Dev Catalyst Alumni Spotlight: Semal Sheh
“It never felt like there was pressure it was just fun,” says Semal Sheh, sophomore computer science major at Stevens Institute of Technology and this week’s Dev Catalyst Alumni Spotlight.
Dev Catalyst was Sheh’s first coding class and an opportunity to learn HTML and CSS. Completing the project for the competition was what really encouraged him to learn how to code.
“The competition forced me to learn mostly because I didn’t want to turn in a bad project so it forced me to go home and learn,” says Sheh. “So, the whole site was just me learning how to code. It was a great experience for me and I had a lot of fun making it.”
I can tell by his smile that he did enjoy the experience and his hard work must have paid off because his project landed him a spot as “Code Champion” which for Dev Catalyst means a trip to San Francisco.
“San Francisco was great and I really enjoyed touring companies like Pivotal and LinkedIn and talking to all of the people that worked there. Now that I think of it, the trip to San Francisco is what made me want to move to New York City. I really enjoyed being in the city, and seeing all of these companies and opportunities.”
Sheh shared that while home recently from New Jersey he ran into Dan Drogosh, theCO’s Operations Manager. Drogosh invited Sheh to stop by theCO and catch up during his break. When he did he was able to connect with Sodium Halogen and land an internship with them. Sodium Halogen is an interactive design company based in theCO that focuses on software design, user-experience design, branding, and much more.
“I’ve been working on multiple projects with Sodium Halogen,” says Sheh. “I like that we’re not doing one thing all-day. It’s refreshing to have 3-4 tasks to do that are completely different. There are things I’m familiar with and a lot of new things that I’m being introduced to. Using Github is new to me, I’ve heard about it in school but I’ve never used it in a professional setting where your organization depends on it. It’s been interesting to see how integral it is for day-to-day operations.”
Sheh says he’s enjoyed the team dynamic because everyone knows each other and that he’s looking forward to continuing his internship with Sodium Halogen remotely through his spring semester. Sheh is proof that you never know what networking will lead to and staying connecting has its perks. He ends our conversation, giving encouragement to young students who are interested in coding and Dev Catalyst.
“Just do it. You’ll figure out if you like it or not,” he says. “You don’t know if you like it yet. If you have space on your schedule and you think it could interest you-- just take it.”
To learn more about Dev Catalyst and all it offers for students, click here.