The first half of the year as a rookie intern

If I were given another chance to choose whether to go to Cathay Life for an internship, I would say without hesitation, definitely go!

I experienced the last semester of the academic club in college, and decided to give myself an experience different from school life, so I chose the industrial internship in the department and entered the "Taichung System Development Department, Marketing Information Department, Cathay Life Insurance".

Perhaps because of a bit of luck, I happened to meet Cathay Pacific who was updating the old system, so I directly joined the company's project development to create a greenhouse gas inventory information disclosure platform, log in and audit the greenhouse gas emissions of the entire company and make reports. Thinking that other Cathay Pacific people will use the system I made, every time I make a part, I will feel more fulfilled, and I will fully experience the feeling of a rookie working, not just an intern who goes to help.

Cathay Pacific’s training plan for new recruits is really perfect. In addition to a set of teaching gitbooks for self-learning, there is also a step-by-step basic teaching by mentors, and then independent implementation of simple projects. Finally, the mentor’s code review makes us more clear when writing programs. How to improve its performance and legibility. Although there are many interns, there will be some people who are quick learners waiting for those who are a little slower, but this part will happen more or less, so I used this time to study the bottom part of their project structure and understand the whole The architecture of the system will also be of great help to me in making projects later on.

For me, the report is probably what I learned the most here! After the project started, every two weeks, I had to report what I had completed, what functions I had done, why I did it, and how I could optimize it. In addition to training me to be able to present my results without nervousness to a group of unfamiliar people on stage, it also increased my ability to fully describe my ideas for the projects I produced. This part is a very important ability whether you will continue to study in graduate school or enter the workplace in the future.

Presentation in Cathay Life

And here I also experienced a system development process. After discussing requirements and assigning work from SA (System Analyst) and BU (Business Requirements Unit), we need to implement them. Confirm with SA, and he will communicate with BU. After the program is completed, it needs to go through two mentor code reviews to ensure the correctness and quality of the program. After confirming that there are no problems, it can be pushed to the company's server and deployed on the platform to test that there are no problems with its own program. To make a test report, one copy must be made for each program, and the function of the program and its unit test should be written to ensure that everything is correct before the work is officially completed.

I deeply understand that the operation of a large company is really rigorous, and avoiding any mistakes is the most important thing - this is difficult to understand in school.

But also because the regulations are very strict, it will increase some inconvenience. For example, there are many regulations in git. Code review is required before pushing to the branch developed by myself, but mentors usually need to wait for a day or two. After all, they also have their own work. If I do not communicate with others at all in the development part It doesn’t matter if it’s related, but maybe because we are interns, everyone’s division of labor is relatively detailed, and everyone will use the part I wrote, and the back end of me and another person are the same part, but I haven’t yet. Before the code review, I couldn't push the things I wrote, so other people couldn't use them. If they want to use them, they can only copy them directly to the other party. This part may be the part where it is difficult to have the best of both worlds.

The most fulfilling thing for me is to learn UI/UX to design the data login page! The information to be displayed on this page is a lot and complicated. My sister hopes that I can solve the problem that the previously designed page is messy and the user steps are not smooth. But I mostly studied the backend during my schooling, and I had never learned UI/UX before. The seniors also took this opportunity to teach us some basic concepts of UI/UX. After many discussions and revisions, even during the holidays, I was thinking about how to make it better, and finally made the final version, which was also affirmed by the seniors.

Quite a sense of accomplishment in front-end interface design

At the end of the internship, I am very glad that there are many manufacturers in the department who cooperate with the internship, so I have this opportunity to enter Cathay Life Insurance for internship. When encountering any problems, the teachers in the department are obliged to help me, so that I can find a better solution and complete all the tasks and work during the internship. I also met a group of good teammates who practiced together here, and worked on the project together to solve various issues, so that the project can basically take shape. Finally, let my college career draw a perfect ending.