A trip to India to join a Microsoft boot camp training? Sure! When it comes to personal development, we will even cross borders. To become full-stack developers, Max and Ceriel joined the Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer training which took place in India during the 7th till the 28th of April 2019. In this blog, you will find out why Max and Ceriel joined this training and what benefits do they get from it.
Who are you and how did you get to work at Mediaan?
Ceriel: I am a software engineer with a degree in Business Administration. After finishing my degree, I quickly realized that I have a passion for technology. Therefore, I started my career working as an IT- consultant. As a consultant, I noticed the repetitive nature of the tasks at hand and spotted an opportunity to automate them using Python. This is where my love for programming was born, and it escalated rather quickly. After autodidactically expanding my knowledge from scripting to web development in my limited time to spare, I felt ready for a career switch from consultancy to software engineering. After deciding to switch, I wanted to make sure my new employer would provide the perfect breeding ground for my programming desires. To me, this meant working for a company that utilizes the latest technology stack and has plenty of seniorities on board for me to jumpstart my programming career using best practices. Mediaan was my top pick and would become the start and the ending of the job hunt.
Max: I graduated with a master’s degree in industrial engineering and innovation sciences at the university of technology in Eindhoven. I did my internship at a healthcare company which brought me in contact with Mediaan. Soon after I started my career as a consultant in the field of data science at Mediaan.
What made you join the Microsoft boot camp training?
Ceriel: After a couple of months working at Mediaan gaining experience as a full-stack developer, I felt the desire to increase my background knowledge of .Net Core and to get familiar developing for cloud computing platforms. Mediaan offered an opportunity to fulfil my eagerness to learn, by providing a chance to follow a Microsoft boot camp training in India from the 7th until the 28th of April 2019.
Max: After 1.5 years of work as a management consultant, I noticed a lot of affinity with software development when collaborating with my colleagues at Mediaan. From this point onward, I decided to change my career from the management consultant to become a full-stack software engineer. But this is easier said than done. Mediaan offered me to go to India for a Microsoft boot camp training for learning some essentials of software engineering.
What is the Microsoft boot camp training in a nutshell?
The Microsoft boot camp training lasted 18 days in total. The goal was to learn the essentials of software engineering focused on Azure and front-end development. The Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer training covered topics such as Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3, Developing ASP.NET MVC Web Applications and Developing Microsoft Azure and Web Services. After the training, we received a certificate of attendance. Soon after that, we followed the Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer exam to become a certified developer.
How did your typical day look like during the training?
We started our day with breakfast at 8:30, followed by a 10-minute walk to the training facility. The morning part consisted of a lecture of the trainer with some demonstrations. At 13:00, we had a lunch break. The training continued until 17:00 with some exercises to practice newly thought skills. After returning to the hotel and eating dinner at a restaurant, around 20:30, we went back to the training facility for some evening study. 23:30 was the time to return to the hotel and go to sleep — ready to start the next day.
What did you learn, and how did it benefit you in developing certain skills?
Ceriel: The course covered Azure Cloud Development, Web Services and ASP.NET Core Web Applications among other things. Looking back at the training, I gained valuable insights and gained a fundamental understanding of the software engineering field. Following the training program offered a way to gain in-depth knowledge, that can be hard to acquire on the job. Nowadays, I develop applications with scalability in mind, utilizing the capabilities of cloud computing platforms to their fullest extent.
Max: Looking back at my trip to India, I feel great that I got the opportunity from Mediaan to go there. It was a very cool experience, and I learned a lot from the training to kickstart my career in becoming a full-stack software engineer. Now I am already active as a software engineer at one of the customers of Mediaan. I really enjoy the new job, and I look forward to my future. I am glad I made the right decision to switch. Essentially, I learned that it is important to do what you like, even if you discover this at the early stage of your career. There are always possibilities to do the things you like.
