First thing’s first. How did I even find the company? I mean, I spent weeks searching for an intern position and couldn’t find one. So the fact is that my friend found the company and told them about my website which led to me to the interview.
The interview
I was basically asked about what I know, although he did not ask for a CV so many things that I already knew (such as git) were not mentioned at the time. The employer then asked us to finish a coding challenge to write in ANY language.
The challenge consisted of reading in an excel file, getting the names from its rows and finding the images corresponding to the names, then copying them into a new folder. (I know what you’re thinking, where’s the challenge?). However, for some reason I used nodejs and completely forgot about the asynchronous nature of the fs module, so I ended up taking a long time to finish the challenge.
The actual Job
On the first day, we were given reading tasks to learn about gitlab, HTML/CSS/JS, a niche db manipulating package that is no longer maintained, SQL. Pretty easy right? Well…the fact is no one tells you that the niche db manipulating package that is no longer maintained is actually no longer maintained since 10 years.
The setup was nice. It was a dual monitor setup with a macbook pro.
The task that was given to me and my colleague was nowhere near as simple as what they give you in university. It required me knowing extensive knowledge in 2 different APIs that I’ve never seen before. That was part of the reason why I’m writing this. University is like when your dad tells you to get him the screwdriver, you feel like you actually did something productive and helpful, but the actual work is much more difficult than you think.
Overall, however hard it may get once you get the job done you just gained valuable experience that’s gonna help you in your career.
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