about innovior
the company is called INNOVIOR Africa Group; it’s located in Nairobi, Kenya; they pretty much provide erp solutions to businesses so its more of a b2b service (business sells to businesses not to people directly); within their erp solutions they need consultants and software people who can translate any software jargon to business; also need software and data science expertise for creating mock erp test cases to eventually replicate clients (actual businesses), read more on their website; its actually a pretty cool company w/ a very nice work ethic, at least in my opinion.
interview
this was an internship i did in highschool and was my first ever actual job in the software industry where i was getting paid (oh yeahhh, shillingsss); i was really scared for the entire hiring process because i didn’t have much coding experience at this stage of my career; my interviewer could definitely tell; i came to the interview directly after attending school and was in school uniform; my interviewer asked me about my uniform and what i like doing in school; neither of which were typical questions for this type of role; i started wondering why he was asking me these irrelevant questions (this is literally what i was thinking, kinda silly lol) but we dove right into what i prepped for within minutes.
in hindsight, i realized that he started with those questions just to calm me down a little; this was necessary because it would have definitely influenced my ability to answer his questions; so they were not irrelevant, i was just too inexperienced to understand the situation; this was also a learning experience for me to never assume anything and also always think positive about people who most definitely know more than me.
what i did
i had no expectations for this internship except to learn and not make anyone unhappy; the internship itself was not long, it was a 4-month term but i really only went to office for a month (and a half, i think, i’ve kinda forgotten if i did go physically for longer); the rest was on-call programming and doing oracle netsuite (erp work).
i want to tell u the things i programmed because i feel like it was a good set of tasks both for exposing a newbie to coding and to also get some projects out of him but to be honest i probably won’t just because i don’t want to end up over-sharing, but i was mostly doing full-stack software engineering and communicating with stakeholders too; i got to meet the president as well :)
meeting internally
ok first let me contextualize something, i’m writing this after having done 3 other internships in far bigger companies having much higher expectations, so like, when i’m thinking back abt this experience its like it was the easiest thing ever, it prolly wasn’t but i might end up making it sound like it was… umm, i’ll try not to tho.
so everyone was very open and welcoming to having me on board; i had some long conversations with other consultants and it was mostly very productive; we would sometimes talk about my future too and universities i’m applying to as well; some of the people at innovior were international so i was also getting advice from them in terms of where to apply and where to learn from, canadian schools teehee.
one memorable moment was the coffee person; in my office area they had someone who was assigned with cleaning the desks, floor etc. i kinda don’t want to call her a janitor and just call her coffee person cuz she figured that i liked a nice coffee every morning and literally went out of her way to get me it every single day; it was super sweet and i’m pretty sure she did that cuz i was visibly nervous sometimes but anyway ;)
we used to have weekly meetings at 7AM and i would almost never show up on time; bro idk why they were so lenient with me i remember showing up like 30 mins late and they still were ok with it; it was actually insane how nice and welcoming these people were, i loved it so much. i can kinda see why they were ok with this, but i’ll give u a reason i didn’t think of: my other consultant said that as long as u do what’s needed of u then they don’t do anything abt it (but i had nothing expected of me whoop, so idk abt that)
also there would be someone assigned to recite a prayer in the morning before the meeting; this was so nice too.
pretty sure ur realizing how most of these internal experiences are of the little details and it goes to show how they matter; i put these learning xps into my future internships as well; doing things like greeting people everyday or even just smiling at them when u walk by, these things make a genuine difference, like it did to me here.
meeting externally
oh i actually got to present to a business; like one of our clients, 2 different times (to 2 diff clients); the first time was very fun, i was being supervised by another consultant and he made sure i didn’t fumble, but the second time i was assigned to present directly by the president and i got so scared lol he could tell i got scared too; i don’t remember if we did the 2nd presentation or not but either way it was really nice cuz everyone was very open to let me do what i want within reason :)
also something crazy is that i personally knew both these clients (in the sense that i would purchase their products); ummm i can’t think of an example that’s not revealing but assume ur working somewhere and that place has mcdonald’s as their client and ur mcdonald’s’ regular customer, or some super known place within the area which u buy from, that’s how it was like, kewl.
inexperience
so as u know, this was my first ever internship and i had no experience whatsoever, this is what made me very visibly scared and sometimes not willing to take challenges head-on cuz i would fear failing. i’ve got a lot more experience now and i can tell u that i’d rather fail than not try, even if its high stakes, but at that time i didn’t know.
i told my father about this and he was like ‘just code an erp in ur free time and present it to them’; yk what i said? i was like ‘they didn’t assign me that’ and this was another learning experience yay,
my father taught me that doing things ur not assigned to do can be beneficial in many ways, BUT ONLY given that some conditions are met: (1) u do everything else assigned to u, properly; (2) its not a confict of interest; (3) do the extra work ONLY in ur free time; (4) make it as relevant as possible; (5) ask people what they’d think if they had this extra work u do as a feature/product and see if its worth doing.
so yeah, i learnt that from my dad and then started working in my free time to code a mock erp, this learning xp lowkey continues with every other internship i’ve done too, eehehehe.
coding like crazy
i actually learnt a lot in both the assignments i was given and in working free time; through the assignments, i learnt what to apply and where to apply it for making my own erp system; also learnt a crazy amount of programming conditions and high end considerations.
now look, i say ‘crazy’ because that’s how i journaled it back then but in the internships i do nowadays, that ‘crazy’ amount is like 2 days worth of learning at max, i did this in 4 months back then but i’d cut some slack cuz highschool internship maybe, but yeah i don’t really wanna put my younger self down, so BOOM CRAZY AMOUNT OF CODING woooo yeahhh.
impressions
then came the big day of presenting all my work to the board. i thought i’ll fumble, i didn’t, i had fun, got a return offer (not like i was gonna come back, which is kinda sad, but anyway) and ended the internship
why it matters
this experience was like a typical first-timer exposure one: get scared, woooh, learn its not so bad, then take advice (thanks papa) and outperform what u thought u would do. i think this experience was far more valuable to me from a learning standpoint than coding; yes i did code, a lot, like for a kid that age, i’d say a decent amount, i thought it was a crazy amount at the time, so yeah, i did code; but i think the experience of going to office, meeting people, learning how to talk, that, that shaped me and that was more valuable here, and, that’s, why it matters :)