Skandalaris Center

The background image for the website. It is a multi colored mosaic.

Open-Floor Offices during a Global Pandemic: Taking “Ghosting” to a New Level 👻

Nurzhan Kanatzhanov (BS '21)
July 23, 2020
Share:
RoomTap – Room Reservation and Space Management Software

Hi everyone, my name is Nurzhan Kanatzhanov and I am a rising senior majoring in Computer Science at the McKelvey School of Engineering with a second major in Finance, planning to graduate in December 2020. This summer, I have had the opportunity to intern at Sharp Coffee, a tech startup that has developed a product called RoomTap, which is a room reservation and office space management software. 

At the Skandalaris job fair, I met my current venture host Brandon, who told me a story of how he founded the company: the company he currently works for (as well as having his own business) did not want to pay a high price for existing software that manages office spaces. Brandon, on the other hand, saw an opportunity to make his own product and improve it, having the company he works for as a first client. Sharp Coffee is a pretty young startup; in fact, it is so young that I am technically the first-ever employee to be “hired,” which is pretty funny. 

Coming into a team of two software engineers who work for another company full-time was pretty challenging. Given the circumstances, it was already hard to communicate remotely but doing so while your venture hosts have other responsibilities outside of their startup added another layer of challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic did not help either, as office spaces all around the country are vacated and remote work is the new norm.

Often times I would find myself experiencing roadblocks due to inexperience. However, I knew that one of the most important skills a good software developer possesses is being a “professional Googler”: programming is all about solving problems using any available resources. In my case, it was hours of researching various tools, reading documentation, and scrolling through StackOverflow. Nevertheless, that is an extremely important skill that I have developed during my time interning at Sharp Coffee—looking for answers to problems myself.

My first approved pull request! 🎉

Additionally, working in a small team has its own perks as well. I was free to decide what I want to work on and what excites me. My venture host Brandon let me choose the direction of my internship myself after a couple of weeks of my onboarding and getting familiarized with the software. He told me that I had full control and that “whatever I put in, I get out.” I was really passionate about doing data analytics for the company, so I set on that path, analyzing raw data that would be valuable to get key performance metrics. Calculating KPI’s is essentially the selling point of RoomTap—knowing which spaces are underutilized, ghosted, or experience a lot of traffic. I am really glad I am working on something that brings real value to the company.

Ultimately, even though there are still about two weeks left of my internship, I have seen myself grow both professionally and personally, learning about the industry, entrepreneurship, and most importantly about myself.