Vinted Engineering

The post was written by Elena Lapinskaitė after her internship at Vinted.

When you’re 18, there are so many ‘firsts’ to experience. Your first driving ticket, your first holiday abroad on your own (and getting lost in Warsaw in the middle of the night with a dead phone, fun), your first morning not remembering what happened the night before, your first diagnosis of arthritis and first dentures. And your first proper work experience.

Mine was at Vinted. Not the dentures, but the work experience, or as some call it — ‘shadowing’. Being a technology enthusiast, I wanted to see what things look like behind the glass walls of a young, successful start-up. For 5 days in the middle of July I had the chance to get an insight of the magic that is performed in product management.

One thing I noticed right away - or shall I say, was blown away by - was the amount of English terms in a Lithuanian sentence. Andrius, who, (I’ve counted) managed to use 7 out of 10 words that weren’t of his own language, was the definite winner.

All in all, the week was great. The experience that I gained during the 5 short days completely outweighed my expectations.

I learned so many new words and ways to get through things in the complicated world of business. I attempted to analyse statistics and make calculations based on predictions. I saw what a serious job interview looked like. I sat in many interesting meetings, thinking “wow, this makes sense, I’d actually like to do this kind of thing when I graduate”. I participated in the traditional ‘Vinted day’ where I got to learn about new features and successes of the brand. Vinted even debunked a myth in my head that an office is not a suitable place for a dog.

I have realised that no matter what, there is always space for improvement and to advance. The feedback that I’ve received from my curator Tautvydas is going to be very useful towards my future career aspirations, and perhaps even modify my university course choices. And although it was my first time at Vinted, I’d like to believe that it was not my last.