For many high-school and university students, the end of the school year does not necessarily mean holiday. On the contrary, instead of playing computer games or hanging out with their friends, they use their free time to search for the job. Some of them may just want to earn money, but many others (besides that) may desire to learn something new and gain valuable experience. Just like those who joined Red Hat Brno and decided to kick-start their career path as interns with the world’s leading provider of open source solutions. In the company where everyone’s opinion is being heard no matter which level their position is on.
Red Hat Brno offers internships regularly during the year, even though summer has always been a “peak” season. However, the number of interns has increased quite substantially this summer. On July 1st Red Hat welcomed more than 60 new interns among various teams and for the very first time has organized intern BootCamp full of teamwork, entertainment and educational activities lasting for 4 days.
It all started on Monday, leading with the regular onboarding sessions including the introduction of essential information and signing all necessary documents: all the unavoidable matters to become a real Red Hatter. As soon as everyone got their badge, the “magic key” to every door in RH Brno office, they were ready for an office tour to explore all the secret corners of the building and of course, their work place where they eventually stayed to meet with their peers and team. Next morning was dedicated to the introduction of Red Hat organization, products, culture, benefits, communities, after work activities and so on. To put it simply, how it feels to be a part of the innovative and dynamic company like Red Hat.
After absorbing all the new information, the time to act has come. Scavenger hunt! How well do the new Red Hatters already know the building? Where is the Garbage room and what does the “code” 0D323 mean? Well, finding these and other spots was the easier part. They first had to reveal the hint by solving riddles. Sometimes they were even “forced” to use internal systems like G Suite, Rover, Mojo etc. Each solution led them to another place around the office. And because cooperation is one of the most important Red Hat values, they were divided into teams to find the solution together. Thanks to that they had a chance to exercise their critical thinking, get to know each other and mainly: have a lot of fun! As Honza says: “Personally, I mostly liked the scavenger hunt. It was fun, I met some new people and could go through all the buildings (which was really useful to know where is what).” And as a surprise, the fastest (winning) team won a sweet reward!
Wednesday belonged to agile training, organized by the Agile Practice Team. Besides the introduction about what agile and scrum, or kanban means, interns had a chance to show off their team spirit and know the agile practice to their cost. How? Believe or not, by “baking a pizza” or “playing with Legos”. Lucie, a member of Agile Practice team, is pretty sure that everyone who attended BootCamp will think of kanban while making pizza and recalling scrum when there are Legos around.
On Thursday, the last day of BootCamp, local seasoned Red Hatters came on the scene to pass on their experience to the “new Red Hat generation” and reveal the secrets about being a great developer, what Git is, what kind of possibilities you have as an intern and much more. To find out how does it feel like to be an intern at Red Hat, there were also Red Hatters, who were walking in these shoes once in their life: those who started at Red Hat as interns as well. When the talks and training were over, another BootCamp highlight came along. Party time! Time for socialization, networking, celebration, sharing impressions among all the attendees, announcing the winner of scavenger hunt and of course: filling up tummies with yummy grilled goodies.
So was the BootCamp successful? As organizers, we enjoyed it incredibly! But the most valuable feedback comes from the attendees themselves and their feelings. So we asked. Most of them agreed that the BootCamp was a great way of starting their internship. “The first week was perfect, it is hard to say which part I enjoyed most, I enjoyed all of them. That team games were super cool, I met a lot of new friends here from other teams” says Nikola. Apart from the fact that interns had a chance to learn about Red Hat from every angle, they (and that’s one of the most valuable things) had an opportunity to meet and get to know each other. After all, strong relationships and communication are important building blocks of unique Red Hat culture and that’s why (among other things) we would also like to support the BootCamp in future.
