Letter to a new Clio Co-op
From a departing Clio Co-op
Welcome to Clio!
There are a number of different approaches companies take working with co-op students in software development, but Clio is one of the rare few that will essentially take you on as Junior Developer. If you are here looking for some early career experience, you are in the right place.
I’m writing this in my last week at Clio, where I’ve done my 4th and 5th co-op work terms for a Bachelors at the University of Victoria. I worked full-stack with the team building the Client Portals feature, from prototype to early release. While it’s hard to put my full experience into words, here’s a look at my time at Clio and some of my key learnings that I’ll also keep with me on my path forward.
On-boarding
On-boarding is going to feel like a lot of information coming at you at once, and that’s really what it is. Some advice; don’t expect yourself to learn everything. There are lots of resources and lots of people willing to help — and it’s okay to ask the same question more than once! Clio has large and complex code bases, but recognizing and following software patterns will help you be able to navigate quicker.
Sharpening your skills
I found trying to learn Ruby on Rails from scratch before doing real work wasn’t that helpful, because getting into the real work was a good learning experience. In my experience, the best learning tools were other people’s conversations on pull requests and on Slack. Not only does it not bother people when you ask a lot of questions, it gets noticed that you are engaged and interested.
Beyond coding
Writing code is far from the only skill you’ll work on at Clio. There is a huge opportunity here to learn about the engineering that goes into releasing and maintaining code as well.
Lean into the resources
There are a number of apps in tech stack that make your life easier and knowing how they work helps to understand large parts of a tech company’s pipeline.
Gathering context
Communication makes up a huge part of working, especially in the remote environment. I spent a lot of time reading anything I could get my hands on across GitHub, Slack, Discourse, and Confluence. Other sections of the department and company are very open and great to engage with to see how your job fits into the bigger picture.
Overall, I had a great time at Clio! It’s clear that the company is high functioning, with many moving pieces, at times it was overwhelming how much information seemed to be moving around me at the speed of light. Clio’s culture is one that is striving to prove that it can scale and be both “human and high-performing”, so don’t forget the “human” part and take the time to connect with the team, and breathe if you need it.
Rylan Cole
August 2021
