My STEP project for Summer 2023 was a Software Engineering internship at Tangram Flex in Dayton, Ohio. I was tasked with multiple bug fixes and the creation/modification of test cases for an internal tool at the company.
This experience largely changed my assumptions and perceptions of life in the workplace. My previous experiences I would des
cribe as a more stereotypical work environment with cubicles and very work-focused people. However, my time at Tangram has introduced a whole new workplace culture. The individual people and their time seemed to be valued extremely highly. This opened my eyes to the importance of company culture for my future work. This also gave me a good idea what it’s like to work for a smaller company, as they only have around 90 employees. I thoroughly enjoyed this aspect as everyone at the company was extremely accessible. Overall, I believe I want to pursue smaller companies with similar culture in my future professional career.
One aspect that heavily affected this view was my relationship with my supervisor Nathan St. Amour. At Tangram, your supervisor is separate from the person who assigns you work. As a result, they are there to support your time at the company and ensure that you are happy with your work. I had meetings every 2 weeks with him to discuss anything that could make my time better and developed a very positive relationship as a result. He would bring up any concerns raised in those meetings to my project’s lead, who would then assign me work accordingly. This relationship developed extremely well, and I was able to ask questions about the company and software engineering in general. I even had an extremely productive pair-programming session with him during the last week of the internship where we were able to wrap up my final tasks together. This relationship highlighted the best parts of working in a smaller company with this structure, as I was able to be supported extremely well.
The onboarding process also helped to change my preconceived notions of the professional world. The entire first week was dedicated to getting acclimated to the company and its people. This included various typical meetings with HR and IT, but also included meetings with the CEO and other positions. The CTO even sent a private message on slack welcoming me to the company on my first day. Reflecting on this now, it is another benefit I see in smaller companies. Everyone who works there is very clearly a real person who you can interact with. I had never considered speaking to someone like the CEO at previous jobs, but it was a part of the onboarding at Tangram.
The final interaction that I will discuss that heavily affected my view on this experience was the help provided and genuine care of the other people on my project team. I had people like Jake Swelbar who ensured that I understood the project when I was first assigned, Eli Guck who I met with to discuss the repository that we had been assigned to work in, and my project lead Julian Santos who aided me multiple times in setting up my Linux environment and tangram repos. These people all volunteered to meet with me primarily to help me get comfortable faster. They were genuinely kind and instrumental to my enjoyment of the summer.
This experience was extremely influential to my near future as I will be applying to jobs that start after graduation 2024. I had experience at a medium sized company and decided to try out a smaller one to gauge my future interest. I can safely say that I at the very least want a smaller company vibe. It felt like a close-knit community that was extremely open to helping others. I believe that this type of environment is where I would be most successful and happy. This experience also opened me up to hybrid work. I enjoyed the flexibility of being able to work from home or the office on any given day. The office was great to be in for conversations with interesting people and the ability to ask questions in person. However, I was sometimes able to be more productive when I could just put my head down and work at home. Overall, I am glad that I chose to complete my project at Tangram because it offered an extremely different experience than what I was accustomed to, and as a result, changed my view on my future in the professional world.