Intern story: my time at Elements

Casper has been an intern at Elements for a while now. About time to put this 2nd year software engineering student through the test and ask him what working at Elements is really like. This blog will summarize his experiences and professional development thus far and might inspire you to walk the same path.

Hi, my name is Casper! My high school was not too exciting, I did senior general secondary education. Then I took a gap year to see what I wanted to do with my life. I could already do a bit of programming, but programming education was not for me because I thought that the competition there would be really fierce. After some hesitation I decided to do it anyway. I decided to follow my current course in software engineering. It soon became clear that no one knew what they were doing on the course and so with my little experience I was more than okay.

“I came in and I immediately said that I wanted to strive to become a senior intern. Even though this is a fictional role I wanted to be able to put this on my LinkedIn.” - Casper

Discovery of Elements

Since I'm in my 2nd year it's pretty hard to find an internship, companies mainly look for 3rd year students because of the extra experience. One of my teachers in college, named Chris, contacted me about a company called Elements that did software development. When Chris offered me to come to Elements for an internship, I immediately accepted. I ended up at Elements through his guidance. In the end this was just pure coincidence. The first official contact with Elements was with one of the owners of the company named Barbara. She interviewed me about my goals and ambitions for the internship.We had a good click and she decided to hire me. This is how it all started.‍

“I remember when Casper had to submit a research paper and that it was so good they flagged him for fraud, they were lyrical about him when they found out that there was no fraud at play.” - Chris

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Meeting the Elementeers 

My first impression of the atmosphere at the Elements office in Almere was that it was very informal and super relaxed. There is no hierarchy at all. You know that the senior developers have way more knowledge, but they just treat you very normally. I couldn't have found a better place than Elements. 

My first week I was given a booklet to learn Swift, the programming language they use for iOS development. Prior to this Internship I had never worked with something even remotely related to iOS. So it took some time getting used to and reading up on, but then I made the following commitment: "Give me 2 weeks and I'll make a fine iOS application." I thought if I made such a promise, then I'm so stuck on it that I'd look like a fool if I didn’t make it. It worked out just fine in the end, I made a fine application thanks to this hard deadline. Well fine… at least it worked. The application gave the user the ability to add a comment to a photographed object, so you could eventually have a whole comment section under a particular object. 

“When he came in, my first impression was that he was a quiet somewhat introverted guy. However, when we started talking I was surprised by how open he actually is. A very authentic person, super friendly and super smart." - Barbara