At Flexagon, we have internship opportunities year-round. While our summer internship pulls students from around the country, our school-year internships draw from local colleges, looking for students going for degrees in Computer Science, Math, and Engineering.
We pride ourselves on bringing on interns to do more than the low-level work so many interns are typically given. We ask our interns to be part of the team; working on projects that will directly impact FlexDeploy and our customers. Over the holiday break, we sat down with one of our interns to talk about her experience working with Flexagon.
Flexagon: Thanks for sitting down and chatting about your time with Flexagon to date! Let’s start with introductions. Who are you, what are you studying, and how long have you been with Flexagon?
Emily Simon: My name is Emily Simon. I’m studying computer science and math at St. Norbert College where I am a Senior. I have been here since September, so about three months.
F: What have you been working on?
E: I’ve done some work building plugins for FlexDeploy. I’ve also done some configuration for automated testing. I’m currently starting work on Rest APIs. Really a variety of tasks.
F: What have you learned during your internship that you wouldn’t have learned in school?
E: I learned about DevOps and the software delivery lifecycle in detail. I’ve improved my Java skills, and programming in that. I’ve also been able to apply what I’ve learned about in class, which has been helpful.
F: What surprised you about your time with Flexagon?
E: How much I’ve learned. It has been interested to see how much of what I’ve learned in classes has applied to my work. We’ve all had classes we take that we’re like “when will we use this?” Just about every class in my program has applied to my work at Flexagon in some way or another.
F: What have you been bringing back to school with you?
E: Skills like organizing projects, best practices in programming, integrating tools, and automating as much as you can. The problem solving I’ve learned will be helpful for my capstone senior project. For other classes, I’ll be able to consider how what I’m learning will apply in the real world.
F: What has been the best thing about your time here?
E: I like being able to work on a project that will actually be used. As a student, the projects I work on are for my own use or just for a grade. In this internship, I’ve been able to contribute to the product and not get so much “intern work.”
Everyone here has been really open with helping me; I feel like I can ask any questions. There has been a good mix of working with others and also trying to figure things out on my own and asking for help as needed.
F: Would you recommend an internship or job with Flexagon to others?
E: Definitely
F: What do you tell them about working here?
E: There are high expectations, but you’ll get a lot out of it. No matter where you go after, an internship at Flexagon would be helpful.
F: What has been a highlight of your time with Flexagon so far?
E: I really enjoyed writing plugin operations for the Kubernetes plugin. (Editor’s note: she wrote the whole plugin!) It was one of my first few weeks here and I didn’t know much of anything about Containers or plugins. With help form the team I was able to design, build, test, and finish it within a few weeks. With that assignment, I learned so much about Containers, plugins, and how FlexDeploy uses them, and it was a great jumping-off point for my work.
F: Talk to me a little bit about the culture at Flexagon.
E: It’s a small team. Everyone is really inviting and welcoming and knows each other. It’s really nice if you have questions that you can do to anyone. I would say the team is laid back, but motivated. Everyone works hard and is passionate.
F: What else would you like to share about your time with Flexagon?
E: I really like how we’re able to work on a variety of different things, and work on a variety of tools that will be helpful going forward. Getting that experience with experts in the field is incredible.
As of this writing Emily is still working with Flexagon and was responsible for the API Updates is our most recent release. If you are interested in an internship or job opportunity, reach out to [email protected]. We would love to hear from you.
