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Four years of practice-integrated Bachelor's degree programme (PiBS) at Swisscom. Four years of hard work, sweat - but above all exciting projects, unforgettable moments and lots of practical experience. Four years as a student at the centre of the most exciting industry of our time.
The practice-integrated Bachelor's degree programme in computer science is a federal pilot project designed to enable high school graduates to pursue a degree in computer science while working, without having to complete a year of work placement beforehand. In addition to technical modules such as algorithms and web development or business-related topics such as innovation and user experience, students can specialise in areas such as data science or distributed systems. Students can thus customise their studies to suit their individual wishes and interests. The focus is always on the exchange between theory and practice. This allows students to actively contribute input from their work with the many practice partners and thus further deepen their knowledge of current topics.
I completed this degree programme myself from August 2015 to July 2019. I quickly made my choice of practical partners - I wanted to join Swisscom. Here, students are not assigned to projects, they choose the projects themselves - or simply set them up themselves.
After my first steps as a web developer for projects in the field of network expansion and experience with methods such as Scrum and DevOps, I built up a small team for an internal start-up together with other students. In collaboration with the Kickbox(opens in new tab) intrapreneurship initiative, the vision of a chat application for Swisscom TV emerged from a workshop. After a two-week exchange with our Dutch colleagues at NGTI in Rotterdam, numerous insightful discussions with various experts throughout Swisscom and many lines of code, we were able to conduct a successful alpha with over 200 real users. With the bachelor thesis in mind and hungry for a new technical challenge, I switched to Swisscom Blockchain(opens in new tab) for the last three semesters. As a software engineer in an international team, I helped with consulting for various companies, participated in a custody solution for cryptocurrencies and wrote my bachelor's thesis on distributed crypto exchanges - the starting point for a paper(opens in new tab) that I was later able to publish at an international conference in Toronto.
My career path during my studies at Swisscom is no coincidence. My personal interests and the philosophy of combining theory with practice have accompanied me at every step and in every project. Be it software engineering principles as a web developer, agile frameworks such as Lean Startup as a project manager in our internal startup or various papers and research in the field of crypto-currencies as a software engineer for blockchain technologies. It was precisely this mentality, the large helpful network, experienced colleagues, an innovative environment and countless exciting opportunities within Swisscom that made this time so special for me. Four years of practice-integrated bachelor studies at Swisscom. A wild ride.
DevOps Engineer
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