Hello Alex, you are a working student at XALT? Please tell us a little about yourself, your studies, and your role in the company first.
Hello, that's right, I have been a working student at XALT since May 2020 and I am studying Bioinformatics at the Technical University of Munich. At XALT, I am involved in both internal company tasks and customer projects. Here, I support, among other things, our DevOps engineers in quality assurance, configuration, and documentation of software and/or deployment.
How was your start at XALT?
I was contacted shortly after receiving the offer for my application to start onboarding immediately. The onboarding week was already a challenge for me, as I had never worked in an IT company before. First and foremost, I familiarised myself with the tools, workflows and the corporate culture.
I was only able to meet my colleagues online at first, but I was still welcomed warmly and invited into the team. Initially, communication was crucial for me, so that I could get up to speed on projects as quickly as possible and gain an overview of the company processes.
During my time at XALT so far, I have had no problem balancing my studies with work. Of course, I had to give up some leisure time compared to if I were focusing solely on my studies.
What parallels or differences do you see between working at XALT and your studies?
In my studies, we are introduced to basic knowledge of various tools, methods and solutions. The methods learned serve as a helpful knowledge base for being able to address actual problems from everyday work.
The fundamental difference between a project at XALT and at the university is that at the university, work on most projects (for first-semester students) mainly serves educational purposes. In a company, on the other hand, there are real tasks (from customers) to be completed. You are thus working with a real and concrete problem that must be solved. In addition, the focus in work is often on a high-quality result. At university, the methodology tends to be more central.
What impact has the work culture at XALT had on your university life?
As a bioinformatics student, working in the IT department has broadened my horizons in several areas. Among others, in the analysis of Big Data, in programming and in general teamwork. These are all topics that are also crucial in my studies.
For our projects, I also familiarised myself with DevOps tools, carried out software testing and contributed to project organisation. This allowed me to gain valuable insights into how a company works. My new programming skills, for example, gave me a boost in the computer science lectures and exercises at the university, as I always had a reference to what can actually be done with programming.
Furthermore, working at XALT has had a positive impact on my productivity at the university. I have learned to organise my work and to process tasks in a structured manner. This helps me to shape my daily life in such a way that both my working student role, my studies and I as a person can benefit from it.
What are your most important insights from your time at XALT?
In my short time at XALT, I have been able to learn a great deal so far. The 5 most important things I have learned as a working student are:
- Insight into management and organisation in larger IT projects
- Working in a team of people with different backgrounds and areas of expertise
- Self-organised task allocation and problem solving
- Building communication in remote work
- Coffee in the morning drives away worries and cares :)
In summary, I would say that working in a company is a completely different experience than studying at university. This will not be a big surprise. In my view, topics such as the general approach to problem-solving and the different learning methods are very different.
