My experience as a Junior Software Engineer with Wavelo at?Tucows

by Jenny H. | Jr. Software Engineering Intern| Wavelo

Do you know what is better than one cow? Tucows! You herd it here first folks. I hope that amoosed you as much as it did me.

My name is Jenny and I’m going into my third year as a Computer Science student at the University of Toronto (UofT). After my second year, I was on the search for an internship to get more hands-on experience and take a break from the stress of exams and grades. I was ecstatic to receive an offer to join Tucows as a Junior Software Engineer. In fact, it was through UofT’s Professional Experience Year program (PEY) that I was able to get this internship. It is a ‘work-integrated learning program that helps undergraduate students gain 12-16 months of paid work experience before they graduate.’ With that, I started my first 12-month internship journey with Tucows.?

My Work

What is a typical work day like for me? Simply put, I start the day by attending the daily team standup where we talk about pizzas, movies, and all that nitty gritty. Oh, and work-related stuff too, of course. My team uses Jira to assign and keep track of all the tasks needed to be done related to our projects. So for most of my day, I would be working on one of those tasks which could range from adding a new feature to fixing a bug to refactoring code. Once I finish coding that task and *thoroughly* testing it, I create a pull request on Github and start working on a new task. The rest of my time is either spent in meetings, doing code reviews, looking at pictures of cats in our #topic -cats channel on slack, or helping out fellow teammates if they need it (but most of the time it’s me asking for help because why suffer alone when you can share that fun suffering with someone else).

Although, during the first few months of my internship, I definitely did not write code as much as I do now. My contributions to the team were fairly limited as all my time was spent trying to get a grasp on the new tools and technologies that we were using. In particular, I had to become more familiar with Golang , a programming language that was new to me, and the Hashicorp stack . At the time, my team was developing an in-house tool aimed to allow engineering teams to easily provision and maintain Openstack resources as well as to provide support on the infrastructure in which the Hashicorp stack is running. This tool was built using Golang and used alongside a Command Line Interface (CLI) created with Cobra (a Go library). After a while, I was able to contribute to adding new features to this tool, fix a few bugs, and build a static website using Hugo (a Go framework for building websites) to showcase this tool. This was the first project I worked on, but little did I know that this was only the start.

Throughout my time here, I have contributed to several other projects including building a REST API written in Go and a slack bot using slack-go . I’ve gained more insight into databases and container tools including PostgreSQL and Docker . However, I must say that my proudest work has been building a user interface (UI) from the ground up for one of the in-house tools we developed. I’ve always been an artistic person that loves designing things and creating pretty stuff. Therefore, building the UI was a perfect fit for me and a chance for me to learn more about front-end development. As I was, at first, the only person in charge of building the UI, I was given a lot of autonomy. That led me to do more research and gain more insight on ways to build it and best practices. I decided to build the UI using Vuejs (a frontend javascript framework) along with Bootstrap 5 (UI toolkit). Upon successful deployment of the first release of the UI, I learned more about Vue and its component-based programming model, frontend authentication using JWT, fetching data from API endpoints with Axios, and using Nomad to deploy the dockerized Vue app. It was definitely rewarding seeing my work come to life in a visual manner (I like doing backend too, however, there’s something about front-end that’s much more satisfying to me). Since then, I’ve been working alongside my fellow intern to maintain and improve the UI.

Being known as the all-things UI expert on my team, I was also given the opportunity to design a couple of logos for the tools we developed. This doesn’t really have to do with coding, but thought I’d mention it because I had a lot of fun doing it :)

A little bit about my awesome team

I am a part of the Platform Solutions team which currently consists of 6 other team members (including another intern). We are in charge of defining the “golden path” of infrastructure tooling and configuration standards. Basically, we help enhance the developer experience at Tucows by providing knowledge and standardized practices around tooling such as the Hashicorp stack.

It has been a blast working alongside such knowledgeable and supportive teammates. There was a good balance of independent work and teamwork, where I had the opportunity to make numerous technical decisions on my own and also have help from my teammates whenever I got stuck. It was the best team I could have asked for and I will definitely cherish the fun moments we had together and the cookie-baking and pizza dough-making team events we had!

Work Culture

If I had to describe Tucows’ work culture in two words, I would say it is flexible and caring. I could go on and list a few more words, but I feel like these two resonate with me the most. Ever since I joined Tucows, I’ve felt my well-being improve and started developing a harmonious work-life balance. This was something I rarely experienced before because let’s be honest, being a university student can take a huge toll on someone mentally and the scale is weighed more towards work. However, with Tucows, I was offered flexible scheduling, a reasonable amount of workload without having to exert myself, and the ability to work anywhere I wanted. Sometimes I would even go to my university campus and work there alongside other students. Another cool thing is that Tucows offers daily mindfulness sessions and free meditation apps. I’ve never been into meditation myself, but it was fun attending the session a few times to de-stress a bit.

Apart from this, I also would like to note how friendly and welcoming everyone is. I had the chance to go to Tucows’ Toronto office twice for work-related events and it was nice being able to talk to everyone as an equal. Although remote work offers many benefits, there is no denying that it can also at times lead to a lack of relationships among coworkers. Hence it was refreshing to have a change of pace and be able to meet my coworkers face-to-face.

Other Learning and Networking Opportunities

Aside from work itself, there were so many other learning and development opportunities. For one, there were online lunch events organized specifically for interns called “Leadership Speaking Series”. Leaders from various departments would come and chat about their careers and answer any questions we had. I found this pretty cool because it provided insight into various career paths and the responsibilities they carry. On another hand, there was also this website platform that consists of learning and development activities throughout the organization. It ranges from workshops, webinars, courses, and recordings that introduce various services, software, and tools used within the organization. Every now and then, there would also be live sessions about an engineering topic where anyone interested could tune in and listen.?

When it comes to meeting new people and networking, the HR and Talent team did a great job organizing events, welcome to all interns at Tucows. Some of them included speed-networking sessions, fun competition sessions with prizes to be won, and casual social events. We also received some snacks by mail (because as you know, free snacks = happy intern).

What’s next?

The end of my work term is coming soon; however, this year-long journey at Tucows has been really fun and plenty rewarding. It not only gave me the opportunity to learn new tools/technologies and discover new interests but also introduced me to some awesome people to share this journey with. I can definitely see myself coming back to work here full-time after I graduate, and I highly recommend Tucows if you’re looking for an internship here. On another note, I think the most important thing I’ve learned at Tucows is all the cow puns.

Well, time to hit the hay. Until next time :)

About The Author

"I’m a third year Computer Science student at the University of Toronto. I’m an avid foodie, keyboard enthusiast, and adrenaline-seeking individual.

Feel free to check me out on LinkedIn here:?https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/jennyh0/ "

About Wavelo

Wavelo ?provides a full suite of flexible, cloud-based software that simplifies the management of mobile and internet network access, provisioning, billing and subscription, developer tools, and more. Its software helps communication service providers minimize technological and network barriers to improve internet access worldwide.

Learn more at: https://www.wavelo.com/

About Tucows

We do a lot, but at our core, we're in the business of keeping people connected and keeping the Internet open. We're made up of three companies: Tucows Domains, Ting, and Wavelo.

As? Tucows Domains , we help people find their place online as the world's largest domain name wholesaler and the second-largest domain registrar globally.

As Ting Internet , we deliver high-speed fiber internet service to communities across the United States. We are modernizing city infrastructures and helping families and businesses alike access the power of the Internet.

As Wavelo , We believe the future of Telecom is simple. We build telecom billing and operations software for Mobile Virtual Network Operators and Fiber Internet Services.

#JoinTheHerd at https://www.tucows.com/careers/