From Syria to Germany: My way into IT

When I came to Germany from Syria in 2015, my dream was clear: to study computer science and later go into software development. In 2019, I was able to start my studies and in 2022 I had my first internship in a government agency. The position was advertised as a test automation engineer. Since I couldn't really imagine what that meant at first, I did some research on the internet. There I found the information that a test automation engineer should also have knowledge of programming.

Deepening the internship at the authority

During my internship, another intern and I had a supervisor who has now also been with adesso SE since 2023. He prepared us very intensively for the activities in this area. So we started with the basic tools such as Jira and Confluence. His methodical approach was to start with test management. At first I thought that was a bit of a shame, because I would have preferred to get straight into development. However, our supervisor said that test management is a good way to get started in a project. We would later benefit from this with the testing perspective as developers.

We started with ad hoc test executions from Xray Testmanagement for Jira for an iOS project. Then, a little more structured, using test plans. We were then able to optimise the first manual test scripts quite quickly and create our own. During the internship, I used various tools and technologies, including Jira, Confluence, Git, Gitlab, Xcode, Katalon and Cypress. I was able to test two apps both manually with test specifications and exploratively. This experience showed me how important precise testing and sound test management are for quality assurance.

Switch to adesso

Towards the end of the internship, I was taken on as a working student. At that point, it turned out that my supervisor was going to move to adesso. So I tried to take as much knowledge from him as possible. In the end, we were also able to set up a completely new project with him in the form of an Angular application. Unfortunately, it was only four months, but they were by far the most exciting and intense. By completely rebuilding an infrastructure for development with Gitlab, Jira and Confluence in a highly networked form, I was able to gain a good insight into the step-by-step development and improvement of the workflow. Even though the authority was very pleasant and surprisingly modern, I wanted to change to deepen my knowledge. By September 2023, it was clear to me that I also wanted to switch to adesso. The application process at adesso was much less complicated and faster than at the authority, which motivated me even more.

I was able to use almost everything I learned during my internship at adesso. In addition, I got to know new technologies such as BitBucket and Jenkins. GraphQL, Liquibase, Bitbucket and PrimeNG were also completely new to me. There are also some parallels in the application from a technical point of view.

Insights into team dynamics and project complexity

At two intensive team days at the end of February, I was able to get a rough overview of the high complexity of the following activities through the structure ‘Day 1 – what is being done, Day 2 – how and who is doing it’. I am very happy that I was introduced to the exciting but also complicated topics in a methodical way.

I work as a manual tester in the adesso team and am learning the ropes of development through self-learning. The collaboration with my colleagues is very supportive and inspiring. I find the complexity of the projects challenging, but also enriching.

First programming task and challenges

In April, I was given my first programming task, which was to do with accessibility. I worked with Visual Studio Code and adapted the page titles so that, when you have several tabs open, you can recognise the title of the page you are on at a glance, without having to go to the page. This task was an interesting challenge, as it was about improving the user-friendliness and accessibility of the application. From this experience, I learned how important it is to pay attention to details and to take the perspective of the user.

Outlook

I currently work as a student trainee for one day a week. After my studies, I can very well imagine continuing to work at adesso and starting as a developer. My long-term goal is to familiarise myself with the topic of cyber security. That's why I would like to gain insights into security testing at a later date, and I'm sure that the work I've done so far will serve as a basis for this.