My experience of The Arbor Program by Commutatus
Quick intro:
Hey ! 👋 I am Chandan, a 2019 computer science graduate from SRM University in Chennai. I am here to talk about my experience working in Commutatus.
One of the key experiences everyone recommends during your college time is to do an internship. I wanted to intern in a company that would give me an idea of what it was like to actually be a developer. By the time the college placements started, I was looking for a company that could give me such an experience. Commutatus was one of those companies. The Arbor Program (TAP) was an initiative by Commutatus to nurture young talent and train them in technical development skills while they were still in college, so that they would be ready to tackle real-world problems head-on by the time they graduated. The program was also backed with an attractive offer letter by the company while I was still studying. This excited me as I was looking to explore a career path and develop new skills that would give me an edge in the job market.
Hiring-process :
The selection procedure was quite simple. Starting off with a pre-screening round comprising of an online test and an easy assignment. This was followed by a case study round to where they gave us a problem that the company had faced in one of their partner’s products and asked asked us to solve it to evaluate our problem-solving skills. The final round was a relaxed, face-to-face interview with a few experienced developers and the CEO of Commutatus. I felt this was a perfect example of how interviews should actually happen. The whole thing felt like a conversation rather than an interview.
Beginning of awesomeness :
I was thrilled on receiving company’s offer letter, confirming my selection the day following my interview. Upon arriving at the Commutatus office on the first day of my internship I was filled with mixed emotions, anxiety and excitement. I was accompanied by five other students. This being my first position in an office atmosphere, I didn’t know exactly what to expect. However, the environment at Commutatus was quite relaxed. We had an onboarding to understand the core principles of the company it’s vision. During my initial phase, I was given small weekly tasks that would aid in building up my web development skills.
The journey so far :
My internship at Commuatus has taught me more than I could have imagined. It all started from simple HTML/CSS websites to large scale, advanced single-page applications. Your role (frontend/backend/full-stack developer) in the company is decided based on your interests and performance in the weekly tasks assigned to you. As I was keen to learn Javascript and showed interest in building a wonderful user experience, I was given tasks related to the role of frontend dev. Soon after I completed my training in core concepts and advanced javascript, I was introduced to the team I’ll be working with. At this point, I was extremely happy getting inducted into the React team. ( For those who don’t know what’s React, it’s a modern javascript library used to build web applications like Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, Codecademy, etc.,).
What I learned during TAP?
Amazing projects I have worked on :
The biggest benefit of TAP is that it offers a space for students and graduates to gain work experience by working on live projects. In the past year, I have worked on numerous projects :
- AIESEC: Yes, that’s right! Commutatus manages all global scale development for AIESEC’s platforms which facilitate leadership development and cross cultural experiences in over 120 countries. I am part of the development team that built the management portal — EXPA, to manage and analyze global operations from CRM tools to complex analytic functions.
- Educatly: A student platform to explore over 1,50,000 study-abroad opportunities worldwide. Educatly was my first project as a React developer that gave me an exceptional learning experience and an opportunity to apply the skills I acquired during TAP. I also wrote my first ever tech blog on medium, addressing a problem I faced during development and it has over 2000 views till date 🤩.
- Gehna : An e-commerce platform for custom handmade jewellery, built on NEXT.JS (first of it’s kind at Commutatus). This project has taught me a ton of new skills as I got an opportunity to build it from scratch and integrate core dependencies, all by myself in just 3 months. I am one of the key developers of this platform and I built the whole user interface (or maybe 90% of it 😛).
Perks of working in Commutatus :
- Be a Polymath : You are free to wear any hat in the company. (Wait! not this 🎩) I mean you have opportunities to explore any domain you like and diversify your skills. It’s been less than a year at Commutatus and I got a chance to recruit for TAP 2019. How cool is that ? I just graduated in May and three months later, I am revisiting my college as a recruiter. Yup! Let’s meet in the interview.
- No hierarchy 😎 – we don’t address anyone as ‘ sir ’ instead we use the ‘ bro ’ code.
- Flexible work hours ⏰ — although there isn’t a fixed time we usually work from 11 am to 6 pm and you also have an option to work from home.
- Employee fitness and health 💪 — the company provides medical insurance to all its employees and also focuses on doing fitness activities/challenges. We also play football/cricket every Thursday.
- Special days 🎉- We celebrate & do employee engagement activities on occasions like World Tug-of-war day / World Pizza day etc.,
- *Free lunch *!! 🥗 🍴
Oh, wait!
I almost forgot to mention this. We also have Tiger in the office.
Conclusion :
As mentioned earlier, this internship (The Arbor Program) has improved my skills a ton, both off the paper and on paper. It not only served as a positive learning experience but a resume builder as well. It’s just been 3 months since I officially graduated out of college and now I am a full-fledged React developer. I thank my team leader, CEO and all other people who assisted me in building a strong portfolio & develop my technical skills. Finally, I am proud to be part of the Commutatus family.
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