Evgeny Vinnik
Contributing more than 10,000 lines of code, reporting from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, and getting back in the soccer game. These are just a few of Evgeny’s achievements during his graduate co-op placement at Broadcom.
Evgeny’s PhD research is related to mobile phones, and like many passionate coders, he develops smartphone apps as a hobby. He was seeking a development position with a big player in the mobile technology field and was thrilled to be offered a placement with Broadcom, a Fortune 500 wireless communication company.
Evgeny found that setting ambitious goals helped keep him motivated to excel. During his second term, he was determined to learn to write a Software Development Specification (SDS) – a written document, usually created prior to any actual design or development work, of a customer’s system requirements – for a new functionality required by a project plan. He succeeded, and delivered the entire feature almost by himself. He even managed to merge his patch into the main code branch.
Evgeny’s lasting legacy to Broadcom is his contribution of more than 10,000 lines of code, which all had to bypass the rigorous internal review gates. He also made considerable contributions to the internal Broadcom wiki, which provides explanations of different projects for staff. “It’s one thing to know something, but to be able to explain it to someone is much more challenging,” he says.
The placement also expanded his horizons on a personal level. After many years off the field, he renewed his lifelong love of soccer, playing weekly games with other Broadcom employees. Practice makes perfect, they say. Although his stamina was “approaching zero” when he started out, he finished the season as a striker and plans to continue playing soccer recreationally at SFU. He was also able to fulfill a childhood dream of running 10 kilometers and took part in the Vancouver Sun Run with the Broadcom running group, achieving a personal best time.
One of his crowning achievements was taking part in the Broadcom Blogsquad at the Consumer Electronics Shows (CES), the biggest consumer electronics show in the world, which took place in Las Vegas. Broadcom selects several interns who are active on social media to attend the show, take photos and deliver blog posts at the end of the day. Evgeny applied and was selected as the only participant from Canada. “Needless to say, it was an amazing experience,” he says.