Henry Cevallos

College: Hunter College

Education Level: College Senior

Career Interest: Software Engineering

Hi! I'm Henry an aspiring software engineer looking to provide smart solutions to everyday problems. I recently graduated from Hunter College Magna Cum Laude and received departmental honors for Computer Science. I majored in Computer Science and minored in Mathematics. I am looking to apply all my knowledge in a meaningful way within the tech industry. Apart from my love of coding I enjoy to solve Rubik's Cube puzzles, play guitar, and play strategy games. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York and as the son of immigrants has taught me the importance of hard work and dedication. These values are what shape me today.

What was your role?

During my time at Unadat I worked on the Money Coach service. Specifically I worked on creating the application for Money Coaches, the training module pages and the Money Coach Dashboard.

What did you work on?

What was the impact of your project?

The impact of the Money Coach Dashboard and the Money Coach service in general is massive. We are providing our clients with and easy means of financial assistance. There are many people struggling with debts throughout the world and connecting our clients with someone that can aid them in turning around their financial status is quite a great impact. The dashboard specifically is a page that Money Coaches will find themselves on often so getting to work on that is a great privilege.

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

Working with team of entirely interns means that there are varying skill levels throughout the team from a technical standpoint. I learned many vs code shortcuts and tools from my teammates in order to increase my efficiency while coding. I also learned some neat git commands from my teammates. These technical skills that I learned from my teammates have improved my coding ability and will benefit me throughout my career.

What skills have you gained?

Working at Unadat has taught me how to work within the Scrum framework. Scrum is one of the most popular forms of development and is something that will benefit me throughout my career in the tech industry. I also learned how to create web pages using PhP and JQuery for reactiveness.

What was the biggest roadblock you've overcome?

The biggest roadblock I have overcome in this internship was getting used to the fast paced and evolving environment. There was a moment in the internship where the web page we were working on had gotten completely redesigned and we had to completely revamp the page. This was frustrating at first as we had to redo work already done but this is what happens in a fast pace environment working on a evolving project. We managed to salvage components already created onto the redesigned page. This situation lead to a clearer understanding of the project and a smoother development process.

How has company culture guided your work?

The company`s culture guided my work by showing me how to prioritize my work. Developing pages until they were either 60/40 or 80/20 allowed for a swift development process. The company`s values of anonymity and ease of use also guided the content of what we were developing. We created designs and pages to follow the existing Unadat layout.

What was your experience at Unadat?

I have had a positive experience working at Unadat. Getting acclimated to the work culture and the Scrum framework was a challenge at first but with time I grew more comfortable in my position. Management treats everyone with respect and give insightful feedback which creates a positive work environment. In my time working at Unadat I learned what it was like to work in a large team. It was a good feeling working as a team and slowly watching our project come to life. As a member of the CS Development team this internship also allowed me to expand my technical skills. After working at Unadat I am now comfortable in my abilities to work in a Scrum environment as well as working with PhP and JQuery.

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

The biggest project that I worked on throughout the internship was the Money Coach Dashboard. This dashboard has multiple tabs and is what Money Coaches will spend most of their time on. The dashboard had a side bar that would lead to different tabs of the dashboard. I created the bones of the dashboard. I first had to split the page into 2 sections one for the side bar and another for the actual content of the Money Coach tab selected. Then I worked on the side bar. I created the side bar so that each page would be dynamically loaded into the second half of the screen. This removes the need to move different pages and reloading the page. With this functionality in place it lead to an easy development process for the individual tabs across multiple developers without conflicts while still working on the same page.

What advice would you give to future interns?

I would advise the next crop of interns to grow comfortable and exercise their inner monsters. Asking many questions and contributing ideas will make the development process easier and fun. I would also want to stress the importance of populating the Jira board and creating a healthy backlog. It is a good to try and tackle any roadblocks but spending too much time on it is unproductive, be sure to ask for help when needed.