Two years ago this month I started full-time at itestra GmbH. I’d been there before as an intern and working student, and itestra had supported me during my Master’s thesis. In some ways I knew what I was getting into. In other ways, I didn’t.
A familiar name, a new situation
I knew some colleagues from the Aachen office, and I understood roughly how itestra worked. But the project I joined was new to me — a distributed team, many faces I hadn’t met, and a codebase I’d never seen. More of a fresh start than I’d anticipated.
The weeks leading up to day one hadn’t been quiet either: thesis submitted, colloquium done, apartment moved into — all in the space of about two weeks before I sat down at my desk as a full-time employee. Good planning meant the stress stayed where it belonged and didn’t spill into the job. But it was a lot of transitions in a short time.
Feeling new again
The six months away during my thesis did shift something. When I came back full-time, there was a brief period where I felt like the new person again — the team had moved on, new things had happened, and I was slightly out of step. In hindsight that’s completely normal and probably should have been obvious: six months is a long time, and teams don’t stand still.
The way back in was straightforward: take on tasks, deliver, repeat. The interpersonal side followed naturally once I was visibly contributing again. On the technical side, the new project brought unfamiliar territory — languages and patterns I hadn’t worked with before. What helped there was having learned how to learn: understanding what a language can do, how to read unfamiliar code, how to ask the right questions. I was picking up responsibility fairly quickly, and that more than anything else is what made me feel like I belonged.
Structure as a feature
The biggest adjustment had nothing to do with the work itself. It was the schedule.
As a student — especially during the Master’s thesis — my time was essentially my own. If I wanted to start late, work through the evening, or swap a Wednesday for a Saturday, I could. The only person it affected was me.
That changes completely in a team environment. Itestra has flexible hours, and I use them. But my own standard is that I don’t want to be the person who’s reliably late or unreachable when the team needs to coordinate. In a student project, “I’ll do it a bit later” is fine. In a team, it has a cost — even if nobody says anything.
I don’t resent the structure. I actually enjoy being able to switch off properly on weekends without a Sunday evening anxiety about a deadline that nobody else on the team is working towards. That was a bigger deal than I expected.
What I do occasionally miss is the flip side of that freedom — the ability to say “it’s beautiful outside, I’m not working today, I’ll catch up Saturday.” That’s simply not an option unannounced when other people’s plans depend on you showing up.
Work is a team sport
Two things surprised me about the difference between university and professional work.
The first: university taught me to solve problems alone. A lot of assessments are individual by design — you write your own code, submit your own answers, pass or fail on your own merits. Even group projects often ended up being one or two people doing most of the work while the rest coasted. I saw it happen repeatedly and found it genuinely frustrating.
That hasn’t been my experience at itestra. The team genuinely works as a team. When something needs to get done, people step up. That sounds like a low bar, but after years of university group work, it felt like a meaningful difference.
The second: professional work is genuinely a collective problem. Not just “everyone does their part” — but the actual output depends on how well the team thinks together, communicates, and covers for each other. That’s a different kind of challenge than individual problem-solving, and one I find more interesting.
What I didn’t fully anticipate was how much the interpersonal side would matter. Everyone on the team is working towards the same goal, and it actually shows — in how people communicate, how they handle blockers, how they respond when something goes wrong. That alignment isn’t something you can take for granted, and I’ve come to appreciate it more the longer I’m there.
Would I do it differently?
Probably yes. In hindsight, taking a month or two off between finishing the Master’s and starting full-time would have been the sensible move. Going from thesis submission to colloquium to moving to full-time employment in a matter of weeks is a lot of transitions at once.
But that’s also just who I am. I tend to jump from one thing to the next without much of a pause, and I don’t think I would have done it differently even if I’d known. There’s a mild regret when I think about it — and then I remember that the alternative was sitting around waiting to start, which doesn’t appeal to me either.
Two years in: still enjoying it, still learning, and not planning to slow down anytime soon.
If any of this resonates — or if your experience looked completely different — I’d love to hear about it. Feel free to reach out via the contact page.