I have always been more of a practical person than a theorist. That's why it was clear to me that if I was going to study, I also wanted to gain practical experience. I want to apply my knowledge directly and put what I have learned into practice. A dual study programme offers this combination.

It was a great fit in terms of colleagues, and in the end, the portfolio was the most appealing to me.

Very closely intertwined. I have a very dedicated contact person in my department manager, whom I always kept informed about the current status of my studies and who worked with me to develop a plan for transferring the content in the module handbook for the respective semester into tasks at work. The best example: relatively early on, when everything was still general and basic, I had a database module in the introductory courses. At iSAM, I was then given the task of designing a database, implementing it and ultimately integrating it into an application.

If you are interested in training or further education and there is a need for it, then this can be arranged through the official channels. However, you also always have the opportunity to gain insights into other projects and learn from them or have things explained to you. Due to the complex projects we do, you constantly discover new things or potential for optimisation, which in turn allows you to improve your know-how. Because we work very closely with technology and processes, you naturally have a great many opportunities to develop very quickly in terms of processes and technology.

As a software developer at iSAM, you have a wide range of tasks that go beyond the duties of a normal software developer. When I compare this with my fellow students, my tasks are much broader. As a software developer here, I am not just a programmer; we also work with colleagues from the hardware department to consider the hardware and the structuring of processes and procedures. You are also involved in commissioning. You put your software into operation as you have implemented it. At the beginning of my studies, I mainly worked on internal projects, developing tools that my colleagues needed. Once I had acquired sufficient expertise, I was able to write appropriate tools for customer projects.

Well, if I had to explain it in two simple words: very well. It's invaluable when you gain professional experience alongside your studies. And if you then stay with the company where you trained, you have an incredible advantage because you already know the processes. For example, in terms of programming, you know the specific structures and procedures, you know how certain libraries are set up and how you can expand them. More generally, you already have experience in the working world and therefore know how to apply your theoretical knowledge. Knowing how a programming language works and how to use it is one thing. But it's another thing to think about what the architecture for a piece of software might look like and why. And what other things you need to consider - things like scalability, robustness, all that stuff. I would say that these are the things that have prepared me very well for working life and that I realise give me an advantage over my full-time fellow students.

Very collegial, friendly, open-minded, humorous. From the very beginning, I have been treated like a full member of the team and, above all, taken seriously. At first, you often think, 'Should I ask this question now?', because maybe the answer is obvious. But then I plucked up the courage and asked these questions anyway, and I was welcomed with open arms. People took the time to explain things to me. My department manager looked at my results and talked to me about my wishes and plans. I think it's great here that most of my colleagues are really humorous and always very direct, but never in a mean or negative way. We toss jokes at each other here, but only because they share the same sense of humour. People talk about how their holidays and weekends were.

I always really enjoy collaborative work. When it comes to discussing and exchanging ideas with colleagues and perhaps hearing what a colleague thinks and how they approach a problem, how you can interlink your own work and that of your colleagues so that you ultimately achieve the desired result. The other thing is seeing something work out the way you planned it. That sounds very trivial, but when I have a plan for something and know exactly how it should work, and then I manage to implement it and see that it eventually works exactly as it should, that's always a highlight for me.

First and foremost: be open to new things and be open-minded. Because in my experience, the topics you are confronted with here go far beyond the knowledge imparted in your studies. Here, you don't deal with theoretical problems, but with ship unloaders or stockyard machines, where you are dealing with real problems. That requires more. That's why anyone who wants to start here should definitely be curious and interested, because the projects here offer so much innovation and so many opportunities that you can apply and accommodate.

Primarily, of course, everything related to computer science, especially my programming skills. I was able to improve on the basic knowledge I gained during my studies through my work here, mainly software development, i.e. pure coding. But I would say that I have definitely improved my organisational skills as well. And what I have also learned for myself, mainly through practical experience, are soft skills. I feel that I am now much better at assessing people. Not 100%, but better, because you simply work with many different people on different bases.