What is it like being an intern at Neugelb?

At Neugelb we offer internships in various fields, both in Frankfurt and Berlin.?Three of our interns agreed to share their experience in a short interview. We talked about their work, what they have learned and their favorite part of working at Neugelb.

Hej, and thank you for taking the time to share your stories. Please introduce yourself and tell us what you do at Neugelb.??

Tim:?I’m currently studying Media & Interaction Design in Osnabrück. My studies combine design, coding and user centered psychology subjects.??I’m a user experience (UX) design intern at Neugelb since September 2021. I’m supporting the Online Banking Experience (OBX) team in Frankfurt. There’s a wide range of tasks as an UX designer: From design sprints to wireframing and concepting user flows, there is a lot of variety. You can also focus more on user interface (UI) if this is what you are interested in.?

Marissa:?I study Industrial Design at the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt. I'm currently doing my visual design internship at Neugelb where I'm working on the style guide for Commerzbank, which is used as a template for the website.?

Johannes:?I’m working as a Frontend Web Development intern at Neugelb. If you look at my CV you might be surprised, maybe baffled, that you’re finding me in this occupation right now: A fully analogous guy from the sphere of books, humanities and complicated sentences in long, mostly fruitless discussions about Austrian literature at the end of the 20th century, here in the middle of the big digital rush.?Before I got to Neugelb, I studied creative writing, sociology, and history. As an intern my first responsibility is to learn. So I′m peeking into several projects, supporting where I can, using my knowledge. Besides of this more general approach, I’m working constantly on the Neugelb website or, right now, on a project, where the frontend for a digital application process for business accounts is developed.?

How did you find out about Neugelb and why did you choose to apply??

Tim:?When I was looking for a company for my internship, I knew I was interested in the finance sector and looked through most major banks in Germany. Finding Neugelb was eye opening for me, because the last thing I wanted was to end up in a typical boring corporate job, which I thought might be quite common with some other banks, even as a designer. This combination of banking and non-corporate work environment was the convincing factor for me to apply at Neugelb.?

Marissa:?I first heard about Neugelb through my professor, Philipp Thesen, who worked with Neugelb before. When I looked at the homepage and fellow students told me about their experiences with Neugelb, I was enthusiastic about the spirit. In addition, I was more and more involved with digital products during my studies and therefore I wanted to work in this area.?

Johannes: ?I was working as a bookseller. And my studies would have been a classic starting point for a career as sophisticated cab driver, annoying customers with weird thoughts about the implications of Bourdieu’s sociology. When my son was born last year and the nights got long and sleepless, I remembered playing around with JavaScript, HTML and Flash many, many moons ago. It was by the time, when there was a constant need for homepages for pupil-grunge-garage-bands and when the routers sounded like a severely suffering R2D2 when connecting to the internet. I started to fiddle around a bit just to see if I’m still able to center a headline on a HTML-page. Well, things got very dynamic and after hours of tutorials on YouTube, reads on Stack overflow and dull staring at cryptic code with a snoring baby on my arm, I somehow managed to put together a small react-app and my weary brain printed out the idea of doing something like this for earning money. Looking for web dev-jobs for rookies, I stumbled across the website of Neugelb, reading that they are looking for Junior Web Developers. Naively I applied – and got very, very lucky even though I wasn’t hired as junior. Or maybe exactly because of that. Working as an intern, I realized very soon, that the little knowledge I had gained, barely could be called “a little” – it was more like a faint idea of what it is like to work as a frontend developer.??

How does your internship prepare you for your professional career??

Tim:?The biggest thing for me is to apply the knowledge and concepts I learned at university. It’s always something different to read about something and doing it in real life. It helped me solidify everything I learned the past 2 years.

Marissa:?I have worked in other fields before, but not yet in the design. That's why I think it's very interesting to learn about new things, such as company policies, design processes and planning.?

Johannes: Throughout the past weeks and months I benefited immensely from the very, very open atmosphere at Neugelb and, of course, from the expertise of my colleagues. I'm still learning a lot every day, being involved in ongoing projects, and working on my own tasks. That way I'm getting a proctored deep dive into new technologies, frontend and, yes, backend topics, coding conventions and various thoughts about solving problems. Sophisticated too, but with fewer words and with more impact on (virtual) reality.??

Does your internship at Neugelb meet your expectations? Is there something you learn here that you don’t learn in university??

Tim:?To be honest my expectations were exceeded. From the first day, I didn’t feel like I thought I would as an intern. From early on I was given responsibility and there is trust in what I do. This really surprised me. The team really is an outstanding part of working at Neugelb: Everybody is open to talk if you have a problem or are just looking for a quick chat.?I think communicating professionally was something I had to learn though. Giving concise and effective answers and feedback to your coworkers is essential at work because everybody only has a limited time to get things done. At university it’s most often not a problem to expand the meeting of a group project for another hour.?

Marissa:?Yes, my expectations were definitely met. However, what is new for me, but that is due to the Corona situation, is being at the home office for longer time. At the same time, I find it interesting to see how easy it is to work so well together in such a networked way.?In my studies, working as a designer is very different: I often design processes from start to finish in a very short time, here in the professional environment it's much more about practical work. What I like most about Neugelb are the people and the great atmosphere. It's something special that I haven't experienced at my previous jobs!?

Johannes: To sum it up: I’m deeply satisfied right now – and even more grateful for this big chance to take a guided, fully interactive trip through the open world of web development. I love that I get the chance to have a guided tour through the realms of web development. But honestly also that the internship is about to get involved and to do stuff. No cooking coffee, fetching bagels, curate inventories of pencils and stamps.?

Does something challenge you??

Tim:?The first few weeks I struggled a bit with time management. When every task you do is new for you, it can be hard to forecast the amount of work associated with that particular job, but that’s something that gets better over time, when you get to know the typical task you work on. If you are really feeling overwhelmed with something though, it’s not a problem and you can easily talk to someone to hand over some assignments.?

Marissa:?Even though I really like to be in the home office for a few days sometimes, it is a bit challenging for me to work remotely. So, I am very happy that Thursdays is a Stand-Up-Meeting where the whole company gets together remotely. ???

Johannes:?I originate from the radical side of the analogous world: I studied sociology, history and creative writing and worked as bookseller for a long time. So, the main challenge for me was (and sometimes still is) to fill in the not so surprising gap of bare technical knowledge - supported by my colleagues and the open atmosphere, where there is always room for questions.?

Thank you so much for your answers! We feel so lucky to have you with us. ??

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