My first week in Berlin has been a total blast. So much has happened in the span of only a single week! As part of our first week here, our IIP group has been spending nearly all of our time together exploring the city with the museums and cultural attractions it offers! We spent the first week touring the city center (Alexanderplatz), visiting quite a few Biergartens, and exploring The Berlin Mall, just to name a few.

I will be working in Web Development, which is a pretty burgeoning field in Computer Science right now. Every year it seems, new paradigms and approaches to developing websites are found. Whether it be through React, Astro, Express, or something else entirely, there are so many ways to construct a website nowadays. Additionally, almost always there isn’t a single tool for the job. These “frameworks” as they are called exist to be mixed and matched, and build off of pre-existing tools that have existed for literal decades.

There are even tools like Electron, that make it possible for developers to use pre-existing website code, and “wrap” it in a miniaturized version of a browser. This is very resource intensive on the user’s machine, but makes it very easy to create apps that can be used on multiple platforms (IOS, Android, PC, Mac, etc) without needing to start from scratch every single time. Many popular apps, like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Slack all use this framework to function properly.

HS-Experts, the company I will be working for, is tiny and contains very little in the way of technical staff.

This is both a blessing and a curse. It’s great, because it will give me the opportunity to prove myself from a technological perspective, but it also means that there will be much more of a burden placed on my shoulders to succeed. I will need to stay up to date on both my front-end and back-end knowledge in order to understand my projects in totality.

Realistically though, I will most often be working on the front-end in a compound development and design role, which is a good thing because that is where I am the most skilled. There is a dedicated database intern on staff who I will work closely with to flesh out the back-end of our app and get everything properly linked together.

As of now, they are using Elementor, which is a subsidiary of WordPress, the CMS (Content Management System) that this website is hosted on! It is essentially just a drag-and-drop system. If you’ve used tools like Wix before, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Even so, it is surprisingly powerful, and has tools to embed your own custom code. More likely than not, I will be working within this framework to squash bugs and implement new backend features into their intricate and ever-expanding platform.

Tech tends to be pretty culture-agnostic from what I’m aware. Because of this, I think the biggest difference for me between working here in Berlin and working back in the US is in the broader working culture. In my briefing before the first day, I wasn’t given a designated end time. As long as I am done with my work, I am free to go for the day. This is radically different from what you’d expect from your typical American 9 to 5.

Additionally, something I just noticed on the Sunday I’m writing this is that almost all German businesses close on Sundays. Besides a couple tram stop kiosks, there are next to no open stores. I have come to learn that this is the result of the German Working Hours Act, which is a massive win for the German working class. A good work/life balance is simply a part of the culture here.

Of course, the language barrier will be an obstacle for me to overcome in my working life. My German background dates all the way back to high school, and I am quite rusty. This is compounded by the fact that my job is highly technical in nature, which means that clear communication is vitally important to getting my job done right. Even so, every single employee working at my company speaks fluent English, so if I need them to switch off of German to get a point across, it is not the end of the world.

Ultimately, I am prepared to jump on the U-Bahn and roll into the office with a blank slate and an open mind. I will be getting as much out of this experience as the effort I put in. Given the effort I have put in learning the technologies to get me to this point, I am confident that I will do just fine.

Until next time, Tschüss!