Wow, how fast can 3 months go? 3 months ago I was extremely happy and anxious about how I was going to manage to become a web dev intern at a project I knew nothing about and to really work as a developer in a company that I admire since I'm an internet user.
Suddenly, here I am preparing the slides for my end-of-internship presentation on next Friday, 26th. It has been a lot of challenges, stress, learning and above all a huge personal growth! Some highlights of what I've learnt:
✓ What is Taskcluster and how the AWS provisioner works (ok, there's still a lot to learn here).
✓ What is an Azure entity and how to create one.
✓ How to run an application with no GUI interface and how to test things with Mocha - and accept that some things we just can't see, but they work!
✓ How to build a React app - I didn't build it from scratch but I definitely learnt a lot here.
✓ Ask for help soon instead of wasting hours and hours stuck on a small issue (such as a typo).
✓ Receiving a lot of comments and critics in your PR can actually be a good thing and an opportunity to learn.
✓ Not be afraid of making mistakes and make stupid questions - there's no such thing as a stupid question.
✓ How to work in a completely remote team and actually be very productive.
✓ Got so many great tips from powerful women with the Women in Tech series sessions (thanks to everyone involved to make this happen).
Beyond all the technical and professional things, I also had a lot of fun! I had the opportunity to go to London and have the experience of what if feels like to be a Mozillian. I met so many awesome people on this path that I can only say thank you!
Mostly thanks to Dustin, an awesome person who I had the privilege of having as my mentor during this period. Thank you, Dustin, for teaching me so much in so little time! For being a great career advisor, for pushing me when I wasn't confident about myself and for being a friend. Selena, you became a role model for me! I'm lucky I had the chance to meet you and to have you as our team leader. Kristel, it was awesome to meet you and share my challenges and frustrations with you, you are a very strong person, I hope you the best, always. Wander, always ready to help me when I didn't wake up in a good relationship with English words, I'm glad to call you a friend now, for sure we are going to meet a lot here in Brazil. Thanks, John and Eli for the code reviews - I learnt a lot with them. Andrea and Hassan, it was nice to meet you in London, we had a great time! Greg, I wish you the best on your new role on the team, you are already doing a great job! Pete, Jonas and Brian, unfortunately, we didn't have the chance to work much together but I could see how much effort and dedication you all put on Taskcluster, it's really inspiring!
Thank you, Taskcluster team, it was a pleasure to work with you all. Such a passionate and highly skilled team. I learnt a lot with all of you!
PS.: If you are reading this and intend to apply to Outreachy, please do it, you won't regret it! Feel free to ask for help or tips at anarutecvm at gmail dot com.