Somehow I managed to graduate, wrap up my work on request and with the internship under my belt, I got hired into a contracting position at Fitch Ratings. Believe it or not, this job was actually easier to land than the internship. That said, it was much more in depth and I finally started getting my hands dirty...

Fitch Connect was my main focus during my time here. They describe it as such...

Fitch Connect can intuitively and seamlessly help you manage risk more efficiently and turn opportunities into realities.

I was there during the early stages of this build out, around a time when they were pulling it in-house after some initial outsourcing. This transition was interesting to say the least. It was the first complex web application I dove into, consisting of thousands of code written by a swath of different different developers. Some bits were well written and documented while others had major shortcomings.

It was built with backbone, at a time when backbone and other MVC frameworks were still fairly prevalent, and grunt was used for concatenation / task management. The app contained...

• Search functionality and autocompletes.
• Data tables containing risk data.
• Forms and advanced filtering options.
• Account management and portfolio construction.

We fixed a seemingly insurmountable list of bugs, added new features, implemented new designs, and more. I got to work with folks of all ages and backgrounds ranging from the ui/ux and backend teams to quality assurance folks and product managers. Towards the end of my stint here, I spent a fair amount of time working out of one of their offices in lower manhattan with a bunch of the product management team.

I have no idea where the application is now, but at the very least it does seem to still be alive. As a non-finance person, I can't say I loved the tool itself but diving into this codebase was definitely a game changer for me as a programmer. Aside from exposure to building and maintaining all of the above-mentioned features, I got experience with things like custom user analytics and insight into what managing a complex piece of software is like.

I met a lot of cool folks at fitch, some who I've stayed in contact with, and learned a lot. My next company was a big jump as I went from a well established financial company to a tiny cyber security firm that was only just starting it's journey building software products.