Ramblings of an Appnovation Co-op

Ah, the first day on the job... The excitement. The thrill. The nerves! I remember my slow, cautious walk up those infamous Appnovation stairs for the first time near the end of April, and having no idea what the heck it is that would be awaiting me on the floor above. Tense, but exhilarating. But, as it turns out, my worries slowly disappeared as I was taken on my first tour of the office. It was so open and free. As I was being introduced to everyone (whose names I obviously forgot as soon as I met them… oops), I was surprised at how casual, friendly, and welcoming everyone was.

My first impression of the office was a good one, and this says a lot about how great the culture is here and it is really indicative of the amount of effort that is put in to making everyone's individual experiences better.

My name is Joey, and I am working here at Appnovation as a Quality Assurance (QA) Analyst co-op for the summer. I have only been working here for a month so far, but I feel like I have already learned a lot. Being in such close proximity to my co-workers in such a friendly and open environment has really forced me to learn a lot about the software development process and how all the parts work together.

We can only learn so much in school, and it was nice to see all that software engineering theory (which, admittedly, went over my head most of the time...) finally being put into practice. Over the course of a single day, I hear a lot of different things from everyone in the various project teams - the business analysts, the project managers, the developers, the designers, et cetera - and I try to quietly observe and absorb as much of it as I can. So, even though I am working in QA, I feel like I am learning a lot more than just "how to test stuff" (although, I won't lie, I do a lot of that too!)

And really, this is what co-op is about, isn't it? Learning about and becoming familiar with the different parts of the industry and how things are done in practice, and then using these new experiences and information to piece together some kind of comprehensive picture of what exactly it is that we, as students, want to do in the future.

So far, I am glad to say that my experience here at Appnovation has been quite positive - and I've still got three more months to soak it all in… It's going to be an interesting summer…