Technical Intern (I) Review

On a day to day basis, I have to attend stand-up (Agile) calls to talk about my current tasks, problems, blocking issues. Then, I get into development - mostly on front-end system. Meaning, I mostly do web development, especially using Adobe Experience Manager (AEM). I also help to manage that part of our system, so I frequently meet with other engineers on our AEM project to discuss their problems, progress, and mitigate any blockers by connecting with Development Operations team, supporting our engineering.

Definitely; as mentioned before, I had attended a lot of training and passed some certificates in many different areas of computer science/software engineering. That includes Amazon Web Services Certified Cloud Practitioner examination and certificate, Agile training, courses on using specific tools like Tableau (data analysis), Postman (testing APIs). By working with skilled software engineers, tech leads etc, I learned all hands-on experience, not only by coding, but problem solving, team working. I work with team from all around the world and everyone has something to share.

I have been given a lot of responsibility, but also freedom. I got to choose what I wanted to do, what areas interest me the most, what tasks I'd like to try out. We were all also given an opportunity to participate in tasks like volunteering, networking, side projects. Some of them were considered an Early In Career necessity and equipped us with opportunity to work with managers and people working longer in the industry.

I had a lot of guidance from my manager, my immediate team, extended team, and also interns' mentor and Early in Career team. All eight of us spent the year working on various projects that were meant to connect us with skilled workers but also ourselves, people just having entered the job market. Cisco has an amazing program for people starting out in IT, we had many networking events, plenty resources and opportunities to ask questions whenever we felt we needed something.

Company culture resolves around networking, mingling, creating connections, and having an intersectionality between different areas of IT (whether it's software, hardware, networks, tech support, business analysis etc). We were celebration ourselves, our works, and making our work environment friendly. It makes sense to have people enjoying what they do. We all treat each other like friends, spend time with each other even outside of working hours. everybody is open to helping you, everybody treats each other equally.

I enjoyed it very much and would really like to be hired back. I loved the company culture, inclusiveness, networking opportunities, flexibility, and opportunities to grow. I got to earn my experience not only by working, but also engaging in side projects. For example, I now have a patent in my name, which I wrote with senior engineers from Switzerland, Greece and Denmark. I got to teach kids how to code and my article got published in a newsletter for everybody. My work was appreciated and seen.

Yes

Definitely - be yourself. On my interview, I spoke about bugs I have noticed on Cisco websites, and even though I didn't know the answers to some of the questions I got asked on my technical interview, they appreciated my willingness to learn and honesty. It's a very social company, so being an extrovert is a plus, but not a must. You have to show them your authentic self, your strengths, and also willingness to learn.