I have finished my degree in informatics this year, in June, and I always wanted to find out how it is to work at a startup. Searching for an opportunity, I applied to the Faber Ventures Summer Internship and I got accepted! I selected Passworks as the startup where I wanted to pass my Summer working because it was the one that I most identified with.
During the first week of the Internship, things where going a little bit slower. I was getting familiarized with what was already made and with the technologies that were being used. However after that I got full autonomy to work in the project, which is great because not only it gives a lot of responsibility and empowerment but also provides me a sense of ownership of the project.
It has been a great experience and it has exceeded my expectations. I like the atmosphere and the team is pretty awesome. Right from the first day they helped me feeling integrated within the team and since it is relatively small I got the opportunity to meet everyone.
So far I’m working with cool technologies that where unknown to me such as Beacons, Ruby and some Big Data tools like Apache Spark, so that I’m learning a bit more everyday, which I find challenging.
The pressure is constant because I like to show results, but most of the time I spent is searching and trying the different approaches to solve the problems I face, which sometimes it’s a hard task since the technology is relatively recent.
To sum up, I found out that working at a startup is something that I really like, besides I got the chance to work around a theme that is also related with the MSc that I plan to follow.
by Luís Alves