Throughout the summer, Skandalaris Center Summer Internship Program participants will be writing guest blog posts about their internship experience. Following is one such post. 

So Many Challenges…

Siam Abd Al-Ilah (EN)

It has been a very interesting experience so far learning about the startup culture in Saint Louis. An interesting thing I noted is how a small difference in team sizes can greatly change how the company functions. My friends here at the Skandalaris Center Internship program all seem to be having different experiences and I think the company size is a driving reason behind that. I am working with Rissana, this summer, which is a family health tech company that seeks to create products to help families better manage health-related issues. My role at the company is primarily as a Software Engineering Intern, which compliments my Computer Science major. What makes this experience poised to be so unique is its incredibly small size. Currently, there are a total of five employees in the company including the CEO. This makes working very closely with everyone in the company very crucial. It also makes the work I am doing that much more impactful to the company and gives me a sense of ownership of the work I am doing.

Pair programming with the CEO

We are currently working on an application in collaboration with Washington University School of Medicine to help doctors better connect with patients recovering from drug addiction. I am working closely with the CEO to develop the core application while the others are focusing on presenting and marketing the product. My experience working with the team has already shown me the plethora of roadblocks a startup has to overcome to achieve any goal. For example, while working on my first task I had to find out that the problem is not simply to implement a feature, but also enforcing a level of security to have the app comply with federal laws. Again, for every task I am doing, I have to keep in mind that real people will be using what I make very soon, so cutting corners is not an option. This differentiates what I am doing now from school projects I have done where I would not expect my project to be of immediate use to anyone. This calls for attention to all the minor details and I have noticed it is hard to meet my own expectation regarding the amount of work I can get done in a given window. I hope as the summer progresses, I can better appreciate the amount of effort needed for any given task and set realistic expectations for myself and others.

Team meeting snapshot. May or may not have been staged (I am in the red jacket)

The independence and responsibility that comes with working at a startup have been proven rather difficult to manage. For instance, I am not required to show up at the workplace every day and have ample freedom to decide when, how and where I work best. Also, my team expects that I won’t have to be given instructions for everything, so I have been tasked with creating the roadmap to various objectives myself which gave me a sense that my opinion is valued, and my work is important to the team. But this also puts greater responsibilities on my shoulder that I have not handled very often. Handling these responsibilities has proven to be a great learning experience so far. I think this summer will be a very valuable experience to look back on.