Jake Suhoversnik talks life as an IT Intern at Weyerhaeuser
By: Andy Orr
Tags: Career Advice, Community College, Applied Baccalaureate, Student Success

Green River College BAS Software Development graduate Jake Suhoversnik

Meet Green River College graduate Jake Suhoversnik. For the past year, Suhoversnik has worked as an IT Intern at Weyerhaeuser, the world’s premier timber, land, and forest products company. He also recently celebrated an exciting milestone: completion of his Bachelor’s degree in Software Development (Class of 2020). In the Q and A below, Suhoversnik talks about his internship experience, the culture at Weyerhaeuser, and also shares practical career tips for college students.

What led you to Green River’s Software Development program?

JAKE: I had taken courses at Green River College right out of high school back in 2009–2012 with a desire to do some kind of computer science transfer. Life happened and I took a break from education to focus on work and just evaluate what it is I wanted to do. In 2017 I started looking at returning to school. I had my floating credits at Green River, so I initially looked at it to see where I stood and what direction I wanted to pivot to. When I found out I could complete an Associate of Applied Science and Bachelor of Applied Science all at Green River, I was sold.

What is your current job title at Weyerhaeuser and what kind of work to you do?

JAKE: For the past year I have been an Intern on the Infrastructure Cloud Operations team. I work with the Cloud team in AWS and Azure supporting and expanding our cloud infrastructure. This ranges from more operational tasks such as cloud resource provisioning and troubleshooting to more forward-looking development tasks on internal tools, automation as code, and Continuous Integration/ Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.

What is the culture at Weyerhaeuser like?

JAKE: I love the atmosphere and culture at Weyerhaeuser. Everyone is very friendly and helpful. Everyone I have spoken with is very supportive and willing to talk about their experiences and it genuinely feels like they want to support you in your growth within the company.

Is there a particular course at Green River that prepared you for success in your current role?

JAKE: The Software Development program at Green River was structured very well to transfer to usable skills. I’ve greatly benefited from the coursework on APIs, Javascript, SQL, debugging, git and of course cloud technologies. These are only the half of it, as the skills I learned in the program have allowed me to become very versatile and quick to adapt and learn or improve on additional technologies, languages, and frameworks that I may have had little or no exposure to previously.

What piece of career advice do you have for college students who are currently looking for work?

JAKE: Don’t be afraid of rejection, just get yourself out there. The worst they can do is say No. I had countless applications that never got any farther than the automated email that the company decided to proceed in another direction. Same goes for interviews. I’ve never been good at talking about myself and my strengths. I knew that I would have interviews that don’t go well, and I tried to grow from those experiences and improve on things I felt went poorly as well as just building up my confidence in myself. It’s all an opportunity to grow.