an-interns-perspective-software-engineer-intern-at-getyourguide
Engineering
Nov 2, 2017

An Intern's Perspective: Software Engineer Intern at GetYourGuide

GetYourGuide
Careers Team

- By Marilou Beyeler, Software Engineer Intern at GetYourGuide's Zurich office.

After a couple of years studying Computer Science at ETH Zurich, I found myself with some free time in the summer and decided it was time to explore the real computer science world and find an internship. I came across GetYourGuide for the first time at the ETH Zurich’s “Contact Party” - a big job fair for Computer Science students. GetYourGuide had a stand there and I met a couple of the Engineers from the Zurich team. The mix of motivated, dedicated and dynamic people with an awesome company model, great values, and, of course, orange shirts and balloons made me think that GetYourGuide would be an amazing company to work for. And I was absolutely right.

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GetYourGuide at ETH Zurich’s Contact Party.
GetYourGuide at ETH Zurich’s Contact Party

From there everything went really quickly and a couple of emails later I was starting a 5-month Internship at GetYourGuide’s Zurich office as a Software Engineer in the Platform Team. From day one it had been a blast and I was directly assigned real work with real responsibilities. I felt welcome and completely part of the team from the beginning. And despite lacking any real previous experience, no one ever gave me the feeling that I was “just the intern”. Working with a team of great, experienced engineers in such a fast-paced environment was awesome. Every day brought new ideas, challenges, and problems. I had the chance to be part of the discussions and to follow the development of the platform all along.

I’ve learned so much these last couple of months! I arrived with a mostly theoretical background and little programming experience and today I can say that I have started appreciating PHP and understanding Javascript. I don’t fear looking and searching through the huge code repository anymore. I also learned a lot about teamwork, organization, and communication.

There were also challenging times, especially in the beginning; how do you tell your team that you don’t understand (at all) what they’ve been talking about for an hour? How do you react when the code you released just happened to break everything? I sometimes had no idea how to start working on a task that was assigned to me and came across programming languages I had never used before. I could work autonomously at my own pace and take the time I needed in order to understand and process the information.

This freedom in my work was very profitable because it pushed me to learn more and find solutions on my own. I also knew that if I was ever facing an issue, someone would be there to answer all my questions. Regardless of how silly my question seemed, someone always took the time to answer it in detail. It was the working environment every intern could only wish for and I’m thankful for the trust that was put in me from day one

My internship was really varied and I had the possibility to work on lots of different projects. This gave me the chance to get a broader view of everything happening in the engineering department. And there is a lot happening!

I was involved in one project where I worked on the backend management system. This system is used by different teams to manage tours and customer bookings. I helped by making changes to modify it and improve the workflows of the people using it. I also had the opportunity to go to the Berlin office for a couple of weeks to work with the mobile apps team. I worked on the App API there and was lucky to experience a different and exciting environment. And still, there is so much more! Overall, the work I did felt valuable and I loved getting feedback on what I built.

I also had the chance to meet my colleagues from other departments at the Summer Summit in Berlin. This was an amazing opportunity for me to see what the other teams were working on. GetYourGuide has so many different facets outside of engineering and realizing how diverse these teams are and how they all work together to deliver the best possible customer experience was extremely fascinating. Working with all these really passionate people in a company with an awesome culture growing and expanding so quickly was such an incredible experience. What a chance I had.

If you are interested in completing an internship in our Zurich office, please contact our HR team at hr.team@getyourguide.com with the subject line ‘Internship Opportunities’ for further details.

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