I was fortunate enough to be able to further my interest in computer science through my internship with Pegasystems this summer. I was able to learn more about computer science and interact with people around me who have much more knowledge than I do. I worked as a software engineer for Pegasystems and this meant that I was mainly focused on testing and debugging code that had errors throughout the company.
Pegasystems is a software company that develops software for clients around the globe. The company was founded by Alan Trefler in Cambridge, Massachusetts but now has 40 locations throughout the Americas, Asia, and Europe. Pegasystems also provides software for many well-known companies including Verizon, PayPal, and Aflac. See Matt Papas’ blog for more details on what Pega does as a company.
The team that I worked on in particular during my time was called the “Pipefitters.” My team's role was to get into the company code and fix errors that had come up from other teams or clients. My team was led by Kevin, who led all the meetings and planning, and Peter, who acted as my mentor throughout the process. There were also about five more people on the team in the United States as well as a few in both Poland and India.
I started off my internship with a week of onboarding where we learned more about the company and other interns. The interns took a day trip to Thompson Island, where we got to know each other and helped to clean up the historical sites. The remainder of the week was spent installing different applications and softwares in order to start working the next week.
The team I worked with operated in ‘sprints’ or two-week sections. The team I was with was mainly focused on debugging code from other teams and parts of the larger code. This meant that sprints often included multiple bugs that needed to be fixed. These bugs were organized by both severity and importance and from there, the bugs were divided amongst the team in order to be fixed.
A typical day with PEGA for me included a good mix of coding and meetings. Every day at around eleven, my team would have a ‘standup’ meeting where we discussed everyone’s project and goals to complete. Before and after the standup, I would work either by myself or with the help of Peter. I had my own separate project which was trying to fix a bug that had been around for a long time but hadn’t been solved yet. The issue I was working on was that sometimes clients provided data in a format that didn’t match what the PEGA code could handle. This meant that sometimes data was stored incorrectly. My job was to help create a way to check if the formatting was correct or not. If it was correct I would leave it alone and if the formatting was different, the code would change it to match the correct way.
Pegasystems also provided the interns with a series of meetings called ‘Coffee Break Chats.’ These chats were formal discussions with people throughout the company. Not only were these discussions a great way to learn more about the company, but they were also a way to connect and learn from the people within the company. Two of these chats that I particularly enjoyed were the discussions with Ken Stillwell and Alan Trefler. These discussions were very helpful as I was able to learn about their roles in the company but also about their philosophies and goals that allowed them to reach this point.
I am very grateful for the opportunity I had to be able to intern at Pegasystems and I want to thank everyone who helped me along the way.
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