September 12, 2019
Requis Culture: a View from Evan Jones, Developer Intern
The summer internship at Requis has provided me more than I could imagine. I have learned so many real-world skills and gained many new experiences working with various members of the dev and product teams. Much of what I learned just can’t be gained through lectures or classes.
The Requis platform is similar to eBay, where companies can buy and sell assets. What makes Requis different is that the platform only allows enterprises to register and become a member, and also allows the companies to manage their assets too.
One lesson I learned is that enterprises work very differently than consumers when it comes to buying things. This might seem self evident, but it’s really important to keep in mind while developing such a platform. Enterprises need their own supply chain and commerce platform built for their specific needs—this is why the consumer platforms like eBay have just not worked for them.
One of the most valuable insights I gained by working on a real development team in a startup is that a developer does not need to know everything. In fact, to be a good developer is not about how much code one knows how to write. In reality, experienced and good developers know how to research quickly what’s needed to do the assigned tasks, and then to apply what you learned in the context of the team and platform overall. These skills require a lot of flexibility, curiosity, and excellent communication.
My time working with Requis started off with getting myself familiar with the platform itself and the code that runs the website. I started off by working with the QA lead and helping to test the platform. This was useful to gain insights into how to test and find issues with a real site.
After I got a bit more equated with the platform, Brett Sanders (Director of Platform Development and Strategy) gave me many small tasks to work on for the platform. For each of these tasks, I would then sync up with other members of the development team, who would guide me through completing the task.
Requis does not have a traditional office space where the whole development team is all in one place a few steps from one another; we worked remotely from all across the country. Despite being hundreds of miles away from each other, it was very easy to get in contact with anyone on the team if I had a question or needed to work with someone on some code; it was almost as if they were there next to me working together.
In syncing with the members of the development team, I got to learn more not only about development, but also about the people themselves and their backgrounds. I found out how each one of them got to where they are now and why they joined Requis.
This was something I really value from this experience because I learned that there is no one uniform way to get something, everybody on the team came various different places and had various different background and experience, yet they are all on the same team working on the same project. This was pretty cool to see because everybody specialized on something, and so if one person was working on a task and it tied into a subject matter that they were not too familiar with, they would sync up with the person that specializes in that subject and would work together to get the problem solved.
This got me thinking about my own career development and where I want to be in the future. I realized that I really enjoyed what I was doing at Requis. Being able to work as a team with people from various different backgrounds and to develop this project that we can turn to and say we created that and see how valuable this tool we developed to the users. When it is time for me to go out and look for potential jobs, I will look for a team that is working on a project that holds an important value to the people and groups we are creating for.
Throughout the rest of my time with Requis I continued to work on various tasks, syncing with the different members of the team. One of the tasks I worked on was adding the ability for global admins to create and delete product conditions that were being put up for sale. This was a unique task because most of the code was done in React instead of Ruby. This was something that was very informative for me and it showed that a project is not always done in one singular programming language and with that we have to find a way to sync up the different languages and files.
My experience working with Requis this summer is something I am going to cherish for the rest of my life. Working with this team of developers gave me tremendous insight to the inner workings of running and developing for a startup venture. I loved my time working in this company and with these people. I would like to extend my biggest thank you to Richard Donaldson, Brett Sanders, and the rest of the Requis team for this incredible opportunity. I wish you all the best in the growth of this company for the rest of your lives.
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