My 5 Years in IT
By: Ilyes Bekaddour
Tags: Experience, Computer Science, Internships, Information Technology

My 5 Years in IT

In the fourth chapter, I discussed my preparation for the Cisco Certified Network Associate exam, the exam itself, and my beginnings in the job application process.

In this fifth and final chapter, I will cover my first experience abroad as an intern, how I was handling in an international environment, and finally how we could manage work during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In September 2019, I’ve joined a private high-school in Istanbul, Turkey as a Computer Science teacher for a one-year internship. My main duties were to teach programming to students, to define projects to work on, and to provide IT Help-Desk services to the school’s teaching staff.

I was excited for my first day at work, and I looked forward to a great experience and success. My first colleague was the previous intern from Brazil whom I replaced, and we could work together for two weeks as his contract ended, and left for a new adventure in Europe. Our tasks were mainly setting-up students’ Chromebooks, and prepare for the new academic year.

Three weeks later, I’ve met for the first time the educational technology coordinator, and who I was closely working with for the entire internship. We’ve discussed the technical topics to teach for the first semester, and we’ve started creating content for Python programming language, SQL database, and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) using UiPath, as I took a one-month training to understand the fundamentals, and get familiar with the software and be able to create content (classroom presentations, pre-work, and homework) for the second semester. I was enjoying my work, and I even took more responsibilities by managing the school’s G-Suite system, and the Learning Management System (LMS) as well.

The only obstacle I was facing during my internship, was the language. Although I was giving courses in English, I also had to communicate with the School’s teaching staff. That’s why, I was learning the basics of the Turkish language to understand the staff, and most importantly, to have better communication in the work environment.

I had the chance to be part of the first Erasmus project hosted by our school, and we’ve hosted European countries like Poland, Italy, Latvia, Greece, and Romania. Under the title Step-by-step Towards Digital Learning (SSDL), the project aimed to encourage schools and teachers to apply technology material during their lessons.

Erasmus Team Turkey

We had great moments together by sharing all our experiences and making sure they get the best of it from our school and Turkey.

Erasmus Students & Teachers

Out of the work, I’ve attended a conference organized by the software development company JetBrains. The topics were based on integrated development environments (IDEs) Rider & ReSharper, and .NET Memory Management. Though the topics were not within my expertise, I was pleased to attend the conference and learn about new technologies.

JetBrains Day Istanbul 2019

Before the winter holidays, we organized private lessons for students who wished to improve more in Python and a basic introduction to Data-Science by giving them hands-on practice using Spyder Python and offering them certificates of completion by the end of the training.

Introduction to Data-Science with Python

Despite that, I was enjoying the internship, I was going through some difficult times for not landing an engineering position where I would enjoy work a lot and improve myself more on-the-job. It was hard for me to accept and carry on my internship, but I stayed positive and kept working until I get a better opportunity. This is why I’ve restarted applying for an engineering position and being prepared for the end of the internship.

Second semester and Covid-19 pandemic

After a few days of holidays, we’ve started the second semester with the continuity to SQL Database and an introduction to RPA for the students using UiPath, and teaching them automation concepts and tricks such as Excel automation using loops & conditions, Web Scrapping, Recording, Monitor Events, and Email automation.

Surprisingly, we have been struck by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the school had to close for the rest of the academic year. It was a strange and complicated situation for all the students and teaching staff, we had to work both as a team to find solutions, to carry on our lessons using online meeting platforms, and make sure the students get entertained besides the lessons by creating virtual tours of museums, historical places, and cities.

I carried on my duties and started to create more content for UiPath for the rest of the academic year, which was a great success for the school and has been acknowledged by UiPath’s CEO as the first institution ever to teach RPA for high school students in Turkey

The quarantine period was a good opportunity for me to learn modern technologies, which is why I’ve been training on DevOps for one month, I had the chance to get a basic understanding of DevOps culture and why it’s important. I had as well hands-on experience on Containerization using Docker, Container Orchestration with Kubernetes, Infrastructure as a Code (IaaC) with Terraform, Continuous Integration & Delivery (CI/CD) using Azure DevOps & Jenkins, and finally software provisioning and configuration management using Ansible.

I was practicing these tools on the three major cloud providers Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Service, and Microsoft Azure. I really enjoyed this training and working on examples where I found myself enthusiastic and ready for a new adventure in DevOps.

During the last three months of my internship, I was preparing for the new academic year by creating new content for technology classes like Flutter, in which students will learn how to develop mobile applications. Unity, where they will learn how to develop 2D/3D games. Cyber Security, in which they will learn concepts of Networking, Security, Cryptography, Attack Methods, and Network Analysis. And many other topics like the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, and Artificial Intelligence. On the other hand, I was actively applying for job opportunities mainly in Europe as a Network and DevOps engineer.

In the last month, I had the opportunity to take a coding assessment for a company based in Denmark for the DevOps Engineer role I’ve applied for. It took me four days to complete it and after an intense and long interview with the team members, the company didn’t move forward with my application, and it was hard for me to move on. But, I was happy and proud of the work I’ve done during the assessment, I took advantage of it, and it gave me a good perspective for my job search.

Overall, it was a great first experience abroad, I got to meet new people, learn a new language, new skills, and in particular be independent and able to manage myself very well in strange situations in a foreign country.

Thank you

I would like to thank all the readers who followed my story since the first chapter. Your satisfaction and curiosity to know more about the story encouraged me to carry on writing until the last one.

I hope this story will inspire students and young talents who got started in Computer Science to continue in this field and to take a good career path. Keep learning, stay positive, and believe in yourself!