So I suppose my biggest question about writing for this blog was, well, what do I write? What do all the budding future interns want to know about working here?
Tough question until I realized I was in those shoes a few months back, and all I can remember thinking is “What Does A Technical Intern Actually Do?”, perfect, so now, how to put this into words…
Way back, in what seems like the distant past, when I signed up at Reading university to do “Applied Computer Science”, the prospect of my industrial placement year seemed a long way off. It was however bugged by one question. In the world of computer science, every day is spent theorizing, learning principles and occasionally programming technical or proof of concept algorithms and snippets – how on earth could I find an industrial placement that had anything to do with this? I mean are there really people who sit in offices playing with assembly code and fighting Kruskal’s shortest path algorithm into submission?
It seems the answer has become apparent working within my current role – As a Developer support engineer I spend a large part of my day with Visual Studio ticking away in the background, working on customer’s code, something I really enjoy – but not so much computer science. This was how I thought it would continue, until a colleague of mine came over to my desk and mentioned that the problem I was facing would probably need debugging fully. It was right about that point that I tripped and fell clean down the rabbit hole.
Debugging code on a low level, picking through assembly and instructions, this was raw computer science bliss and certainly not what I expected when I signed up for this role, and that’s the real value of an internship here at Microsoft – wherever your skillset lies – there is a way to make use of it, and to hone those skills. This is not to say all of my day is spent messing around with Computer Science, but it’s certainly an eye opener to me, that there really is a place for the hardcore Computer Scientist around here.
So I would say to anyone that is curious about how technical working at a software company can get, or worried about how relevant their placement is to their course – make sure you consider every avenue, because you never know where your skills might take you.
Simon Frost
Be Your Future 