Name: Dan Finnegan

Year: Junior

Majors: Mathematics, Economics

CFS Program: Business Field Studies

Employer: Nousot

Something I was warned about early on in my interview was the need to be able to learn under fire. I was told stories of new employees being put on daunting challenges in coding to try to learn quickly simply because they had to. While there was some training for me, a lot of the things that I have learned so far have been this type of “learning under fire”.

This past week I was given the task of learning Python’s statistical modeling set and formulating a model to estimate and predict the unemployment rate in America, all before I had ever written a line in the language. Tasks like these are not uncommon around the office as employees seem to be challenged intellectually all around the office. I am always happy to come into an office that will keep me intellectually stimulated and continue to develop my skills as an employee. I am sure these types of challenges show up in other offices and industries but I think that tech/software startups are a great place to go to really put your brain to work.