What being an intern looks like

As of 2024/07/05, I've become an intern at a small web development team. This page was made to document my progress and to just talk about any funny happenings.

2024/07/11

The team's really small, but exceedingly chill and open-minded, including the boss. They don't question shit about my gender, which is pretty cool.

While I haven't done a lick of coding these past business days, I did learn a lot about how to plan a website- mostly SEO stuff- which I find to be fascinating, even though I don't plan on adding it to this site. Just learning how the pros do it is really neat!

So, my first project was to write up meta-titles and meta-descriptions for an accounting firm site. I got complimented on my work, that was pretty nice... especially since it's something I had never done or even thought about before.

The main project the team has been focused on has been an incredibly complex site for escorts to post their advertisements (no, really). Think of it like a Portuguese OnlyFans but with more features... I've been having to test out how the user experience is and gathering images and videos to use as examples. Of course, the boss asked me if I was okay with helping out first.

Now, I don't really know what makes a woman sexy, and it took a long-ass time to find collections from the same models. We tried going open-source, which made the initial process a lot harder, but eventually the boss ditched that idea when he realized that, holy shit, no one with an eye for photography organizes their erotica collections properly or credit their models.

Eventually the boss ended up paying 20 bucks for an account on a long-running Playboy-esque site. I'm not saying which one, as I think their business is pretty sketchy... and some of the girls looked really young, which disturbed everyone in the team. Naturally, we aren't including those as examples.

Despite all of that, all the models had both videos and tons of photos and they were all organized in their own collections. So, I guess we're playing with the cards we're given...

I could go on about my opinions on prostitution and porn, I'll keep it at saying that people should do whatever they want with their bodies unless there's some pimp or something involved (that's not as much of a problem here, as pimping's illegal). I actually have a lot of opinions about the subjects, but eh, we're not paid to judge these women (or, in my case, not paid at all).

2024/08/06

It's been a week since my first month at the office, and I've been enjoying a vacation imposed by my school. I had nearly forgotten about this post with how busy I had gotten!

So, what's been happening? Well, I designed an entire site for that accounting firm I mentioned in the last entry... on Wordpress, blech. I mean, It's not like I could have done it in such a short amount of time without it, and the clients did pay for a Wordpress site. Not my preferred method of making sites, but hey, you don't get to do everything you want to do at work.

Speaking of the site, we filled it with ChatGPT-generated descriptions as examples for good SEO. I'm not against AI in this context, but God, I'm hoping the guys will at least change some things around... I highly doubt it though, I've heard the firm is ran by some older guys with little to no tech literacy.

Most of my days were spent doing that. Sometimes I'd run out of things to do, and it would always be in the same days the boss would leave us alone... so, no feedback and no more ordering around. Not going to lie here, me and the other interns would spend our free time playing Tetris whenever that was the case (one of the other interns is amazing at Tetris, by the way). We were always ready to help out the other workers, though that didn't often happen.

Anyways, the clientele at a web development office ranges from primary schools and accounting firms to escort services and shamans. It's kind of wild, seeing all these different people and services come to the same place, but I suppose every service wants a site nowadays. The whole office often joked about that- if nothing else, I'm glad this team is so chill.

2024/09/05

My days of «unrestrained summer fun» (staying at home taking care of the cats) ended a few days ago, so back to the internship I go. It's been kinda busy there... mostly because of the escort site.

It should go without saying, but don't go into an internship expecting to do the cool stuff. I didn't expect to learn much code, but I wasn't expecting to edit assets for the site and its promotion. Not that I'm complaining, really, it's not terribly interesting stuff but it is fun to figure out how to make something that both appeals to the people and the market (besides, I am currently a multimedia student, so...). Of course, since the main project is the escort site, I have looked at enough scantily clad women to last me a lifetime. I didn't mention it yet, but we went open-source again, which I do appreciate since it means I don't have to stare and obscenely boring and ethically questionable pornography.

I guess it is kind of a cool project if it means we've at least helped some women gain a couple of bucks. If the site itself ends up not being big like the client wants it to be it'd be kinda lame, but it's no skin off my back either way.

Speaking of the client, I'm not entirely sure how she's gonna make her money back, considering the site is free to use and she doesn't take any money from the escorts themselves unless they pay a subscription to have their ads featured. I feel it's a lot better when it comes to ethics and all, but I have to wonder if it can survive in the capitalist hellscape we live in.

2024/09/18

No more working on the escort site for me (for now, at least). I've been making another Wordpress site, this time for a women's health clinic. I'm pretty far in, I've arrived at the stage where I'm just looking for minor mistakes in the layouts of the site.

Of course, since this is a corporate site, you can't exactly have too much fun with the layouts or have too many of them. So I've just been staring at the same pages over and over on desktop, tablet and mobile to look for stuff to fix.

Word of advice: whatever you do, don't lose Internet access when you're working in Wordpress. Yesterday I spent an hour and a half doing nothing productive because we lost Internet access... and since my computer didn't have a working Wi-Fi connection, I couldn't even use a hotspot from my boss's phone. Hey, at least I had saved my progress beforehand.

Picture related, it's what I was working on during that time. Thank God for MS Paint...?