One day as an intern at Kelda

Adrien Tardieu

Hi,

my name is Adrien, I am a French student in Computer Science at Mines ParisTech and intern at Kelda from January to June 2017. In this post, I would like to give some insights of what it is like to be a web developer in this small company.

  • 8.30 am : my usual arrival time after 10 minutes of biking. No need for coffee, I’m well awake!

With another colleague, I am developing a web application to store, display and process data from drilling operations. We call it internally “Kelda Cloud Portal”. As Kelda is operating in Russia at the moment, a lot of data are flowing. So my working day usually starts with a look at the logs, everyday we upload gigabytes of data to a remote server, process them and store them in databases to make them available on the portal. Seems complicated, but it is actually much easier than getting the colleagues back from Siberia through helicopters, buses and planes!

 

  • 8.55 am: the “stand-up meeting”

Actually, we are allowed to seat, but it’s never for a long time. All employees are attending, including our 3 colleagues in Trondheim via Skype. In a few sentences, everybody says what he’s done the day before and his plans for the current day. It’s nice to have an overview of the whole company.

  • 9 am: let’s get work done!

We are using a task manager to organize the work. For the different projects, we writes ticket on tasks to do and bugs to solve. Today, I will start with a small feature request: saving the zoom configuration in a profile. Basically, if you have been digging in the data, you can save your work to get back to it later or share it with another user. But it would be even more useful to save the time period of the data you have been studying. That will keep me occupied until…

  • 11 am: lunch time, or “lunsjtid” as they say here, best part of the day for a French citizen!

The canteen is located three floors below, available to the few small companies sharing the building. I think it is a typical Norwegian meal: bread with cheese, ham, shrimp, jam… And there is also a salad bar with a large choice of healthy things. Although it is not that elaborate, it makes me reach everyday the recommended levels of fruits and vegetables and the bread is incredibly good. It is fresh, still warm, with corns… Now I understand better why Google & Co are invested so much in their canteens, it is a BIG perk!

  • 11.45 am: a few push-ups

With a few colleagues, we are taking part in the so-called “100 push-ups challenge”, it is quite self-explanatory…

Like a boss
  • 12 am: back to work!

This afternoon, I will work on a more long term feature: data privacy. The idea is to create groups of users and give rights for each data file to some groups and users. We cannot mix up data from different companies.

  • 3 pm: coffee tea break

It is not everyday like this, but usually on Fridays we have a small break together. It’s a good time to chat, prepare April fools day jokes or just lie in the big pouffe!

  • 5 pm: already time to leave!

Last saves, commits and push on GitHub before leaving. Norwegians usually start early and leave early, it is not uncommon to be the last one in office at 5.30pm! After work, I go running with colleagues (the Kelda Vikings) on Tuesdays or play Underwater Rugby with students. This is my typical day as a French intern in Norway 😉

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