Markus Chmiel

College: City College of New York

Education Level: Junior

Career Interest: Software Developer

I am passionate for coding and learning new skills within the computer science field. My goal is work for a big tech company like Nvidia or Intel in the future. On my free time my hobbies include, coding, 3d-printing, and visiting new places. I enjoy experiencing new things and when time permits me, I like to travel to new countries. One interesting fact about me is that I have went sky diving multiple times (it is not scary as you think).

What was your role?

The overall project of my team was to improve the user experience. My part within the team mainly included working on bugs for the desktop site and brainstorming and implementing new features.

What did you work on?

What was the impact of your project?

The impact of quality improvement is to enhance the user experience on the desktop site of Unadat. By improving the quality of features and squashing bugs, users will be able to enjoy the website how it was intended to be without running into problems which non tech users can find quite distracting. A bug on a website can lead users moving to other websites with non problematic features. So in essence, the impact of quality improvement is to keep users on the website and increase user interaction.

What did you learn or improve on from this internship or from your teammates?

Given that my teammates had a wide range of skills, I was able to learn a lot of efficient techniques using front end code.

What skills have you gained?

Prior to this internship I had mainly worked on back end code like python, c++, and java so this internship gave me more insight and allowed me to learn front end code. I became custom to php, css, html, fairly quickly and also learned a lot of javascript and ajax. Not to mention, I worked on my communication skills by stepping outside my comfort zone.

What was the biggest roadblock you've overcome?

The biggest personal roadblock that I have overcame was stepping outside of my comfort zone and advocating myself to be the product manager of my team. This put me in a position of responsibility and to be there for my team when they need it. I was able to pull through on my end and increase the communication and cohesion of my team members which greatly improved the quality of the work that we were able to deliver.

How has company culture guided your work?

The company culture was a great aspect of this internship and aided my ability to work more productively. For example the weekly multi group presentations not only motivated me but my team as well to drive results like ridding of bugs and updating features faster so we can work on the site and get even more experience out of this internship.

What was your experience at Unadat?

My experience within Unadat was pleasant. The flexibility of schedule whilst I was taking two summer courses was appreciated by me. I enjoyed the community feeling that Unadat gave off. Not to mention, I connected well with my coworkers on the quality improvement team which drove faster results since we would aid one another if a team member could not figure out a problem. There was no shame in that aspect and we had each other`s backs. I also like that fact that management is easy to contact since in much larger companies it can be harder, which can lead to less feedback, clarity of projects, and overall slower results. Moreover, I became comfortable with languages I had never used in the past which I can add as a skill for my resume. Overall, the experience was great and I am glad to have been apart of this learning experience.

What was one big project you worked on during the internship? Can you walk me through the process?

One big project I worked on was the most recent project of creating a notification log. It is still ongoing however progress is being made. The process included first brainstorming and deciding the purpose/utility of this feature. For example if it is viable or even if users will interact with it. We checked other websites with this feature and found it to be useful. Next we had to discuss the logistics of this feature, like what would it display, how would it be displayed, where would it be displayed, and also how we would access the information needed to put where we what the feature to be. This lead to all the individuals of the group collaborating and figuring this part out. Some insight was given by Dan by request to aid in pulling information for the database since we had issues retrieving the information after we pushed it. The final part would be putting everything together, and executing on our plan and testing out the functionality.

What advice would you give to future interns?

My advice to the next group of interns for the quality improvement team is to be thoughtful of what users find visually and functionally pleasing. In terms of bugs, it is best not to do simple fixes but more so dynamic fixes which conform to the websites coding style. Simple fixes can lead to another bug down the road if another feature is implemented with the "simple fixed" feature. Other than that, try to collaborate and help your coworkers as much as possible.