An Intern's life at XiMnet - Life at XiMnet

Life at ximnet

An Intern's life at XiMnet

A summary of Ibrahim's experience as a Technical Intern.

The typical workday at XiMnet starts off just as one would expect. Similar to other offices all over the world, at around 9:00 AM every day all XiMnetians huddle up at the office for a fresh new day of work.

Everybody heads to their designated desk space. Space that you can take a glance at and immediately get some ideas of what kind of personality each person has, based on the little toys, trinkets, and plushies they had chosen for décor and personalization of their little spot in the office. And this continues to be a common trend among the workplace of XiMnet, all the sprinkled aspects of individual personality across the office that seemingly meld together to form this tight-knit family.

One of the first things you notice here is that everyone knows each other on a level beyond that of the usual formal workplace relationship. The walls are adorned with collages of pictures, polaroids, and cards of past office trips, food ventures and all the birthdays that are celebrated all year round.

A picture worth more than 1000 words? There are about 100,000 words of camaraderie right here

No one feels out of place or like a stranger here. Being a witness to all the fun and playful antics that take place at the XiMnet office, I often find myself drawing comparisons to the workplaces I see in skits of my favorite workplace TV shows such as The Office and Parks and Recreation.

My internship here is my first experience of work and before joining I was under the very naïve impression that all real-world workplaces would be dull and a chore. Couple that with all the insecurities I had about fitting in or being accepted by my peers, being a foreigner far from home that does not speak the local language. But coming into my first day at XiMnet I was very swiftly proven wrong.

During my very short 2 months working here, I was under the watch of Josephine or Joe as she’s more commonly known as around the office. Agency manager and mama to Dou Dou, a lovely fluffball of a cat (who also comes into work wearing her own collection of bowties!).

Employee of the month: every month

Joe usually delegates someone depending on what type of work I was going to do to supervise and assign a task for me. And since what I’m most keen on learning is web code and development, I had Markup engineer and UX Alchemist Melvin working with me most of the time. Even though I came into this as a measly diploma graduate, fresh in the field. Melvin had no issue in taking me under his wings to teach and guide me through my tasks even though my knowledge and skills at the start were rudimentary at best. Grasping the more advanced tricks were hard at first, but going slow and steady got me there eventually.

At other times I worked with Arshad, who has helped me more than a couple of times as I have sat next to him throughout the entire duration of my internship here. Even though these are just a handful from all of the wonderful people that make up the staff here at XiMnet.

I have never had to be afraid of asking a question to anyone, in fear that I might disturb them or that my question may be too stupid, People are always glad to help. And from an intern’s perspective, that is all we could ask for really. A safe space to learn and hone our skills, to know that people would pick you up if you should fall here and there. Not to have people hold your hand throughout the entire journey, but for people to point us in the right direction and give us the little nudge or push we need to start the journey.

During my tenure as an intern here, I was lucky enough to have had the chance to work on a variety of tasks and assignments. Everything from trying to replicate a fancy already existent website from scratch using my own code to using XiMnet’s very own inhouse proprietary web development platform - XTOPIA as well. The latter of which I have grown accustomed to a fair bit purely based on how intuitive and convenient it is to get a website up and running. Along with all the tests and practice coding. Some tasks involved me having to do real work with actual clients of the agency. These were the tasks I am most proud of as I feel like I have left my little mark in helping the overall workforce of XiMnet.

Although it was hard having to come in everyday half-awake making an hour-long drive at the start of my internship, I have really grown accustomed to my little routine now. It is at the point where I find myself naturally waking up early during the weekend to get ready for work. Even though it’s been just a measly 2 months (that went by way too fast), I am honestly going to miss coming in every day, getting some work done improving on myself. Getting lunch and then pushing out more work to close the day.

But most of all I’m certainly going to miss the people, especially Dou Dou.

Chinese New Year Photo Shooting Session