Ask the Interns: Uzair Inamdar

by Delphix on September 9, 2019

(Pictured left to right: Michael White, Michelle Feng, Uzair Inamdar, Gaochang Li, Kai Chen)

What inspired you to join Delphix?

It’s not uncommon for people to intern at companies just for the “experience.” What I mean by this is knowing that the work you do will not have an impact on the business, being given a project with no concrete assignment—or even worse, doing plain old busy work. For me, however, I wanted to be on the front lines, tackling real and relevant problems because that’s where I believe actual learning happens. When you’re given the opportunity to work on a project that will serve important use cases, you’re automatically pushed to be at your best, apply critical thinking to every decision, and employ best software engineering practices. With each step, you become more equipped to take on new challenges.

I was inspired to join Delphix because I saw this company as the perfect place to be within this broad spectrum. Not only does the company have a great culture, but Delphix is helping some of the world’s largest companies drive innovation by allowing them to secure and virtualize large amounts of data to build better software. After multiple interviews, I knew this internship would be a perfect place to flex and train my software engineering skills.

What project was your internship focused on?

My internship project had to do with adding theming support (customization of colors) to our Virtualization engine. I designed and built the theming API from scratch to provide users the ability to create, read, update, and delete their own custom themes. I wrote core logic that defined the hierarchy and availability of these themes, which included implementing components to interact with these APIs. This project will allow us to add a personal touch to the product for our partners and customers, empowering them to store more than one theme in the database.

What is the biggest challenge you faced and what did you learn from that experience?

Developing good software engineering practices. This was not easy because it often required me to spend additional time to rewrite pieces of code in a better way. I made it a huge priority to write good and efficient code, so this practice could eventually become second nature to me. Through a number of code reviews and feedback, it became significantly easier for me to apply this method of thinking when I write code.

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What key skills and/or experience have you gained from your time at Delphix?

While the significance of good software engineering skills cannot be stressed enough, I’ve grown most from and have come to greatly value the importance of working with others. While I thought I had plenty of experience with collaborating with others in school, this internship took it to another level. Working with my team made me realize how important it is to learn how to tactfully disagree with someone, provide positive feedback, and give credit where credit is due. I realized these were things I don’t do regularly and that it takes practice and skill to achieve. These are all the ingredients needed to create a high-functioning team with the least possible friction.

What’s one thing you wish you knew before starting this internship?

This quote from the Harry Potter series perfectly sums up what it’s like working at Delphix: “Help will always be given at [Delphix] to those who ask for it.”

While I came into this internship without much knowledge in various programming languages, frameworks, tools, and libraries, I think there was a ton of value coming in with a strong computer science background because you’re always going to have to learn something new no matter what company you work for. Tech is always changing, which means your skills need to constantly evolve as a software engineer.