Microsoft Student Trainee Center is a selective program for high school students with a passion for modern technologies and a desire to pass on their knowledge. They/We are a community that shares their passion for innovation. I somehow got into this program two years ago and, here's how it went :D
Introduction
In January 2021 I got accepted into Microsoft Student Trainee Center, and I was really hyped about it. As a programmer, I was logically put into the Azure Programming Action Group. I was thrilled about being put into Azure Programming AG, because I knew it will be the perfect fit for me. I knew beforehand that this program is more IT/Marketing focused as opposed to being purely technical, however, I was ok with that, since my PR/Marketing/Soft skills were mid at best at the time (still kinda struggling :D) and needed some polishment. But what is STC anyways? Well, for a more PR(e) version, you can use the link above, however, if you want to experience it from my point of view, keep on reading!
First of all, they set you up with their Microsoft accounts, since it's fully remote. Then they explain to you their values and beliefs, which is totally reasonable since they are a community and every community has some rules. Then in the span of half a year, you get an in-depth introduction into the office suite with certification vouchers at the end, to prove your skills. The second half of the year and the second year, in general, is more cloud-oriented, you will gain a lot of in-depth knowledge about Microsoft's cloud ecosystem, especially Azure and Microsoft 365 Administration through a countless number of webinars.
During all of this, there are a lot of other webinars about a wide array of topics, team buildings, hackathons, Microsoft events, STC events, and a lot of other optional extra activities you can participate in. If you want to spend time learning and growing, you will be given the opportunity, however, it has to be from your own initiative (healthy/good approach imo). You're not forced to do anything extra, nonetheless students usually still decide to put their (free) time and effort into these extra activities. In general, the more time you put into the program and help out others, the more opportunities and gained knowledge will come back your way.
Then "graduation" comes around. You can either choose your own topic for your "graduation project", or you can pick one of the options that are provided every year. Personally, I believe that it's better to pick one of the provided options, instead of making-up your own, because a lot of the times, you'll be cooperating on it with STC partnered company (like KPCS CZ in my case). After some consideration, I picked migration from on-premises to Cloud as my final project. I don't actually know how much of the finished work can be published, so (just to be sure) here's only the abstract and table of contents:
--------- ABSTRACT ---------
The topic of this thesis will be the migration of one Ubuntu 22.04 server from on-premises to the cloud.
Maximum downtime is one hour, between 18:00 and 19:00 on an earlier specified day.
The server is running automated tasks, docker containers, nginx, and a bunch of other services.
The task assignment is to move the Linux server to the cloud, configure ssh server,
check that all programs are set up and running correctly.
The work will include an analysis of cloud options, an analysis of the on-premises server,
analysis of the options provided by the selected cloud provider for migration,
several migration plans, selection of the best strategy, execution of the work and a
final summary of the whole work.
.-----------------------------------.
| TABLE OF CONTENTS |
|-----------------------------------|
| 1. Introduction |
| 1.1 Assumptions |
| 1.2 Limitations |
| 2. Analysis of On-premises Server |
| 3. Analysis of Cloud Providers |
| 3.1 AWS |
| 3.2 Azure |
| 3.3 Conclusion |
| 5. Possible Migration Plans |
| 5.1 Manual Migration |
| 5.2 Azure Migrate |
| 6. Execution of the chosen plan |
| 7. Summary |
| 8. Acknowledgments |
'-----------------------------------'
The good
- I was given the opportunity to develop part of the internal infrastructure for like half a year. During this time, I got really familiar with Microsoft's Graph API and generally coding with tight integration of Microsoft products. Personally, this alone could be the sole reason to go into STC once again.
- STC provided me with certification vouches, which allow(ed) me to prove that I actually know the things I claim to know.
- STC started and fueled my passion for writing blog posts and sharing code/information in general.
- The in-person meetings - just trust me on this one, because it could be another post in itself :D
The bad
Everything has some negative aspects to it, unfortunately, STC has/had some as well. One of the biggest problems I saw, was the management. The program was still in its (what I would consider) "early" days when I got in. This meant that during the two years, I was there, I saw the leadership "restructure" at least twice! I believe that nowadays it's not that big of a problem and the current management is more or less stable, however, I found that kinda annoying at the time.
Is it worth it?
Yeah, probably. If you're more technical (like me), there are a lot of people who are more than happy to help you with anything related to security/programming/IoT/IT/etc with in-depth explanations, as for the rest of the "org", they're more PR/Marketing focused. If you don't know where to start or want to perfect your understanding of Microsoft technologies, you should consider joining, however, if you already have a really solid understanding of Microsoft technologies, and keep yourself periodically informed about the latest Microsoft stuff, the program itself will not provide you with any new knowledge. That being said, the two crucial benefits that the program will provide you with, regardless of your knowledge/skill level, are: connections to talented people (from a range of domains) who know their stuff AND opportunities (like certifications, internal development, helping out at Microsoft events, and many more). Is that worth it? Depends on your own personal/professional goals, but I would highly suggest you give it a shot.
Proof that I actually finished it :D
I hope you enjoyed this article/blog post!
If you have any questions, problems or want to start a discussion, don't hesitate and write me an email!