Continuing with our internship stories, this week we’ll take a look at the position of Software Architect through the eyes of Sergei, who went through the internship a few years ago.
Applying for the Internship
We talked with Sergei to find out about his motivation for applying for the internship in the first place. He said, “To be honest, I applied because my lecturer, who works for Cybernetica, invited me at the right time. At the end of the spring semester I thought that I needed to find a place for an internship. My main goal was to gain experience and see proper software development.” Sergei told us that he actually had practical experience in development before. He revealed, “Although I have had experience writing applications for smart devices at a small company that we started with a friend, I realised that I didn't know how to organise software development, and I wanted to see how professionals do it. I wanted to focus on software development and do my internship not in a start-up, but in a large and mature company with substantial experience. It was also important that the company worked on projects that would be useful to society.”
The Most Exciting and Difficult Thing About the Internship
Thinking about the fascinating stuff during the internship, Sergei probably valued the cool team the most. “I truly appreciated the possibility to work with people who had already developed technologies that were widely used. I guess that a good first job is extremely exciting and interesting for a young person, and I was really happy to end up at Cybernetica.”
Sergei admitted that nothing was more complicated than he had expected, quite the opposite. “The most difficult was to understand how to communicate well with people that have had way more experience than me. It was a bit intimidating to have to share my opinions with a room full of people who were much more knowledgeable. At first I also had trouble finding all the information that I needed since I did not know the internal tools yet. I had to learn how to use a lot of new tools, which by itself wasn’t very difficult, but there were just a lot of them.”
Why Did You Decide to Stay?
Speaking of reasons for accepting a full-time job offer, Sergei mentions the team and wanting to continue as the most important criteria. He said, “A superb team is definitely the main reason. Changing jobs is always a gamble whether you find a team that you like to work with or not. During the internship I had to develop a larger project. It was tremendously interesting, but by the end of my internship I completed only a minimal solution that had to be developed further. Basically, I wanted to finish what I started and see more of a software life cycle.”
Why Would You Recommend an Internship at Cybernetica?
Sergei sums up our conversation up with a nice and ambitious thought by saying, “If you want to get an idea of the projects that build the present and the future of the digital society, Cybernetica is certainly the place to be. There’s a lot to learn about e-governance, secure computing, electronic voting, communication and monitoring systems, but also new cryptographic solutions and research. Cybernetica deals with interesting and unique projects the likes of which can only be seen in very few Estonian companies. Despite the complexity of the field, each intern participates in a genuine project, solves difficult problems and competes with real-life restrictions and requirements. That’s why you need to be independent, think critically, be able to analyse complex problems and seek answers to questions that, possibly, no one has ever asked before. Of course, Cybernetica is not an easy place for just anyone, but it is definitely a place where smart and independent can do things that will put their abilities to the test.”
If you feel like you are ready for your next exciting challenge, step up and apply for our summer internship here: cyber.ee/careers