Fitch Ratings
Somehow I managed to graduate and wrap up my work on request. 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
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 lines of code written by a swath of 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.
the work
We fixed a long list of bugs, added new features, implemented new designs, and more. I got to work with people of all ages and backgrounds — ui/ux, backend, QA, and product. Towards the end, I spent a fair amount of time out of one of their lower-manhattan offices with the product team.
what i took away
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. Beyond building and maintaining those features, I picked up things like custom user analytics and a feel for what running a complex piece of software actually takes.
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 its journey building software products.