We always save space for interns at AIMMS. In fact, it’s built into our employee headcount! We believe that it’s a great win-win scenario in which we bring in fresh talent to do whatever it is they do best, and we can share our knowledge and experience to help them transition to their future careers.
And, in some cases, we win a new AIMMSian! (Fun fact: Gertjan de Lange, our Chief Executive AIMMSian, had his first role at AIMMS as an intern!)
The most recent cohort presented their projects during our annual AIMMS Connect Week (a social energizer event for AIMMS employees), and I took the opportunity to chat with them about their internship experience. In this interview we discussed impressions about working at AIMMS, learning new technical skills, surprises, and takeaways.
BTW: If you are looking for an internship, keep your eyes on our Careers page, and follow us on LinkedIn! Even if we don’t have a current opening, you can send an open application (send your resume as an attachment).
First off, introductions...
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Fergus Hathorn is a Business Analytics Master’s Student at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The internship was part of his thesis project, where he evaluated an approach to modeling uncertainty in supply chains. He begins next month as an AIMMS employee on the SC Navigator development team!
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Milo van Houwelingen is completing his Bachelor's at Fontys Hogeschool Tilburg.
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Thomas van den Hout is studies Mathematical Engineering at Fontys Hogeschool Eindhoven.
Milo and Thomas worked jointly on a cargo routing problem, which will become an open source AIMMS example – coming soon!
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Robbert Ritsma is a Masters student at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. For his internship, Robbert worked on a real-world problem in a factory setting, working with state task networks.
What were your first impressions of AIMMS during the first days?
FH: On the first day, Paul van Nierop (Product Owner of AIMMS SC Navigator) introduced me to who would be helpful. He was my go-to whenever I needed something. Then I also hopped around, asking lots of different people questions.
Everyone was super welcoming and interested in what I was doing, and really willing to help. There are so many people here who are wildly good at what they do and really want to impart their knowledge!
MvH: On my first day I met Luis Pinto (Customer Success Lead for AIMMS Low-code Platform) and talked to the team I would be closest to. My first impression was that I could ask anything. That was nice! In the past, I had difficulty asking questions, but here, they were interested in what I was doing, and told me to just ask whenever I needed any help.
What was it like learning the new skills you needed to work through your project?
FH: I had never used AIMMS before. I was surprised how intuitive it was to learn AIMMS. Coming from using mainly Python, I thought it would be a big challenge to learn a new language, but the modeling side is super intuitive in AIMMS. Procedures and that kind of thing. I had to learn some key concepts, but once it "clicked", I found it quite simple.
MvH: Before I had worked with only the basics of programming and modeling in AIMMS, but not the coding or WebUI, so learning that was a good experience. I took the first 4 days to learn AIMMS Basics and WebUI, which was a good enough start to get to work and be able to fix most problems that came up.
What were the biggest surprises as you worked through your project?
MvH: Surprises...I thought building the WebUI was going to be hard, since I'd never done it before. But that was actually the easy part. It didn't take long to find what I wanted from the widgets.
RR: In my project, I found it relatively easy to find a solution, but creating a model that is efficient to solve is harder. But I enjoyed the process of cleaning up the model to make it more efficient.
What do you take away from the internship?
RR: The thing I take away from this internship is how much having friendly colleagues matters. It made asking questions easier...everything just becomes easier. It opens headspace to work on the project instead of slowly trudging along on your own.
MvH: What I take for the future, is that it makes it easier when there are nice people around to help you. And when you get close to them, you want to make them proud, so you work harder to make a good product in the end. And – I'll take the WebUI knowledge with me.
FH: When I came in, I was worried about making a good impression, which stopped me from asking a lot of questions. But once I understood what AIMMS is all about, a lot of my biggest breakthroughs in the project came from informal conversations. I was talking to someone around the coffee machine, someone who didn't have anything to do with my project, had no personal investment in it, but was able to give me really good advice. I realized, in a company like this, the more open you are about challenges you're working through, the more people will respect what you're doing.
Big thanks to all of these interns for their time and hard work! 🙌