Internship experience as a software engineering intern at Rootcode

Sharing my exciting journey as a software engineering intern at Rootcode.

It all began in the month of June. After a CV screen procedure, Rootcode picked me for an interview, and I was elated! Let me walk you through all the details!

The interview process at Rootcode Labs

The whole interview process was divided into three phases. During the first phase of the interview, I was asked some general questions as well as some tech-specific questions. Overall I thought that the interview was very well structured. A few days after, the people and the culture team said that I had passed the first phase of the interview and I’m qualified for the next phase. The next phase of the interview was a practical evaluation where I had to develop a small e-commerce application within the allocated time frame. I was asked to demonstrate what I’ve built, to some of the technical leads and they said that they were rather not looking for the completion of the project but rather the approach that I had taken. After a few days I got a call from the People and Culture team, and they said that I have been selected for the third phase of the interview.

The third interview was more of a quick chat with with Alagan and Mangala (CEO and the COO of Rootcode), which I found very insightful. Plus, it was a pleasure to see that even the C-level executives get involved with regards to recruiting an intern! Finally, they broke the good news to me saying “welcome to Rootcode”. I was really happy that I got selected for this internship and I’m also grateful that I got the opportunity to start my career at Rootcode with zero experience.

How I kick-started my internship

The first few days, I spent my time learning about Rootcode, getting to know my fellow colleagues, and adapting to the way of working at Rootcode. My initial task was to get hands-on experience on a mini-project, which led me to gain an idea of the tech, frameworks the company is using. As a person with no prior hands-on experience, this was a great launching point. Frankly speaking, it was challenging, but I was able to learn so much within a limited time frame thanks to my team leads and mentors. Thanks to the support system and the friendly culture at Rootcode, I was able to reach out to anyone at any time if I came across a difficulty. This contributed to my learning process at Rootcode as an intern.

The training and development process that I underwent helped me become a better engineer every single day. I was asked to complete the allocated tasks within a given time constraint and then a Senior developer would review the work that I have done and give feedback. I believe this was very effective since I was able to learn simultaneously while I’m working on a project.

Whenever I have to learn something new, I would seek guidance from Senior developers and Tech leads working on the same project and then refer to the official documentation and other articles, for better understanding. This not only improved my reading habit but also improved my communication skills!

Learning and development

I’m so glad for the fact that I got to learn a lot of new things at Rootcode. Even though I had an idea about the project management processes followed at Rootcode, I have never used any project management tools for the projects that I worked on before. The whole project management process was new to me, and with time, I got an in-depth idea about the whole process.

At the very beginning of my internship, I wasn’t familiar with many of the tools that were used by the team. The only library I was familiar with was React and during the first week, I was asked to learn tailwind CSS for styling and Next.js for server-side rendering. I also worked on animating certain components using React Spring and Keyframes. This was a great experience!

Whenever I do a university project, the main focus would be led towards the functionalities of the app that I’m developing but here I had to focus on other aspects of the application as well, such as performance, responsiveness, usability, code quality, etc. Since I was involved in different phases of the software development life cycle (SDLC), I understood the different stages that the product goes through and the outcome of each stage through practical encounters.

Over a few months, I not only learned new frameworks, technology, etc. but also learned the work that other teams perform (QA, UI, Marketing, etc.) and how their work influences the overall success of a project.
As a university student who had to juggle studies and work, I also learned how to be better at time management and stay organized.

Project experience

After the first week of training, I was assigned to a project called the Expert Republic. Speaking a little bit about Expert Republic, it is a mobile and web application that provides secure, trusted one-to-one, and video consultations between industry experts and customers. The application provides a platform for businesses/individual professionals to make their services available online so that customers can obtain the service from their homes or from wherever they are. One month later I was assigned to a project of revamping the Rootcode website, which was also an interesting one. You can check out the brand new look of the Rootcode website right here.

Rounding up

Simply putting in, every day I’m given a task to complete, and that task might carry a lot of problems. I like how I end up exploring and learning new things in the process of finding a solution. The learning and development curve that I underwent is enormous concurrently exciting as well. Thanks to the well-structured processes and the guidance received from the seniors, I’ve gathered so much knowledge and experience during the past few months working at Rootcode.

One of the best things that I like about Rootcode is the freedom that you have to talk to anyone, even with the CEO or COO at any time with no restrictions. All team members are always willing to help and sometimes they even leave aside their work and try to help me find a solution to the problem. It really did feel like I’m working with a bunch of great friends. Genuinely, this is a work community that feels like family!