probably what has stood out the most to me: the persistence of it. What I mean by this, is that Vincit has inspired a lot within me, such as a want to create personal applications and sites to hone my full-stack skills, and a drive to get my AWS Developer Certificate. It is as if Vincit’s passion and company culture has rubbed off on me and is only starting to spread as I continue my career path.
That culture and level of respect is something that I cannot put a price tag on. It is something that I also believe will never leave me, and I have only been impacted by it for three months. So, for that, I would like to say thank you to Vincit and all of the people I’ve worked with, this has been a wonderful opportunity for me to grow in all aspects of my life.
As Vincit Arizona’s inaugural developer intern, I have had an outstanding time and have learned that there is much more out there to experience, in terms of my career and also, my life. All of the people at Vincit genuinely care about the success of the company and are willing to go the extra mile to achieve it. That is something that I think anyone can appreciate, and as a developer intern with not much experience, I can say that I felt at home with Vincit. Thanks to all of the Vincitizens that helped make this experience amazing!
