Guest Blog Post: Guide for young minds for the wonders of tech 

During our Easter work experience week, we asked our students to complete a blog post about their experiences. Here, Ethan tells us what he learned.

Introductions 

For my work experience I worked for the Altitude Foundation, where I was tasked with making a blog post on “giving other young people guidance about different journeys, and if they have any advice for young people looking to get into a tech career”. To start off I decided to research and interview Scott Logic staff members. 

Scott Logic 

Scott Logic is a tech company that “love difficult”, they solve puzzles and analyse critical problems for large businesses around the world and across a range of industries. They bring professionals to innovate, engineer and analyse to “offer support that’s both expertly technical and reassuringly human. People are at the heart of what we do”. 

Interview 1 

We had first interviewed a man named Matthew, a senior developer who had studied politics and geography before taking an apprenticeship for a software developer at Newcastle University, Then he had proceeded to apply to Scott Logic as a job. I had asked him about his goals for the future then he had told us that he was content in his job or being in a similar position. Next I had asked him about what programming languages he uses and he replied with full stack or type script for front end development, client side script uses java. Then he had explained that he also had used python in a job that was about AI as it was to do with data science. After that I asked him who had helped him through his journey and he told us that his seniors, team leaders and in general anyone who was more knowledgeable were always there to help him when he first started out. Afterwards we had asked him how he specifically got into this job which he shed some light on Scott Logics grad scheme which entailed hiring from freshly graduated students roughly around August, November and February. People who were accepted started as grad developers then Scott Logic taught them about front and back end scripting which took one month each and for their last challenge they had to start a grand project that mimicked a real job with a client so that they could gain experience from start to finish. Finally we had asked him about the skills he had learned from the job which were Problem Solving, finding solutions and finally being able to be proactive. 

Interview 2 

We next interviewed Elliot, a senior developer, who had studied physics and even got a phd in it before deciding to switch careers. Whilst studying physics he had to use coding as it requires a lot of data analysis and calculations so when he decided to change career he had faint knowledge of what he could do however he had a passion for it and decided to just go and try it. He got into Scott Logic where he learned the importance of teamwork and time management. He uses the agile method to stay organised and flexible for work whilst keeping close contact with other team members so that they could work together and fix any problems that may arise. We once again questioned what Scripting languages he uses and he told us that he uses spring boot for front end development but he also uses angler as well as the java and typescript for back end development. Now a new question we had asked was. “What resources did you use to get here?”. which he had replied to use with the fact that he was given a book on python and so with his friends he had met up with them to read together so that they could all learn together and get better. He also frequently listens to podcasts on the latest tech, however before he had gotten into his job he had friends who he would talk about technologies with. The last words that he left for us, a simple piece of advice that lots of people don’t follow is “don’t reinvent the wheel” start small and gradually move onto bigger and bigger projects. As John Heywood said “Rome wasn’t built in a day” neither is your career. 

Interview 3 

Our third interviewee was Tony, a principle delivery manager who oversees the projects developers and testers maintaining their balance, making sure they both do their jobs correctly. Tony first started in physics doing odd jobs before landing in an oil company where he calculated data that were processed by computers, overtime he had enjoyed working with computers more and more before he changed careers to a software developer, which he worked at British Airways, he had then realised he was best suited for organisation, the bigger picture and clients. So lead projects and so he ended up at Scott Logic negotiating with clients about estimates of time frame projects and prices. his biggest piece of advice was to work for a big company so that you can see what you can do since sometimes you aren’t always knowledgeable about the vast amount of jobs there are. He had also told us that to keep our options broad so that you could use specialize into any field you want instead of just having one sole focus. Finally skills that he had told us about was that he needed a keen sense of puzzle solving and networking. 

Interview 4 

Finally we had interviewed Kyle, a senior tester, a man whose goal is to break everything a developer does by pushing the bounds, then asking and reporting developers about any issues so that they can be fixed. He had first started out as a video editor, freelancing whose job is to pay attention to the details and later on he had a degree in linguistics eventually he had signed up for the grad program and built his career of testing from the ground up. he had specifically told us about you don’t need a background with computers to get into this industry only a open mind. His future ambitions were having fun in the moment and awaiting the future with new tools to test and AI to to figure out. He faced challenges like convincing companies to switch from the slow and monotone waterfall method ,which is inefficient prioritizing documentation over actual work, over to agile which allowed for a faster and more streamlined experience overall increasing efficiency. He had told us a little bit about the skills he had picked up along his journey like changing perspective, learning the automated testing apps. accessibility options, mobile testing and an important skill communication. 

My experience 

From my personal experience as someone who wants to go into the tech industry as a programmer, I have learned that they aren’t people who slave away at a desk for hours after aways with no social interaction but people who have to communicate in teams to build a piece by piece the bigger picture. In case anyone is needing any advice from me, this would be to stop looking at tutorials that tell you how to create a complex idea but instead look at the concepts that build up this bigger image. If you want to practice and refine your coding skills I would recommend a website called leetcode that lets you have a variety of difficulty levels. 

Conclusion 

In conclusion if you are looking to get into tech it would be useful to surround yourself with tech, learn new skills on tech, learn new languages or frameworks, that you don’t have to reinvest the wheel or start from scratch question more knowledgeable people whenever you’re stuck, remember that you don’t program alone but in a team. My final words to you are, no matter where you start, whether early or late, in a different career or similar you will always change your career to a developer with a change of perspective or mindset. As all interviewees had not planned on going to tech but still decided if you’re wanting to start now or may have an advantage over others.