Introduction

Looking back two years to my Questrade internship is interesting. On one hand it was my first truly technical job related to my field. Before then I was only ever working as a service clerk at Zehrs. Coming into it at the height COVID-19 lockdowns was definetly abnormal to say the least.

General

As mentioned earlier, due to the nature of COVID the position was completely remote. Meeting the team and my managers, Sergey and Marina over digital conference was interesting. As someone in computer science, being remote, on the computer, wasn't all too different then normal. I didn't really have any issues working remotely. I do think I missed an opportunity in just taking a look around at what other people or teams are working on, but in terms of the work I don't think it really effected my performance.

My team lead, Marina, was fantastic - very patient, very understanding in that she is recieving this first technical work experience version of myself. Starting off some work with Excel and basic data work, before taking the opportunity to make use of my Python abilities and send me working on the data scripts which was the focus of my internship.

The script called on Power BI's REST API endpoints to gather a variety of data into BigQuery was modular in the sense that the dataset information gathered could be change. We focused on usage data to prepare for a presentation on how to better organize the data warehouse. We developed it in two week agile sprints, and it was my first experience looking at some DevOps parts, automation testing and monitoring with DataDog, as well as using Gitlab and Kubernetes deployment pipelines.

Other than the Python scripts, there was also a variety of work with PowerBI. Reviewing reports and doing data warehouse work, but also optimizing using M Power Query and DAX, focusing on where we can use measures and calculated columns. I think we were super succesful here as we could find noticeable increases in the most egregious reports, compiling in almost half the time for the ones that were taking well over half an hour.

Non-Technical Challenges

Not really a challenge, however as mentioned earlier I think it was unfortunate I was unable to get a feel for work in the office, seeing other people and their work.

Technical Challenges

The largest challenge for me was the introduction to DevOps.

Working on Power BI was also a new skill I had to develop, especially Power Query and DAX.

Lessons

DevOps pipeline.

A bit of technical skill in Power BI.

Conclusion

A pretty good entry to the industry.