Ruud started his traineeship at Codit Netherlands in 2020. The first three months of this were spent training, followed by a 6-month period working for customers on Integration projects alongside a senior member of the team. Additionally, he worked on Research and Development (R&D), Artificial Intelligence and IoT projects. Following his Traineeship, he went on to accept a permanent role as a consultant, working on integration, loT and AI projects at Codit Netherlands. Read about his experience here!
Consultancy attracted me because it allows me to work with technology as well as have customer interaction. ”
Why Codit?
Ruud firmly believes that the number of cloud-based services and solutions will continue to rise in years to come. For this reason, he had already obtained his Microsoft certification on Azure Fundamentals, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform and in his search for a traineeship, he came across Codit. As Codit is the biggest Microsoft partner in the area of Azure integration and IoT cloud solutions in Europe, it quickly made it to the shortlist. After finding that Codit offered a traineeship where you could focus on IoT and AI, he decided to apply. The personal connection Ruud felt with his interviewers only convinced him further that Codit was the place to start his career in IT.
Traineeship Guidance
For his internal project, Ruud and his fellow trainee had the guidance of an architect. Through him, he was taught about Codit’s standards and way of working. Guidance consisted of weekly check-ups to discuss what he was going to build and which technologies he would learn about in the next week. During those check-ups, Ruud would also get advice from an architectural point of view, as well as security considerations. Additionally, he was also trained on the Invictus framework, a Codit product used by the majority of our customers to accelerate cloud development. He found this to really accelerate the learning!
Personal Development at Codit Netherlands
During the first few months of the traineeship, Ruud went into depth with the technologies and focused on gaining hands- on experience.
After the traineeship, personal development continued to play an important role for him within Codit. He was assigned a mentor, which is a senior colleague from Codit with whom you can discuss your long-term development and career plans. To help you work towards those goals, Codit provides a generous personal development budget. This can be used for the standard tracks such as (Microsoft Azure) certifications that boost your experience or help when visiting conferences, as well as personally initiated trajectories. Ruud did both, achieving Microsoft certifications on AI in Azure, and the following masterclass hosted by Microsoft and Nvidia. These focused on building- and running AI models for computer vision on Azure IoT Edge devices. The courses have come in handy for Ruud, as he was able to apply his knowledge for an IoT/AI R&D project that led to a Proof-Of-Concept (PoC). He is now helping to build this POC to showcase in pre-sales conversations to potential new customers.
In addition to technical skills training, Ruud had the opportunity to train in developing his consultancy skills. Topics this year centered around persuasion, which Ruud found to be very useful in consultancy!
Support and Supervision During Early Assignments
Ruud’s first project for a customer was in a team with experienced colleagues, as well as another trainee, both from the Netherlands and other Codit countries. The team held daily standups to discuss issues and the upcoming day. Moreover, support from colleagues was not limited to those working on the same project. Within Codit there is a strong collaboration culture. There are various ways to ask questions in company-wide communication channels, where colleagues can think about and solve complex issues together. This is part of what makes the job exciting!
Independence at Codit
Codit adheres to standards, but within the framework you are free to come up with the best solution to approach a problem. Just as important for Ruud is that this also impacts how you can shape your own development. Codit provides guidance in a wide variety of development paths, and it is up to you if you want to develop yourself as a generalist or specialist in certain technologies. However, you are also encouraged to follow other trajectories.
Independence is rooted in the heart of the organization, and I experience this daily during the projects I work on. ”
Growth
What makes consultancy attractive is that you experience multiple projects in various industries. Ruud has taken lessons from each project and kept noticing the gradual but rapid increase in his knowledge of technologies. This has allowed him to ask increasingly critical questions and provide customers with better solutions and implementations. Noticing these improvements on a daily basis gives him a lot of satisfaction.
Projects
Consultants are responsible for the development of a solution, and for having a close professional relationship with the customer. Ruud enjoys this combination a lot. For his first project, which was for an international shipping company, he joined the project in the building phase. Once development was finished, he hosted sessions to educate employees of the company on what they had built and how they could expand upon it in the future.
Another project Ruud worked on was for a big retail company in the Netherlands. This involves moving the company’s entire messaging system to the cloud, as well as implementing new technologies such as Azure Data Factory to automate data movement and transformation.
Next to the customer projects, he is also involved in R&D projects within Codit in the fields of IoT and AI, such as the PoC which they are showcasing to customers. He has also joined several pre-sales visits to potential new customers for IoT and AI Projects.
Codit Netherlands
Within Codit there is an excellent work/life balance. Out-of-work activities such as family days and dinners are regularly hosted, alongside Codit-Cafés on Friday afternoons. All of these are great opportunities to get to know your colleagues in a different environment! What stands out for Ruud is that Codit is an inclusive organisation that knows its employees. For example, they often receive themed sweets during the cultural holidays of their colleagues in the Netherlands.
On a professional level, Codit employees have a passion for technology. To accommodate this, they host knowledge sessions that involve a dinner and presentation by colleagues or external guests, on topics such as a new technology, exciting projects, or the highlights of a course/conference attended.
Throughout the year Codit has organized various other cool initiatives. For example, during the EURO 2020 football matches, employees wanted to collectively build an AI model that would predict match outcomes. Check out the blog on this topic written by fellow Coditers: Predicting the Outcome of UEFA EURO 2020 with Microsoft Azure
Future Ambitions
Ruud’s passion lies at the intersection of AI and IoT. New technologies and innovations follow up on each other at a rapid pace, so this is where he will continue to develop his technical knowledge. He particularly enjoys the presales talks, which take place before the customer really understands how they want to realize their business case. A combination of the two, as well as the desire to keep on learning and developing, is what he sees in his future.