A guest post by Chamundeshwari R. Vadamalai
I worked at Valory AG as a full-time summer intern from July to September of 2022. The two months were filled with opportunities for me to gain knowledge and be exposed to a range of ideas, from administration to blockchain to coding. It was nothing short of a rich and memorable time.
Valory is a startup that is centered around autonomous software and blockchain technology. As someone whose prior experience in this field was little more than the textbook definition, it was initially a challenge. But by the end of the two months, I think I would now be more comfortable being in a room filled with people who like blockchain.
My role over the summer focused on the operational aspects of the company. It reinforced to me that being in a startup, or any tech company, didn’t just mean coding and debugging. I worked on finding information for trips, spreadsheets, potential journalists and more. Often, the tasks had a challenging aspect to them. But due to all the support I received, I never felt lost.
During the second month of my internship, I was tasked with finding leads for the company to approach with their work. This gave me more exposure, one could say, to the other companies in this field. I was then searching for information on DAOs, DeFi and NFT content creators. The world of blockchain seemed to get bigger. I felt surprised, but really quite happy to get this role, as it was something I considered really important and didn’t really expect to get this task as an intern.
The highlight and most challenging task of my internship was contributing to the Autonolas Oracle project. Towards the end, I was given the opportunity to work with the Research team on this. Of course, the skill set needed to do the coding for this was very high level and technical, and unfortunately was beyond my abilities. Nevertheless, I believe I was able to provide the perspective of someone who was relatively new to the field for this application’s final touches. This provided me with a solid idea of what it meant to work with a team on a real life project, even though mine was a minor role.
This internship flew by, just like my summer holidays. From the first call I had to interview to the last “Town Hall” (a weekly company meeting), I felt welcomed and like I was a part of this 17-person strong team. There was always someone I could ask for help and receive a reply within an hour, even if the team was spread across 13 different countries. It never made me feel lost.
I am grateful to have had an opportunity to work with this highly qualified, creative and fluid team. It was special.
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