Twin Cities Maverick Hunter Kievet shares his experience working with Maverick Software Consulting and outlines his post-graduation plans.

School:

• University of Minnesota Twin Cities

Degree program:

• BS Management Information Systems, BA Computer Science

Planned graduation year:

• 2016

How long have you worked with Maverick?

• I’ve worked at Maverick since the end of March 2014 — about 8 months.

Why did you join Maverick?

• I joined Maverick to make some money doing what I like — programming.

What are the benefits of working at Maverick?

• The people that work and used to work for Maverick are awesome. When I’m at Thomson Reuters, there is always someone to eat lunch with that is a Maverick.

• The pay is great and the work is rewarding.

• The work atmosphere at both Thomson Reuters and Maverick allows and promotes creativity.

• The Minneapolis office is extremely close to campus and bus routes.

• Hacky sack.

What have you learned so far?

• I learned how to work on a development team and how to conduct myself in technical meetings.

• I learned an awful lot about the .NET platform, the MVC model, Groovy on Grails, SQL, and front end web development.

What kind of projects have you been working on?

• I work on an internal business intelligence web application. I’m currently working on migrating the application from a Microsoft stack to an Oracle/Java based stack.

What does your typical day working at Maverick consist of?

• A typical day at Maverick consists of a lot of coffee, a lot of coding, a lot of music, anywhere between zero and four meetings related to my project, some hacky sack, a meal and some good conversations between coworkers.

How is Maverick different than other internships or work experiences?

• In previous internships, I would receive tasks that the full time employees didn’t want to do. The work was not fulfilling.

• Maverick differs in that I’m doing the same work as full-time employees. I am getting real experience with a real project that makes a real impact and am encouraged to make proposals at meetings. My opinions are valued, and that makes the work much more rewarding.

What’s your favorite project so far and why?

• I’ve been working on the same project since I came to Maverick so it defaults to my favorite. I like that my position fulfills both the back-end and front-end developer roles. I get to interact with all the technology being used on the project which allows me to grasp its inner workings.

What’s your advice to other students who want to get into programming?

• Try to get a job at Maverick!

• Read about new technologies and try them out. Setting up a development environment can be difficult but it is rewarding. There is no “best” programming language. Learning and understanding a language becomes easier with each new one.

What are your plans after graduation?

• Ultimately, I want to work for a company like Blizzard or Valve. However, I think I will work full-time wherever I can get a job programming for a few years after college to pay off student loans.