What I Learned as a Summer Intern
My time at Varo has been a significant period of growth for me. In the midst of a university experience uprooted by the pandemic, my QE internship at Varo has felt refreshingly new. As my first experience in the online workplace, it was overwhelmingly positive.
I spent the last year adjusting to the circumstances I found myself in — studying online at a university overseas, facing restrictions on travel to see my family, etc. — the same situation so many of us are in now. In contrast, my internship at Varo was one of my only recent experiences not defined by what was missing from it. The Varo company culture has adapted amazingly to the constraints of the online workplace. From day one, I found Varo to be a community of open, helpful people.
For the past 10 weeks, I have been a part of the Quality Engineering (QE) team, focused on testing the backend framework of Varo’s banking functionality. As a 20-year-old student, my experience has been about learning the structure of the company just as much as the nitty-gritty of the engineering work. Varo fully incorporated me from the beginning when I met with individual members of the team to understand their specific roles. I was given a crash course on all things QE in the first few weeks, setting me up to be able to tackle my own tasks later down the line. I was then assigned a team member to work under, who delegated tickets and tests to me.
Throughout my time, I’ve become familiar with tools and concepts that had never previously crossed my radar. Many of my early days were focused on understanding the scope covered by quality engineering. This then spread into learning the framework unique to Varo — how we distribute and execute tests in our three environments. I had opportunities from the beginning to run tests for myself, starting with manual API calls in BloomRPC and working my way to automated tests.
Once I was settled into the framework, I joined the banking feature squad, running tests on our banking platform in meetings. I was then assigned my own Jira ticket to test various transactions. This allowed me to work directly with a product manager, whom I met with multiple times to align the testing needs with the capabilities. Working on this ticket was the most rewarding part of my internship as I felt that I was at the heart of what Varo’s platform does. On the most basic level, a bank needs to control transactions to and from accounts, and the testing I was working on was ensuring exactly that. My colleagues at Varo trusted me to run and analyze tests that are critical to the customer experience. As a college student, banking has never been at the forefront of my mind, with my only income coming from summer jobs over the years. Working so closely with the core of Varo’s banking platform has given me a newfound appreciation for the efforts made against banking inequalities across America.
The learning curve was steep in the first few weeks, coming from a general engineering background and hoping to explore the computer science space. However, the supportive environment created at Varo helped me every step of the way. I never hesitated to ask for clarification, something that came new to me from this experience. Additionally, my time at Varo has exponentially improved my confidence in navigating online communications. I’ve increased my confidence in speaking in meetings, sending status updates, and following up with others — all skills I hadn’t learned in school. This internship has cemented my belief in learning outside of the classroom environment, and opened my eyes to the importance of hands-on experience. I’m so thankful for the opportunities I’ve had at Varo, and have thoroughly enjoyed my summer.
