What Six Years of Internships Actually Taught Me
I took my first internship at 15 and didn't really stop. Wine-management software, tunnel automation, a data center in Basel, parking systems in Vienna, two summers at the Austrian power grid. None of it was planned but together it taught me how I work and where I'm headed.
Early on I learned to respect the engineering nobody sees. The systems I worked on only function because someone took reliability seriously, and being responsible for something not failing changes how you build.
I also found the work I'm drawn to: making the tedious disappear — automating network provisioning at Roche, structuring market data at the grid. My hardware background keeps me close to the metal and skeptical of abstractions that hide what's really happening, and repairing broken systems taught me how things actually fail, which is rarely how the textbook says.
The clearest thing six years gave me is direction.
Thanks for reading. If you are interested: here is typed-out version of my CV.