Embracing Web Development — Sandhya Mahat

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Ever since my childhood, I have had a certain pull towards computers. Back then in Nepal, the subject “Computing” was all about mugging up answers to the questions such as “What is a computer?”. I literally still know it by heart: a computer is an electronic device that can read, write and compute the data.

Sensing my interest, my mother arranged for hands-on classes with developers while I was ten years old at third grade. I learnt languages such as HTML and QBasic that were never even mentioned until secondary level in school. I was even punished for completing my assignments before the teacher could assign them. Yes, I was that kid, super curious to learn.

Fast forward to high school, I decided to enrol for A-levels from University of Cambridge International Examinations affiliated school in Nepal. The high school lasted for two years, but unfortunately, computer related courses were not provided due to lack of IT professors in my hometown. During this time, I realised that I was lagging behind in technology. My brother, who is a web developer in America, always told me that technology is the future and we need to be up to date with it in order to survive in the future. He instructed me that one has to be able to work with technology in order to thrive in this era.

Hence, I chose to do my Bachelors in Computer Engineering. Since Finland has the reputation of one of the best education systems in the world and the fact that it was free of cost, I ended up choosing Finland over America for my higher education. I studied four years of Bachelors of IT Engineering in Turku University of Applied Sciences.

In the university, I got the opportunity to learn a lot in the field of technology. While my major was networking, I ended up doing my thesis on Game Development with Unity. However, all my three internships were related to web development. During that time, I was quite confused about my path in the field of IT. It was like I was jack of all trades, but king of none.

Then I heard about Integrify. I went through their website and I was intrigued by the fact that they would mentor us to actually specialise in modern web development. I was always scared to apply for real-life jobs as I thought there was a huge gap between university education and real work life. Integrify promised to bridge that gap and I got a ray of hope for a better future.

Currently, it has already been almost three months of pure coding in an amazing environment. Apart from hard coding, we have been active in attending tech meet-ups, learning soft essential skills such as communication and also interacting with our potential employers. It has been a great journey so far and we’ve been learning a lot with an excellent team supporting us. I had to move from Turku to Helsinki for Integrify and I am glad I made that decision.

In the future, I hope to be able to grow as a front-end, if not full-stack web developer with a company where I can continue to learn, while taking on additional responsibilities and contribute as much value as I can. I would love to work with a company that emphasises professional development opportunities.