This month marks my eleventh year in the IT industry. I started working as a junior developer in a small software company in July 1999. I graduated May of that same year. I only had almost two-month rest from the stressful college life when I started facing a more stressful and pressured milestone of my life, and that was being in the real IT world.
I could say that I was blessed because I immediately land on a job which was very much related to my course as I was a graduate of Bachelor of Science in Computer and Information Science. The more than six-month internship (most commonly known to other college students as OJT) included in the curriculum of my course played a big role in getting a course-related job. This internship gave me and my batchmates an edge over the other newly IT graduates during job applications.
During the internship, we were not only given clerical tasks but the school made sure that we were given development and other IT related tasks. We had a once-a-week meeting with the internship coordinator then where each of the interns was required to report the all the tasks that were assigned by the site supervisor. If the coordinator discovered that the interns were not given appropriate tasks, the intern would be transferred to another organization.
I was assigned in a software company which specializes on Point-Of-Sales (POS), Attendance Monitoring systems. The company package the POS with the barcode scanners which were exclusively distributed by the company. I enjoyed my internship because I experienced to work with real IT people and I earned some money from the allowance provided by the company. We were not also treated as interns in the organization. We were given the proper exposure by allowing us deal with clients but we were not allowed to disclose that we were interns. My internship was really a big help for me to get a job very quick.
Since then, I’ve learned so many things. I’ve grown not only on technical side but also on character. I’ve learned how to interact with different kind of people and workers with different culture and nationality. I’ve learned how to work with grace under pressure. I’ve caught and applied values that would help me to be a better worker and person. Whatever kind of IT professional I maybe right now, I owe it to the eleven years of experience this industry has given me. I thank and praise God for all the blessings He has given me for the last eleven years of my life. He has blessed me tremendously.
