Jack Thias: Among the opportunities I considered, this internship offered the most hands-on, real engineering experience. Others were offering tasks su
ch as performance testing, but I wanted to do hands-on application development, which is definitely what I got.,,,Edit #Marketing
#testing
Sylvia: What are your key tasks?
Jack: I’m in a long-term internship (CO-OP) as a software engineer in the Roseville branch working in the HPE Aruba software lab. Currently, I’m working on building mobile apps used for configuring network devices and switches. My project has been in development for about a year. When I joined the team, it was undergoing a massive rewrite. We are working on a pivot of the application, and we’ve completed quite a bit of the code in the time I’ve been here.
Sylvia: How would you describe your office environment and the overall culture?
Jack: It’s really nice being in Roseville. It’s not a huge city, but being so close to Sacramento, you get all the amenities of an urban environment. For the office environment, while I wouldn’t describe it as very relaxed, the day-to-day feeling is definitely along those lines. We’re not forced to pull any crazy hours, and everyone is friendly. Interns have lots of perks. Every week, we get bagels on Tuesday morning and pizza for Thursday lunch. As summer ramps up, we have some fun intern events scheduled, including go-kart racing and laser tag competition. The company is paying for those, which is great.
Sylvia: Who has been your most inspiring mentor?
Jack: The two full-time engineers that I started with gave me great guidance from day one. They helped me ramp up quickly. While they provide useful feedback on the app, I have plenty of autonomy in development. They clearly describe what needs to be done and what approach to take, but only from big terms. And if I need help, I can get it from them.
Sylvia: What have you enjoyed most from working at Aruba?
Jack: I really like how much freedom I am given on development. The project directors give the general direction, but there are a lot of in-between-the-lines areas where I can make my own choices. I’ve heard that at other companies, internships are just railroaded projects, where you just write scripts, that is it. But the position here is very different, and exactly what I want to be doing.,,,,,,Edit
