During the free summer months, a lot of students take up a summer job. Foregoing the sun-filled beaches to make some extra money during their holidays. However, what if you could earn some money and gain valuable experience as a developer? (And still go to the beach during the best internship outing!)
Well, if this sounds good already, read on to learn about our experience as Software Engineering Interns at the TOPdesk branch in Tilburg.
Who are we?
We are Team Spaghet, the team that has been working on improving the release notes website this summer. We are three students, all with a background in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. Our goals during this project were to deliver a great product, have a taste of the life of software developers and learn as much as we can along the way.
Koen Degeling (left)
Hi everyone, I am a Dutch student studying Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Eindhoven and have just finished my third year. In my free time I like to compete in programming contests and develop my own little projects using Raspberry Pi and Arduino. After finishing my Bachelor in Computer Science, I wanted to put my skills to the test in a project in a company setting. During the project I mostly worked on the database, Java back-end and communication with the front-end.
Gabriele Barteskaite (middle)
Lithuanian Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence student at the University of Sheffield. Just completed my first year. Came to the Netherlands for an exchange year at TU Delft to challenge myself further. This internship gave me a glimpse into the professional world and allowed me to try on the shoes of a software developer in a modern and innovative company. My responsibilities were designing our new features, diving into JavaScript and figuring out the subtleties of Knockout.
Juris Arturs Majors (right)
Originally from Latvia, have been studying Computer Science in Eindhoven University of Technology for two years. In my free time I enjoy contributing to open source projects and doing competitive programming. I joined TOPdesk for this summer mostly because I wanted to learn to code in a work environment. During the project I was responsible for managing Docker/Kubernetes and the Java translation back-end.
Now that you have gotten to know Team Spaghet, let’s talk about our internship here at the TOPdesk branch in Tilburg.
Bootcamp
During the first two weeks of our internship, we were given a bootcamp by various people from TOPdesk. We of course covered the developing basics, programming, continuous integration and design. During the talent and scrum workshops, we also learned how to work best as a team and identified our strengths. The remaining time we could choose to learn more about specific things related to the project, or put everything we learned to practice in small projects.
We’d like to thank everyone from TOPdesk who took the time to provide these workshops for us: Sander Koning, Remco Vaes, Joep Weijers, Martijn van Iersel, Astrid Broeders, Jesse van Assen, Emily Klerks, Orsika Labuda, Bart Klinge, Laurent van Berkel, Jan Stankiewicz, Sophie van Bezouw and Wouter Vanden Bergh.
Working
During development we applied Scrum. For that Remco Vaes and Sander Koning were our Scrum Master and Product Owner respectively. Their guidance was crucial to the process of development, brain-storming for solutions and atmosphere. Moreover, whenever we had technical questions or issues everyone in our office was more than willing to help out.
Every two weeks we had a sprint retrospective in which we discussed how we work as a team, came up with ways we could improve our workflow. Around the same time, we had short individual meetings with our Scrum Master in which we could share how we feel about work and give feedback. These meetings helped us accomplish our best as a team, keep work fun and productive..
Lastly, we got to learn how to work with new technologies used by TOPdesk, got introduced to the culture within the company (which we love) and improved an already existing project.
Perks of being an intern at TOPdesk Tilburg
We are very grateful for our time at the Tilburg office. As it is the smaller branch TOPdesk has in the Netherlands, people don’t know much about what is going on here. Therefore, we decided to leak some information for future interns:
- Spacious modern workspaces.
Really, we had great ergonomic desks (could switch between standing or sitting while working) and were using great new hardware. - Helpful colleagues
Our colleagues were always willing to help us solve problems we often caused ourselves or gave us some guidance in figuring it out on our own. - Smash Bros
- No queue for Smash Bros
- Toastie maker
Turns that plain bread + cheese + bread combination into melty crunchy goodness. - Great coffee
Thanks to it those hard Monday mornings were a bit less bitter. - Bootcamp
As we were a smaller group of interns, our bootcamp lessons were more concentrated and we had plenty of time to deepen our knowledge in topics of choice. - Borrels
Lots of fun. Great company, lots of laughs, food and good beer. From board game nights to virtual space missions, we had to remind ourselves to go home. - La Trappe beer
Yes, a full fridge of superior beer brewed near Tilburg by Trappist monks for our cozy Friday borrels.