Hi! My name is Shahrom Dehoti, and I am a rising junior majoring in computer science. This summer, I have been working as a junior developer in a small agricultural tech company called Harvust that provides HR software to American farms. My everyday responsibilities as a junior developer include handling issues, building new features, and solving bugs as they occur.
To give a brief overview, my usual day in Harvust starts with a standup meeting at 10am with the whole team that includes both co-founders, our HR specialist, and another student intern Silivan Munguarakarama.
Left to right: James Hall – tech co-founder, Riley Clubb – sales co-founder, Silivan and me
During our standup meeting, each one of us tells the whole team what they have been working on since the last meeting, what kind of obstacles they are facing if any, and what they are planning to work on throughout the day. Afterward, Harvust’s technical co-founder, James Hall, helps me to unblock any issues that I cannot solve on my own by giving different tips and suggestions. Then, I work independently for a few hours on the issue assigned, periodically asking for clarification or help from James. Usually, I leave the office after 2 hours to have lunch and then work on the issue remotely from home. Once I solve the issue, it is usually immediately implemented and shipped to production the same day.
Besides minor bug fixes and issues, I also work on big projects. One of the recent cool projects that I have finished working on was implementing a third-party search API called Algolia in Harvust’s software so that the customers who are using our web application can quickly and easily find the things they are looking for. Currently, I am about to be assigned a new project that I will be working on till the rest of the summer before school starts, and I am very excited about it.
The internship experience with Harvust has been a very good one for me. For the first time, I have had an opportunity to apply the knowledge I gained in computer science classes to solving real-world issues, an experience made possible by the generous support of Whitman Internship Grant. Since Harvust is a small startup, I worked on all aspects of the app, an opportunity that not every software engineering intern gets, especially working for bigger companies. Throughout my time here, I believe that I have made a great impact on improving the quality of the software and, in addition to that, have made some great friendships with the people I was working with.
Experiences like Shahrom Dehoti’s are made possible by the Whitman Internship Grant, which provides funding for students to participate in unpaid internships at nonprofit, some for-profit, and government organizations. We are happy to be sharing blog posts from students who were supported by either a summer, fall, spring, or year-long grants at organizations, businesses, and research labs all around the world. To learn how you could secure a Whitman Internship Grant or host a Whitman intern at your organization, contact us at ccec_info@whitman.edu.