My summer internship at Netscout ended as planned after just four months on October 31, 2022. It was a phenomenal learning experience and even ended with two "big bangs".
Firstly, I was invited to the bi-annual in-person team meeting in Westford, Massachusetts. That was it: My first travel to the US of A. It was great finally having face-to-face contact to the people I worked with in the last four months.
The second "big bang" was my manager who approached me to consider a longer-term commitment with Netscout. We discussed a bunch of options, and I asked politely for a few days to consider this opportunity. It sounded like a great opportunity, but was I up for the challenge of a part-time job for a global player in the Internet industry?
The team meeting in Westford sold it to me. The time there was phenomenal. The team is extremely supportive and open towards "fresh wind" from university. We discussed a couple of larger projects which leave plenty of room to contribute. The moment to join the team could not be better. I replied to my manager and we arranged the contractual details in early November. I signed the contract in retrospective for November 01. Since then, I call myself a (part-time) Research Analyst of the Netscout ASERT team.
Before agreeing to this job offer, I discussed the opportunity with my
back-then project team - a few of the OpenINTEL people. We worked
together on a dashboard to monitor and visualize the DNSSEC resiliency
of the two ccTLDs .li and .ch (Lichtenstein and Switzerland).
My old project tem consists mostly of university staff, all responsible for OpenINTEL. They were supportive and happy when I shared the news. They also gave some advice and explained their perspective. The team explained the pros and cons, the expectations and the opportunities I get when working for a company the scale of Netscout.
All in all, they helped me a lot to make the right decision. Further, we agreed on me switching to an advisory position. This allows me to jump in and support whenever my expertise/knowledge is required.
I am looking forward to the projects I will be working on at Netscout ASERT.