Laura Nichie, trainee
What drew you to METRO SYSTEMS Romania?
I had heard about the MSYS RO work environment from a close friend and when I saw the ad it seemed like a good opportunity to see for myself what it was all about. I knew about the flexible schedule and about the dynamic environment so it seemed like a good start for a student like myself.
What was your experience like as a trainee?
First of all I liked the Application Operations WEB team, they are all fun, energetic and really helpful. They gave me from the beginning the feeling that they enjoy their work and their time together. They are different from each other, each very skilled in specific technologies as the entire team is actually defined by diversity.
I had a great mentor, George Isar, who trusted me and inspired me to become better and made me want to learn and grow as a much as I could. My manager, Cristian Mechenie, gave me plenty of opportunities to learn and develop further my skills by entrusting me with developing an interesting project.
Please give us some examples of what you learned during your time as a trainee?
I learned to think in a very practical way, because during school time I had a lot of experience with theoretical knowledge. Here I had the opportunity to really put the theory into practice. I learned more about Linux, networking, eCommerce and a new technology, Python programming. I even created an application from scratch in order to help my team in their work, a tool which executes automatic scripts for multiple environments.
Please describe your transition from being a trainee to a full-time employee.
The most important impact was on the diversity of my activities. Now I have an active role in 2 of the major projects on team level and I am also involved in daily tasks like incidents and deployments.
I am also one of the Agile kanban facilitators in the team, I am responsible for daily and retrospective meetings for the entire team.
What’s the best advice you’d give to the new trainees?
Be like a sponge, absorb information from everybody, your team, your manager, other colleagues. Think agile, be flexible, learn as much as you can, share your knowledge, be open to feedback, be appreciative and don't forget to have fun. And be yourself, at MSYS RO people are friendly and positive.