Internship as Software Development Engineer In GDP Labs
Hello everybody :D. So today I wanna share about my internship experience at GDP Labs Bandung.
GDP Labs is a software product development-centric organization based in Indonesia. You can read more about this great company here https://www.linkedin.com/company/gdp-labs . In my university, it is one of the most popular company and by the way my university uses one of its product too, which is Olympia.
So that is quick introduction about GDP Labs and here is my story
Registration — Why Software Development Engineer at GDP Labs?
First I know about this opportunity from a good friend of mine. So I decided to fill in application form in the company’s website . Why GDP Labs? The reason is clear as it is mentioned above that GDP Labs is an awesome company for everyone who is passionate to learn about IT. The other reason is that GDP is popular among my university’s student. From the website, we can choose the job position we want to apply. But for me , I choose position as Software Development Engineer because I want to learn about Web and Mobile App technology. I also want to learn about Software Development practices, such as collecting resources and apply those in our projects, also things such as clean code and refactoring code.
Registration — Requirements?
The requirements for each position in GDP Labs can be seen in the company’s website. But for me, I prepare my CV which includes my academic and working experience. When I fill the application form, less than 2 weeks, I receive a respond email from the company about coding test that is problem solving test in Olympia. What a quick respond!! Yes, this is just one of the many things I like about this company. The test had limit time but we are free to start the test at any time in the range of 1 week from the time we receive the respond email. The test contained 3 questions and had to be finished in 1 hour 30 minutes. I solved two of them (number two and number three, but found the first one really difficult so I didn’t finish it). After I passed the coding test, I have invitation to have interview test, which is in main asking me about my interest in my position, GDP Labs, and also some questions about Web technology. They also ask if I had working experience before and if I have ever done any IT projects. In interview, there are also some live coding tests. So the interviewer will give us some problem to solve then we solve it in from of them. Then the interviewer will ask us to explain about the algorithm we use and how can we optimize the algorithm. By the way, all coding tests are just problems, and in which language we have to solve it is we are free to choose, great right :) ? The problem is mostly about algorithm and data structure. Also in the interview, don’t hesitate to tell them your experiences or knowledge regarding the question they ask, even if you feel that knowledge or experiences are trivial.
Beginning of the journey
On the first day, we have onboarding event where we are introduced to our mentor and the project we are assigned to. My mentor is Kak Samuel Lusandi, who works as Senior Software Development Engineer at GDP Labs. He is incredibly smart and helpful. In the first weeks, I explored about the technology of my project. I ran sample code and also wrote simple code to understand how this technology works. But the most time I learnt is from my mentor, my mentor gave me many useful resources, also there are so many times where I confused about the things I read or where should things be applied, I discussed those things with my mentor. He is literally the best mentor ever!! One important thing that I learnt from him is to never be afraid of trying, even though we are not sure whether it will work or not, just try it and also document it so we can learn where we are stuck and search for the solution for each’s problem or find other alternative according to that problem. At the end of week, I and my mentor usually have 1o1 meeting in Google Meet to discuss about next step or any problem I had while doing the project.
GL Weekly Meeting
One of GDP’s culture is to hold meeting at the end of every week’s workdays. The meeting is where employees share knowledge to each other and also some discussions about GDP Labs’ developing products or some new regulations (including some new regulations according to Covid 19 pandemy). It was such a great thing for us to be invited into this meeting, so we could see GDP Labs working environment and it was very enthusiastic. Also at the end of the 2nd month, we have opportunity to have discussion with GDP Labs’ CEO, Mr On Lee. He is an awesome person with a lot of experiences and knowledge, that he shared during the meeting. An intern also asked about his experience as Microsoft director.
GL Talk
There are usually 1–2 talks each week in the middle of our internship period. Each of them usually takes about 1 hour. This is worth mentioning because from this GL Talk, we learn a lot about technologies and software development best practices. The Talk is like seminar but it is more special because the speakers are GDP Labs’s employee that apply those technologies and practices in their projects. So although some persons might have already heard or learnt about those technologies, they will listen to how those technologies implemented in real projects. At the end of the talk, there is also a demo and explanation of the codes. There is also Q&A session where we can ask anything about the topic of the talk or if we just want to share our experience of using that technology.
Intern presentation
After several weeks of researching and developing application in several platforms with the technology of the project I am assigned in, the only thing remained was to present it. So at the end my job is to refactor the code and complete the documentation before I presented it in front of GDP Lab’s employees. It was great because from that presentation, I could share the works I was doing during my internship and also received some feedback or questions to figure out the answer. It was really fun talking in front of people that are passionate about technologies. Other interns also shared their projects’ result, so we learnt from each other. That was great!! All of us were assigned to explore about new technology, so the challenge was there, but we were not doing it alone, but together with our mentors who guided us. So trust me it was very fun.
Summary
Working as Software Development Engineer intern at GDP Labs is like a dream come true.
Working alongside people who are enthusiastic about technologies, also love to share and discuss about it make me have new point of view of how technology and everything I learnt from university applicable in working field. Learning is sharing, technology develops so fast, and there are so many resources to be learnt on the internet, the most effective way to learn about it is to share what we learn and discuss with other people about it, finding way to improve or explore other side of the technology we are learning from there. That is how they, people in GDP Labs work, which is great!
