We are continuing a series of publications on internship at SKB Kontur. Today we will get acquainted with Anna Shlyak , who will tell you how her internship took place in St. Petersburg and share tips.

Test

I learned about SKB Kontur from my classmate: “They have cool internships in C #”. In February 2017, I waited for the internship, but was wildly upset: the test task seemed to me just overwhelming. It was necessary to write a statistics server for a shooter game. “Cool,” I thought, and began to try. By the end of February I was still able to make the initial version and send it for review.

The selection for the test went in two waves: first, those who sent answers before March 1, then - until March 19, were considered. I wanted to get into the first wave, and as it turned out, not in vain. They answered me at the test: “You did well, but didn’t reach our TOP a bit. Until March 19th, there is time to improve your answers. ” So I did. While I was writing the code, new clarifications and requirements for the task appeared. In one of the clarifications was the prohibition to use the MS SQL Server database. If this base does not fit, then how to choose the right one? At random, I chose SQLite and anxiously sent a test for verification. And passed on.

The next stage was a crash course at the recreation center near Yekaterinburg. In April, I flew from St. Petersburg to the capital of the Urals for lectures and entertainment. I was happy that I got into a crash course: interesting and useful lectures, pair programming, a lot of different games, snacks.

We learned to write clean code, work correctly with exceptions, tried the TDD technique, learned the principles of Dependency Inversion. We performed all tasks in pairs, and on the last day we were divided into teams and we arranged a programming competition. It is a pity that only 4 days, because it was really cool!

Interviews and internships

At the end of May, they called me and invited me for an interview. The next day! I had to change all the plans and immediately after defending my coursework, run to the office for an interview. The result did not have long to wait. As you understood, he was positive.

July 3, I officially became an intern. The first day ended with my first commit, which broke the build. The first pancake is lumpy, but on the first day I started writing code.

The first two weeks in my head was a complete mess. A new subject area for me, a lot of unfamiliar, abbreviations. Understanding came slowly, sometimes it seemed very slowly. But the more I mastered, the more I liked at work.

They took me to the Billing team - this is a service that allows you to sell Contour products. The largest and most distributed team: about 50 people in Yekaterinburg, St. Petersburg and Izhevsk.

Team Billing work in pairs. My mentor for 2 months was my partner, we wrote the code together, in turn. There are a lot of team practices in the team: code review, design review, various duties, meetings, scraps, guilds. I was surprised that the meeting takes a lot of time. You do not write code all day, but communicate, share knowledge, discuss possible solutions and problems. This, in my opinion, improves the quality of the code. You validate the decision, take breaks from writing the code, and always know what happens to the team.

Business trip

During the internship, I flew to Yekaterinburg on a business trip to get better acquainted with another part of the team and sit in a pair with another intern. At the same time I was able to get to the internship internship - it was a trip for all the interns, where we played a strategic game, ate barbecues, and then played on the boards.

But also the life of the interns in Yekaterinburg turned out to be different. In Yekaterinburg, every two weeks, conduct interns interns, where they told what they do. This is really interesting, because everyone has different teams, culture, tasks.

At the end of the internship there was a conference at which the interns talked about their tasks. I did not go to her, there was no suitable task for the report. Many people had several big tasks for the entire internship, and I mostly dealt with small business ones.

Big challenge

Throughout August, we were engaged in one big task related to time zones. In the system interface, the dates were displayed Moscow time, which is why users had problems. We needed to learn how to display the time in the user's time zone. Users of our system work with potential sales, which are associated with so many different dates, for example, creation time, lifetime, etc. Therefore, the task turned out to be quite laborious and with a lot of pitfalls, it demanded a lot of communication with analysts and other developers. For example, I learned that in Ireland until 1916 there was a time zone of UTC – 0: 25: 21.

Results

After the internship, I remained part-time because I was still studying at the university. In general, I liked it, I was expecting something more complicated, boring and heavy. But it turned out not so at all! Friendly team and interesting tasks help to feel at work at home. It is definitely worth going through all the stages, overcoming the difficulties at each of them, and already during the selection a little bit to grow up to the internship itself.

I visited Yekaterinburg 2 times, for the first time in my life I received a salary and work experience in my specialty, and most importantly - new knowledge. The only disappointment - I wanted to lose weight over the summer, but with the kitchen in the office, which is full of delicious things, it turned out the opposite :)

Tips experienced

• Start solving the test as early as possible.
• At the crash course, devote oneself to the crash course: ask questions, try to understand as much as possible, prepare yourself in advance and study all the recommended materials.
• Get ready for an interview: read books, see courses. Do not be afraid of something not to answer - it is important for interviewees to understand how you can reason.
• For an internship to be effective, share feedback with your mentor.
• And most importantly: enjoy it all. If you do not want to go to work - probably something went wrong.

Try and do not be afraid that expectations do not coincide with reality, sometimes it is very cool!