Arsen Tumanian

College:

Education Level:

Career Interest:

What was your role?

During my time at Unadat I got the chance to work on developing a brand new feature of the site called challenges. With my team I worked on implementing both the front-end and back-end to allow users to view, create, and send their friends challenges to boost the chances of achieving small financial goals through competition. I got to work with HTML, CSS, jQuery, JS to design web pages as well as PHP and mySql to store and house user data in a database.

What did you work on?

What was the impact of your project?

What did you learn or improve on from this internship or from your teammates?

My teammates have always been a source of great help whenever I was stuck with a problem and couldn`t find an immediate solution by myself. Those who were more knowledgeable in programming than me shared and taught me a great deal of web development whenever I was stuck. They were super helpful and reinforced the age old advice that you should never be afraid to ask questions and seek help.

What skills have you gained?

Some technical skills I enhanced include HTML, CSS, JS and completely new ones are jQuery, PHP, and MySql. I was introduced to the new world of backend programming and databases which I havent had experience with. I also got the inspiration to play around with Figma for one of my personal design projects.

What was the biggest roadblock you've overcome?

The biggest roadblock would have had to been the remote setting of the internship which really challenged me to stay focused and on track. With in person activities/work your are kind of kept in check by the need to be physically present and that on it`s own usually boosts productivity for me as well as giving me the outlet to interact and socialize which I enjoy. However with a virtual environment, you really need to put in the effort and discipline to "do the right thing" so during my time at Unadat I struggled to keep myself in check and actually do the work in a timely manner and within a dedicated working period because in the comfort of your own home it was very tempting to push things off. But to counteract that I tried my best to engage and socialize with my teammates. I would ask to work with people on call aswell as assemble our sub team to make frequent progress checks to keep myself and others engaged because for me, seeing them work motivated me to continue working whilst we chatted and bounced off each other`s ideas. I also used Notion to create personal checklists for me to stay on track and a bit more on top of my work.

How has company culture guided your work?

I really enjoyed the value of escalation and treating it as a positive terminology rather than something that should be avoided. Knowing that you could bring up an issue and that someone can step in to bring some clarity and decisiveness was reassuring while working because it meant there was always a way to resolve a major roadblock and bringing up a problem didnt equate to blame nor repercussion.

What was your experience at Unadat?

What was one big project you worked on during the internship? Can you walk me through the process?

What advice would you give to future interns?

Be curious. Definitely expand out and talk to people from other teams not just yours. It`s easy to just hunker down and stick to just the minimum by attending your meetings and working on just your task and in hindsight that is kind of what I did. Go find out what others are doing and just chat around. Most of the people in the internship cohort are your fellow CUNY students, people your age, and potential future good friendships/professional relations (Plus we`re all so used to chatting on Discord as CS students that it shouldn`t be too daunting or scary).