Summer at Debricked: Sofi’s story

Hey there Sofi, how’s it going?

A little tired, but otherwise good! I’ve been working a lot from home, but since this week I’ve started coming into the office a few days, which feels great. 

You’ve been with us for about four weeks now, what made you apply for an internship here?

I had heard about Debricked a few times since I have some classmates who have done an internship with you before, so I knew a little. I had only heard good things! When I started looking for a summer internship and found out that you were looking for developers I instantly applied. 

What’s your background?

I study Information and Communication Engineering Technologies (InfoCom), and I have one year left in school before I get my degree. I used to study bio medicine, and during a course we got to do some statistics in R. Doing that made me realize that I probably should change direction, since doing R turned out to be the most fun thing I had done all year, haha. So, I applied to InfoCom and luckily got accepted. 

I had never coded before, but I really enjoy learning new things and I’m not scared of asking questions that might sound silly. Being prestigeless and humble is the best way to learn new things fast. I’ve also always been interested in tech since a child, but mostly as a consumer.

Once you started coding, what was the biggest challenge?

I’m the kind of person who likes to have a complete understanding of things. At first I could make it work, but I realised that I needed to understand why it worked. Writing code is one thing, but understanding why the computer then does what it does was really important for me. One thing that really helped me was drawing it on a piece of paper, that made it less abstract. 

What’s your favorite thing about coding?

I love learning new things, whatever it might be haha. But, what attracts me to coding is the satisfaction of creating something and making it work. It’s a great, instant reward. 

What have you learned so far during your internship?

I’ve never dealt with the Symfony or Vue framework before, so that was new. Also connecting front-end to back-end, I’m used to working with either separately so that has been a great learning experience. I’ve also become more used to PHP, which is nice. In the future, I’d like to be a programmer with many different qualities so I like to try a lot of different things. 

What’s your plan after the internship ends?

I’ve recently realised that I’m really into data science, and I am currently exploring the possibility to maybe do my master thesis at the Debricked data science department! So, if I have time to learn enough about it, I might be coming back here next year. 

I’d love to be able to work in that field when it’s time for me to apply for a job. But I also know that whichever workplace I end up in I will enjoy it as long as I get to learn new things on a daily basis, which is pretty much what programming is, haha.  

What was your first impression of Debricked?

I like that it’s a small organisation where it’s easy to make your voice heard. In larger companies I sometimes feel like it’s hard to have an impact. I like to question things, which is usually perceived pretty well in a startup, haha. And most importantly, everyone has been super nice and helpful.

Lastly, do you have any summer plans?

My biggest focus this summer is taking care of our new kittens, which is actually more time consuming than you might think… It’s super cozy though. I’m also gonna take some time to spend time with friends in Sweden since we can’t really travel. 

As soon as I can, I will go snowboarding, it’s my absolute favorite thing to do in the world. 

We wish Sofi good luck with the rest of the internship and hope to see her back next year!