This feature was requested by my manager. The feature did have a purpose so I did not bother asking the importance of this feature or if it was important for everyone (plus it was my manager asking it and I didn’t want to disappoint). It was a relatively simple request too, so I code the feature, test it on my machine and release it. The feature affected the intranet so everyone using it would get my feature the next time they load a page in the intranet.

One thing that I did not mention is that the manager asked that the feature be implemented with a small permanent pop-up window (if someone closes it, it will be re-opened the next time a page is loaded). Of course, less than 5 minutes after releasing the feature, a manager comes in the developer room asking for what the hell that little window is doing there.

I explain the feature request, I learn that no one else was aware of the feature request and talk about it with my manager. We decide to disable it until I add an option in the user management page to enable or disable it. So I add a column in the Users table, add a field in the user management form and release the code while re-enabling the feature. The process was not this smooth due to an oversight from my part, but this is for another post. I’ll just say that the problems involves a SQL update statement and no where clause…

The feature was working correctly (except for the bug mentioned in my last post) and everyone could choose to use it or not. As you may have seen it coming, a few days after rolling the feature out, the only one who has it enabled is my manager. This brings me to a Dilbert comic which sums up the situation perfectly:

I did learn a few very valuable lessons from that little project though:

• Question the validity of a feature request, make sure it is something people would actually want
• Proofread your queries before running them (however, we should have had test servers)

I know that I can sometimes lack confidence during my interviews, so I usually try to compensate by trying to look confident. However, the manager who hired me told me that I was bit arrogant during the interview. I made a note of it for the future. The line is fine between confidence and arrogance.

Anyway, I finally got a job that was pretty much perfect for me at Cyber Génération. It’s a web company so I would be able to improve my then newbie web development skills. It was 20 minutes away from where I lived and the pay was above average for a first internship.

Responsabilities

My official responsibilities were to do technical support and help with network administration. The tech guy was overloaded and needed some assistance. During the first month or so, I would help set-up computers and link them together over the network.

After that, a new permanent network admin was hired to help him so my tech duties were reduced significantly. Fortunately for me, I would be given small development projects instead. I had to take over some of the tasks of the other intern which had gotten really sick and could not come back.

I was asked to improve and fix some bugs in their custom-built intranet (which is the best, biggest and most useful intranet I’ve seen so far). At the time I only had a few months worth of PHP experience and they were developing with ASP. The transition was effortless and after a few days I was releasing improvements and fixes at a steady pace.

During the last month and a half I was given two “major” projects (major to me at the time). These projects were different because they were completely new features instead of just adding functionality to existing parts of the application.

During the final weeks, the work load became quite light however and it was clear that they did not plan enough work for me for the entire duration of the internship. They even asked me to assemble a storage shelf to keep me occupied (which had to be done by someone anyway).

Experience

This internship, being my first real computer-related work experience was very benefiting for me. I learned a lot about web development and about what to expect for my future jobs. I improved my skills with ASP, SQL, JavaScript and CSS. I even had the chance to follow a short SEO (search engine optimization) formation from Abacus Référencement (french only, sorry) which I really enjoyed.

Unfortunately, I had some issues with the manager, but nothing that made me dread going to work every morning. I just remember one thing that annoyed me from his official evaluation of my internship. He once asked me to fix something in a feature I had implemented to keep the connection to the intranet alive as long as the page was up in the browser. However, once in a while the javascript timer would not behave properly and the session would time out anyway. He asked me to make it so that it never times out. I applied the only fix I could think that would solve the issue, told him that I did something to try to fix the issue, but that I could not be sure if it was completely fixed (we did not have test environments and the bug happened so rarely that it was difficult to know if it was fixed for good or not). I also mentioned that I didn’t think any other programmer in the company could fix the issue we were having trouble with (now I’m pretty sure there wasn’t but at least there would have been a workaround, which was most probably beyond my capabilities at the time). Somehow this translated to him in a refusal to fix the bug and made sure to mention it in my evaluation without talking about it to me first.

Even though this particular manager might not have been particularly impressed with what I did, I know that everyone else in the company was more than satisfied with my work and that’s what really matters.

It was my first real work experience and it solidified my love for web development.