My Internship blues!
Hi guys!
I've been a long time reader of these forums, this was my first port of all for most of my programming needs in my first two years of my Software Engineering degree.
Towards the end of my second year of Uni, after having endured almost a full year of soul destroying applications processes, I was delighted to have been offered an Internship at a large multinational company in Germany.
I started my internship with the feeling that I was more than just an average programmer, however this initial shine quickly wore off after the first few weeks of W.T.F.!!! It's actually quite shocking looking back and remembering how naive I was.
After having worked in the company for more than eight months, I am seriously reconsidering changing professions, not from I.T. but maybe to another Computing role, such as Networking. My green optimism has been replaced by clock watching and a feeling of lethargy whenever I open Visual Studio.
Having said that I had always enjoyed programming. I remember writing my first QBASIC application when I was 13 and the thrill of writing applications that did next to nothing :) This joy had been echoed as I progressed further and further (my first C++ Programming book, my first Windows Application).
I just wanted to ask has anyone else here felt anything similar or been in a similar situation? Has it worked out for you? Should I persevere? Or should I pack it in and buy a commercial Pizza oven?
I've been a long time reader of these forums, this was my first port of all for most of my programming needs in my first two years of my Software Engineering degree.
Towards the end of my second year of Uni, after having endured almost a full year of soul destroying applications processes, I was delighted to have been offered an Internship at a large multinational company in Germany.
I started my internship with the feeling that I was more than just an average programmer, however this initial shine quickly wore off after the first few weeks of W.T.F.!!! It's actually quite shocking looking back and remembering how naive I was.
After having worked in the company for more than eight months, I am seriously reconsidering changing professions, not from I.T. but maybe to another Computing role, such as Networking. My green optimism has been replaced by clock watching and a feeling of lethargy whenever I open Visual Studio.
Having said that I had always enjoyed programming. I remember writing my first QBASIC application when I was 13 and the thrill of writing applications that did next to nothing :) This joy had been echoed as I progressed further and further (my first C++ Programming book, my first Windows Application).
I just wanted to ask has anyone else here felt anything similar or been in a similar situation? Has it worked out for you? Should I persevere? Or should I pack it in and buy a commercial Pizza oven?
Last edited on
What type of projects are you working on and with what technologies? Sometimes you just have projects that suck that you must push through. Business App development is not by any means casual.
I'm trying to steer as far clear of Business App dev as humanly possible without switching majors. Mostly because I've heard so many horror stories like this one.
Thanks for the replies guys!
@Return 0: I am working in the Q.A. department, implementing test software tool. I say implementing lightly as it's mostly been throwing old DOS code at the Windows A.P.I. and praying it sticks. I work with Visual Studio 2008, using the M.F.C. to create G.U.I.'s for my applications.
I couldn't agree with you more Return 0! I spent the whole day trying to figure out how to "Programatically select a List View Item in a CListCtrl": http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/windows/40618/ , thinking it was the solution, only to realise what I wanted to do was adjust the scroll bar's position (it's funny how you get lost in bad ideas! :D ).
@Seraphimsan: I can totally understand why you would do that! It is insanely tedious. Especially when you don't have all nice .NET functionality at your disposal.
@Return 0: I am working in the Q.A. department, implementing test software tool. I say implementing lightly as it's mostly been throwing old DOS code at the Windows A.P.I. and praying it sticks. I work with Visual Studio 2008, using the M.F.C. to create G.U.I.'s for my applications.
| Business App development is not by any means casual. |
I couldn't agree with you more Return 0! I spent the whole day trying to figure out how to "Programatically select a List View Item in a CListCtrl": http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/windows/40618/ , thinking it was the solution, only to realise what I wanted to do was adjust the scroll bar's position (it's funny how you get lost in bad ideas! :D ).
| I'm trying to steer as far clear of Business App dev as humanly possible |
@Seraphimsan: I can totally understand why you would do that! It is insanely tedious. Especially when you don't have all nice .NET functionality at your disposal.
What sort of test software tool? There are many COTS solutions. QA in general is very boring and the area of IT where programmers go to die. They may wield fancy titles like Quality Assurance Engineer, but I assure you, there's nothing engineering related involved at most companies.
@Return 0: Without breaking the terms of my contract, I work on internally used software tools that perform a wide variety of tasks, but the primary focus is to support the manufacture and assembly of Personal Computers on the factory floor, but I also have debugged software that was in use (which was pretty cool). Are you currently working in the industry?
What funny is my e-mail signature says, "Software Engineering Intern" but I the most engineering I've done is integrate old functionality into a Window's G.U.I.
If anyones reading this and think "ohh, that sounds clever!" believe me, it's not!
What funny is my e-mail signature says, "Software Engineering Intern" but I the most engineering I've done is integrate old functionality into a Window's G.U.I.
If anyones reading this and think "ohh, that sounds clever!" believe me, it's not!
R&D at the moment. I'm a consultant and specialize in system modernization and new product development.
Actually I feel it is good that the intern-ship 'wake' you up to the real working world in comparison to your Uni studies environment. You can take this great opportunity to evaluate if your character is suitable for this line of work.
IT is very broad and if you want those areas that change "little", try QA, systems admin, database admin, project mgr, business analyst, systems analyst etc etc. If you intend to dabble in IT programming, then I doubt there is anything close to change "little". In fact the motto is "The only constant is change!"
I know cuz I have been through that.C, C++, Lotus Notes, Visual Basic, VBA, ActiveX/COM/DCOM, ASP, CORBA, Perl, Javascript, JSP, Java, Android for mobile development are just the some of the phases I go through. The algorithm and data structures remains pretty much the same. The language syntax change quite often although most of them seems to originate from some ancestor language :P
IT is very broad and if you want those areas that change "little", try QA, systems admin, database admin, project mgr, business analyst, systems analyst etc etc. If you intend to dabble in IT programming, then I doubt there is anything close to change "little". In fact the motto is "The only constant is change!"
I know cuz I have been through that.C, C++, Lotus Notes, Visual Basic, VBA, ActiveX/COM/DCOM, ASP, CORBA, Perl, Javascript, JSP, Java, Android for mobile development are just the some of the phases I go through. The algorithm and data structures remains pretty much the same. The language syntax change quite often although most of them seems to originate from some ancestor language :P
| Actually I feel it is good that the intern-ship 'wake' you up to the real working world in comparison to your Uni studies environment. |
@sohguanh: I feel the same way about it. At least now I have a few years to plan my moves before I graduate.
Post graduation I was thinking about doing a Masters in a H.C.I. (Human-Computer Interaction) related field, but we'll see in which direction the wind blows.
I've also been thinking about diversifying a little, and I've started to dabble in Silverlight and XNA.
Last edited on
Topic archived. No new replies allowed.