Differences between what you observed in your internship and what you learned in classes

 The major difference between my internship and what I learned in class is that leveraging the work of others is highly encouraged during my internship as opposed to terming it academic dishonesty in school. One aspect of my project that has made my ramp-up process easier is code from a Microsoft hackathon where an employee attempted to build a feature similar to my project. Although the work from that hackathon was not merged into the main branch, I found a pull request to the branch with the code that I am using as the starting point for my project.

I know doing something like this in my classes at Berea would be considered less creative and to some extent a form of academic dishonesty. I was surprised when my manager advised me to highlight different ways I plan to use the work of others in my project during our first meeting. My manager called it leveraging the work of others.  When I inquired why Microsoft encouraged employees using work from others, my manager highlighted how it saves Microsoft resources like time when employees reuse existing components related to their work. He added that it also makes the development process easier because as an intern, using existing code from a full-time employee, I get a direct contact to ask questions about my project. Furthermore, he explained how the efficiency of reusing existing code makes products more efficient.

Unlike my internship where more emphasis is on delivering a quality product than showing individual mastery of software engineering, school measures my ability to accomplish tasks individually. I know some courses at Berea involve teamwork, but it is unrealistic to get a course grade assigned solely on teamwork assignments. Additionally, school is often perceived as a competition where brighter students want to reveal their understanding of course concepts and might not freely share their ideas with other students. Such a culture is very different from Microsoft culture where all employees work together to deliver a product without seeking individual rewards.