I was introduced to Mile Two a year before I had even started considering internship options. I was pulled to a booth at my college's career fair and was instantly hooked on the culture the representatives seemed to ooze, only paying minor attention to the type of software work they did. I spent the next year working to ensure that I was the best candidate they had when they browsed their pool of interns for Spring 2020. When it came time, I turned in my resume, went in for an interview the next week, and was offered the internship on the spot! Quite the relief considering I had no back up plans. I had taken every step to get me where I wanted to be for the past year, so you can imagine my stomach dropping when I was handed the syllabus filled with words I had never heard; React, Javascript, SASS, API, GraphQL.
For some context, I had been a stay at home mom/on-again-off-again student for the past four years with no experience in Computer Science. I picked my major at random, looking for a school program that I could complete mostly online and only had the knowledge that two years in community college had given me. I was paired with interns with Bachelor's Degrees+ and portfolios containing examples of code they'd written and sites they'd built. I was shown examples of current projects M2 had been working on and introduced to published authors, bloggers, and all around impressive people they had on their staff. I had never felt more under-qualified in my life.
I went home crying to my husband that I was a fraud and would never belong in this field surrounded by people who seemed to have been born coding (I later learned the term imposter syndrome) but started my deep dive into Google.
The next day I went in trying to stay positive and act like I belonged there. I went home every night with a new list of things to research ("What is an API?") and came to work every day ready to fix all of my code from the day before. I got to know the people who had fallen in love with the same culture that I did and mastered the fancy coffee machine as the first person in the office each day. There was never a moment that I felt like a light switched on and I was suddenly a real developer, but over time I found myself able to give answers to other people's problems, creating complex functions, and finally writing my own code instead of copying being inspired by StackOverflow.
Fast forward through the change to remote work (thanks Covid), school graduation, and a dabble in customer work, and I was offered a job as an Associate Software Engineer at Mile Two. I had done it. Last month I hit my 3 year work-aversary and have worked on multiple teams on different projects within the company. I have reached Mid Level Engineer and fully immersed myself into the culture that first brought me to M2. I have made best friends, led working groups, and hosted "Lunch & Learns". I have truly become the Software Engineer that little baby Intern Lindsay was so inspired by. This year I'm helping to reignite the internship program that gave me so much. If I could go back and shake some sense into Intern Lindsay, here are some advice tidbits I'd drill into her skull:
- YOU BELONG HERE. You aren't a good enough liar to fake an entire resume. You were hired because they believe in you.
- GOOGLE EVERYTHING. I've heard more people in this field say they are a professional Google-r than any other way to describe the job. They aren't wrong. That super impressive Senior Dev writing huge chunks of complex code? Googling.
- If/When Google fails, there is not a single person at M2 who doesn't want you to succeed. The company truly lives by it's Core Values, including Success is a Team Effort. Ask for help.
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