Learning new skills at codebar
👋 I am Ankita. I joined Photobox 8 months ago, as a Junior Marketing Consultant in the Marketing Team.
My day to day role involves sending out marketing emails for our brands, Photobox and Hofmann, through Adobe Campaign. I hadn’t used Adobe Campaign before I joined Photobox, but I’ve loved getting knowledge of the technical product and this has encouraged me to further my technical knowledge in other areas too. I wanted to learn HTML and CSS so I can make a website of my own which will feature all the projects that I have done outside of work, and it’s a great opportunity to grow and take up projects at work. I began looking into online courses for HTML and CSS, and was really excited to hear that Photobox would be hosting codebar.io, an organisation that would support me on this journey.
codebar is a non-profit organisation, supporting diversity in tech and promoting underrepresented groups. It’s hosted by a different company each week which sponsors the event by providing a venue, food and drinks to attendees, so the event is free. There’s also a great network at the events, with the same people coming to the events every week, so it’s a great time to socialise and catch up on projects too.
codebar is open to people of all levels, so even if you have no experience your coach will help you get started. The coaches and students are paired up for the evening, for one-on-one coaching sessions, giving the students a great opportunity to ask questions and learn from the experienced coaches. The coaches volunteer with codebar, coming from some of the top companies around London, including often from the host company. John, one of our Android Engineers, came along to coach for the first time and really enjoyed it.
During the evening I had a range of languages to learn from and chose HTML and CSS as a starting point. I was paired up with Nick, my coach for the evening, who is a regular coach at codebar. He was really helpful as he understood areas and pinpointed my mistakes very quickly. He also taught me some tips and tricks on ways to improve.
The workshop was really well structured and explained by folks from codebar. There were a lot of students and professionals from different fields and with varying experience. It was really interesting to hear some folks talking about their experiences and motivation to learn coding, and I’m looking forward to continuing with what I learnt at the session, and seeing the people I met at more codebar events.
Photobox is always looking to foster growth and diversity of employees by providing mentorship, coaching, learning resources, cross-functional team working, workshops, regular events and meets up. Some of the events or meetups hosted at our offices are also open to the public, such as codebar. Diversity is a big focus in tech and Photobox is really happy to be able to support this mission. If you’re looking for a venue to host events (post COVID-19) we’d love to hear from you.
Photobox is fortunate to still be hiring in these difficult times — here are our live vacancies!
