Hi everyone! I’m Steven Chung, a Computer Science/Business Option and Three-Year Geography student at the University of Waterloo. I just started a co-op term at Rypple. Yeah, my designation is mouthful, but I enjoy learning a variety of things. I’ve transferred a few times and know what it’s like to be unsure of what career path to take. After jumping around, I found an interest in design. I read about it almost every day — you can follow along on my Google Reader feed if you’re interested.

I learned a ton of stuff during my last co-op term at Xtreme Labs and I wanted to see what other start-ups are up to. Rypple attracted me because I read a blogTO post that featured Rypple. I also wanted to stay close to home, I can’t picture myself going to California permanently yet. Plus, the commute is surprisingly one of my better commutes from Markham.

During my first week at Rypple, I’ve been setting up my development environment, learning about the code, reading up on the frameworks and fixing bugs. I’ll be honest: they aren’t the most fun things in the world, but you gotta learn them somehow. Plus it’s been really interesting getting up speed on the app and how the dev team here works.

My goal for this term is to learn about website design. Whether you want to design a user interface, craft some code or do some marketing work, you’ll get to see many aspects of a startup during a co-op term. And with weekly one-on-one’s, I get to clearly express what I’d like to do. The team has shown clear motivation to move me towards my goals, starting with weekly user testing on Wednesdays.

To me, all of my six co-op placements had their own special thing. So far, I think Rypple’s magic comes from its people. The people at Rypple are the most enthusiastic co-workers I’ve had. You can always ask for help whenever you’re stuck and someone will be glad to lend a hand. Your concerns are taken into account whenever you speak up, which kinda makes sense considering that Rypple is about employee feedback software. The next best thing is the perks. You get free snacks and subsidized gym membership! I also get to work with three monitors in front of a window with a nice view. Weekly group lunches are awesome and we just got a PS3 on Friday.

And that’s my thoughts on working at Rypple so far! I look forward to seeing more and hopefully learn lots about design. Stay tuned for more updates.