My Experience As A Software Engineering Intern At CareGuide
In the summer of 2016, I received an offer for a co-op position at a tech startup I had never even heard of before. Being a computer science student at the University of Waterloo, I had hundreds of other options available to me, all posted on the university's job-seeking website. But for some reason, unknown at the time, this one job stood out to me. I decided to take a leap of faith, and accept the offer before even completing my remaining interviews. Little did I know I would be spending the next year, not the usual 4 months, as part of the CareGuide family.
As I have now learned, CareGuide was the perfect company to experience my first position as a web developer. The most important things to note about CareGuide's engineering team is that it is relatively small (consisting of about 10 engineers), and that every single engineer is extremely talented. I have friends who have worked for companies with 100+ engineers and others who have been the sole engineer of a company. CareGuide's team is a perfect compromise of these: the team is small enough that I sincerely feel like I have had a significant impact on the various products, and large enough that I have had the opportunity to learn from several skilled engineers, who have truly shaped the web developer I am today.
Another great thing about working at CareGuide for the past year is that I arrived at a very exciting time for the company. Not only have we beaten company records for multiple metrics during my time there, but we are also stirring up some very exciting new projects. In fact, I have played an essential role in developing the foundation of the tool that our HeartPayroll operations team will be using in the future to monitor payroll for hundreds of families and caregivers across Canada and the US. Not to mention that I was able to use some of the latest web technologies, such as React and GraphQL, to accomplish this. I have also had the opportunity to build the tools which allow our Customer Success team to deal with the behind the scenes of subscription management for all CareGuide sites and improve the way our users can manage their own accounts.
Finally, I would to explain why I mentioned the phrase CareGuide family as opposed to team. There is really a sense of community here, and not just because I had the chance to work for four months alongside my twin sister, or because the man-in-charge calls himself the Chief Executive Dad. My time here has been filled with great memories, including numerous outings to restaurants, parks and even one unforgettable trip to Niagara Falls, where I have gotten to know my co-workers beyond their lives at the office. I have made amazing friends here and it saddens me to leave them behind.
As I will be choosing once again between hundreds of job postings next term, I don't quite know what the future holds for me. I can only hope that I will find a company that treats their interns as well as CareGuide does, and that allows me to make use of the many skills I was able to develop here in the last year.