We wanted to say a huge thank you to Fei who spent his summer interning at Exempt Edge. He came to us having just finished his first year at the University of Waterloo where he is studying Software Engineering. He continually blew us away with his work ethic and deliverables. We can’t wait to see where his career takes him and want to wish him all the best as he heads into his second year.
“Fei displays a highly consistent level of performance in his work and accomplished all tasks he was assigned ahead of deadlines. His output is among our intermediate software developers while quality standard is not lowered. All colleagues he worked with appreciated his professionalism, humble attitude, and attention to details. Fei is one of the best young coders I've ever known in my 15 years of tech industry experience. I strongly believe this young man has a bright future in this industry.” -Shengkai Ju, Manager of Software Development
We asked Fei to sum up his experience here at Exempt Edge and this is what he had to say:
How would you describe your experience working at Exempt Edge?
Learning. Lots and lots of learning. When I first started, I had very little knowledge of our tech stack, primary programming language, and business as a whole. It was thanks to the incredible team here that I was able to quickly learn about the technical and business side of our software and have the confidence to fail forward. Within a few weeks, I was working on projects and features that were bringing real impact to clients. These past few months have flown by, and I’m blown away by everything I was able to learn and work on during my time here at Exempt Edge.
What was your biggest take away?
Thanks to the great developers I’ve had a chance to work with, I’ve learned that there is so much more to being a developer than just programming. I’ve learned the importance of communication, that understanding the problem at hand and what is being asked will allow you to come up with the best solution to solve it. In addition, having an open mindset is crucial because software development is such a vast field. There are many different ways to solve a single programming problem, and more often than not, your solution may not be optimal. It is important that you’re able to listen and learn from the feedback of others, in order to make your solution the best it can be.
What was your favorite project to work on and why?
The new referral system for dealers. Before I could actually begin development, we had to plan and design what this new feature would look like, inside and out. Understanding the business requirements in addition to analyzing the different methods of implementations were exciting problems in themselves. My last few weeks were spent almost entirely working on this project and required a culmination of all the knowledge I had gained from my time at Exempt Edge. There was a great sense of satisfaction seeing everything I had learned from the last few months come together to create this brand-new module that I hope will be able to benefit many of our users.
What would you say to other students looking to start an internship in Software development?
Work on side projects, ideally something you genuinely enjoy. As you work on it, you will face problems and you will make mistakes, but you will grow and learn from them. Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know, appreciate that you are learning.
