Becoming culturally fit, with Infosys!

Aniebiet Abasi Akpan Aniebiet Abasi Akpan belongs to St Loius, Missouri, and has completed his Bachelor’s in Chemistry. He is working as an Associate with Infosys, and, presently developing an application on Service Now platform, for his team’s client-Radial

I’ve always been a huge fan of variety. Until I was a teenager I dreamed of being a Da Vinci style polymath with big successes as an artist, musician, cinematographer, engineer, astronaut, soccer player, scientist, and developer. Anything I spent more than 5 seconds on was quickly added to the list of things I was going to master. Of course the bubble burst and I woke up to the hard lessons of life. Time is short and you cannot be great at everything to why not focus on what you love and what you’re best at? I soon realized that the underlying theme of all my passions and talents was a love of solving problems. So I decided to make a career out of it!

Fast forward to my senior year at Carleton College. After half a dozen internships and three and a half years of classes I discovered that I’m really interested in learning about the problems we can solve when we creatively marry the chemicals and materials that make up our world with the various applications of digital technology. I nourished long term dreams of innovations in spaces like additive manufacturing, medical devices, and energy storage. I was a declared chemistry major so I had that side of the coin down pat. My tech side, however, was lacking. Besides data structures a few HCI classes and failed attempts at developing video games, I didn’t have any formal experience in the computer sciences.

I knew that was going to have to change if I was going to fulfill my life goals. And that’s when it struck me- that working for a technology company could be the best way for me to learn! But finding an entry level job in tech, that was as much about learning as it was about providing immediate value, was easier said than done. And then I found Infosys.

In Infosys, I found a company that really invests in me as an employee. I spent the first 9 weeks after onboarding being trained to be a full-stack java developer. I built upon my Java, HTML, and CSS knowledge and learned entirely new technologies like SQL, Angular, and Bootstrap.

Then there was the project specific training at the beginning of our project to give us more context for solving the client’s problems. I was taken aback by the wealth of internal resources available for anyone at the company, if they had the willingness to refine their skills. There were even courses available for mastering the technologies I’ve always been interested in – like additive manufacturing! The culture itself was conducive to learning – open spaces and a love for experimentation across.

My managers respond to curiosity and questions with excitement and intrigue, rather than disapproval. The biggest thing is that I never feel dumb while asking questions and voicing opinions. Everyone’s different, but as a curious nerd who just really appreciates an environment that endorses curiosity, what Infosys provides me is invaluable.

My two cents to you would be that no matter where you work or what you do, find a company that values you and learns with you. In Infosys, I found just that.