My experience at Aura-Tech Solutions Limited (thus far) has been one I can honestly say will impact me for the rest of my life and the people in and around this environment really help make each day fulfilling with the mindset of driving the improvement of ourselves and those around us.

Now this being my first blog on here, I thought that this may be the best opportunity to revisit and give my personal account of my first couple months within the ATSL family.

My Background

I had just completed my final semester of my BSc in Computer Science and was eagerly looking for a place to put all I’ve learnt throughout my degree into practice. After about a month or two a friend of mine had said that they heard about “This place down south”, which turned out to be ATSL, and from there I began my research.

Having been pretty impressed with what I came across I knew that their goals really spoke to me and if I were able to be part of anything like what they were doing I’d know I was on the right track for myself and my career.

First Developer Experience

Going into my first day at the job I was determined to not be absolutely clueless as it can be very daunting and demoralizing when you’re given a task to complete in a given time and not have a single Idea of where to start. The weekend before my first Monday I was reviewing old projects and assignments over the past couple years thinking that they would keep me in the frame of mind to head into the professional world of software development from the deep end.

When I finally got into the office for the first time as an intern the first thing I noticed is how chill and welcoming everything was. Everyone was willing to put some time aside whenever the new guy was struggling(whether I said so or not).

The first two weeks there were spent getting up to speed on the various technologies I’d have to work with and really being integrated into the culture within the company. I’m not going to lie, I was so eager to start building and solving problems that I was almost blind to how much I really didn’t know at the time. If it weren’t for those “ramp up” weeks it might have done more harm than good. This was also a great time to play around and get familiar with the cool solutions that I’d be working with later on.

When I was finally assigned some tasks to take on, I was really excited. This would basically be my FIRST contribution to this awesome team! I was ready to show everyone what I could do and prove myself as a developer to the people I’d be working under for the next couple months!

…It didn’t go as smoothly as planned.

I ended up spending a lot of time just spinning in circles for hours with something that I was sure I could knock off within a few minutes.

This would be something I would struggle with for longer than I should have, especially with all the great minds that I had around me at my disposal. I would often tell myself “This’ll be a breeze” only to realize that half the day had gone and was way behind my expectations.        

Over a few more days I got hang of the tech and from there it was on to the next obstacle, constantly growing and acknowledging areas for improvement and was eventually offered a permanent role!

At the end of that internship period, I learned so much about what it takes to operate in the professional Dev world. I have so much more to learn, but here are a few takeaways from that initial experience:

•     Time management is a heavily required skill in any aspect of life
•     It’s easy to get lost in code. Seek advice from a good source if you find yourself going nowhere
•     Never stop looking for new things to learn.

Thanks for tuning into my inaugural blog here. Feel free to drop me any questions or comments.

Until next Time!