You will learn a lot in a classroom, but in the end, nothing beats learning by doing. It took quite a mindset switch for Kristof Bruyninckx when he joined Kapernikov as data consultant fresh out of college at the end of 2018, but a couple of years of learning on the job rather than from books later, he is happy to find himself working in a supportive environment that motivates him to always keep growing.
Learning by doing
Kristof remembers how, as a teenager, his brother first showed him how to program in C++ and he applied what he had seen in a high school project. This in turn made it an easy choice to study Computer Sciences at KULeuven and focus his masters on AI and software development. But Kristof was also clear that he wanted to build expertise through practical experience.
“I was looking for a challenging position when I came across Kapernikov. One of the things I liked the most during my interview was getting a small demo of the KIPP project, which showed me what they were doing in the field of deep learning and AI. The cherry on the cake was that I even got to work on an extension of that project when I started.”
Is this the real life?
Since then, Kristof has mainly been working on projects for Optimum Sorting, who design and build optical sorting machines for the food industry. Here, he has enjoyed varied work that has enabled him to learn a lot about, well, a lot. From software development to expand the machines’ operators’ GUI over integrating machine learning into their systems and developing deep learning algorithms: he immersed himself in many facets and found it to be extra gratifying to see the results of his work in real life.
“It’s cool to be involved from concept to execution, so that you can see the results of your work with your own eyes: seeing a sorting machine start to sort products based on your algorithm brings you a lot of satisfaction.”
Teamwork makes the dream work
Of course, it is also teamwork that made this dream work. Balance is everything: you grow a lot by being willing to work independently, but just as much from bouncing your ideas off colleagues who are experienced in the field.
“I like how we work together as a team. We are all free to organize our own work the way it suits us best, but help is always near when you need it. There is always someone who can offer advice or a different perspective on the problem you are looking at. Likewise, it’s great that everyone is welcome to contribute to what the final solution will look like by giving their input, rather than just having to execute tasks blindly.”