This article is a follow up to my previous article on my internship at General Electric. It’s just a short note to sum up some important things I learnt.

1.   Theory learnt in class is actually applied in the industry: there are some things that you learn in university you will probably never use again but other things you will use every day of your life. At the beginning I was like, who cares if the 7 layers of the OSI model are the application, the presentation, etc.? And who care about normalising the databases until it is in Boyce-Codd normal form? Actually a lot of people take those things very seriously.

2.   Documentation is important. I used to see it as a time consuming process that was barely worth doing. Now I understand how it increases teamwork efficiency.

 

3.   Technical skills are not the only thing that matter. Actually a lot of other things matter in the workplace like the business focus, the interpersonal skills, etc. But this experience made me realize the need to emphasise on personal skills like self-confidence and emotional resilience (coping with pressure and quickly bouncing back from setbacks).

 

4.   Follow the instructions. The discipline of doing what is useful and required, instead what sounds cool.

 

5.   Secrecy is the first law of magic. That one is pretty straight forward. The team work remains in the team. The corporate information should not be disclosed outside of the organisation.