Ten weeks in the life of a Wallscope Intern
I was hell-bent on getting a development job between my third and final year at University, but after months and months of applying for internships and never hearing anything back, I had given up looking and resigned myself to working a part time bar job once again. One night while hanging out with friends, someone mentioned Wallscope offhandedly and said that I would find the work they were doing very interesting. I went home and did some research, and boom, I knew I had to get involved.
I sent off an email and expected that, as usual, there would be radio silence, especially since they weren’t advertising that they were hiring. Much to my surprise, within 48 hours I had an interview set up with the Lead Developer and one of the Co-Founders of the company. Within another week, I was told I got the job! I signed a ten week contract as a “Full Stack Developer Intern”. No more bar work for me!
Setting expectations
I’ve had internships before and decided that this time I would set myself some expectations based on prior experience to avoid disappointment down the line:
- I would be given a project to work on that would bear little to no real consequence, neither positive nor negative, for the company
- I would be taken in by the company, but still be an intern, and treated as such
- Once my time was up, I would get a pat on the back and a smile as I was walked out the door, and that would be the end of my relationship with the company.
On my first day, however, these expectations were blown out the water.
Working at Wallscope
I walked in the office on my first day and was greeted by the Lead Developer before being introduced to everyone else in the office, shown my desk and got all the admin out of the way. I was told that I would start off doing front-end web development, working on their flagship project. Sounds daunting right? Right. I felt the usual impostor syndrome a lot of interns feel when they first start, but pushed through it. I was given a week to get up to speed with the code base as much as possible before I joined in on development.
Being given such responsibility, and being held accountable as any fully-fledged employee should, was not something I was expecting when I first joined. It’s a great feeling to be valued at a company; even though I’m only an intern (and still a student!) I know I can provide value to my organisation and it’s an amazing feeling to be trusted to do so.
On top of this, my colleagues have become my friends, something which has never happened at any internship I’ve had. I can be honest and open with how I’m coping — both with my work but also outside of work, we go for drinks, and recently I have taken the plunge into film photography after a push from my colleagues — something I’ve wanted to do for ages.
What have I learned?
Technically speaking…
On a technical level, I believe the last ten weeks have been as much of a benefit to me as the last three years of university, if not more. I have learned so much in such a short space of time it’s sometimes hard for me to wrap my head around.
During my short ten weeks here I have
- Sharpened my skills in Front End Development, mainly through learning how to use the framework Vue.js.
- Learned how to test effectively, particularly using Jest and Cypress.
- Learned the power of linked data, why we use it and why you should too
- Converted different types of data to RDF (Turtle, N-Triples, JSON-LD & RDF/XML)
- Discovered how powerful OCR engines can be by learning how to use Tesseract
- Learned how to deploy an application using Docker
- Understood the entire process of developing & deploying a modern web application, from a database, to back-end, to front-end, and every step in between, including third party integrations
- & much much more
Figuratively speaking…
During my time here I’ve also learned some truths I wasn’t aware of:
- Working somewhere that encourages you to learn & develop new skills will allow you to do exactly that
- Corporate culture is not just a buzzword — finding somewhere you fit in makes all the difference
- I won’t dread getting up to go to work if it’s a job that I want to be at
- I want to work at a company that strives to make a difference — and I’ve found that here.
What’s Next?
My original ten weeks are at an end, but I am being kept on for the rest of the summer, then part time during my fourth year of University, then, if all goes well, full time after University!
A piece of advice to any fellow students / graduates looking for work who aren’t sure how to deal with the endless applications getting ignored:
Find a company that interests you and take a shot in the dark with an email or phone call. Be honest about what you know, but more importantly what you want to learn.
It’s my opinion that any company worth working for will be willing to invest in your personal growth & development — it isn’t always about what you know but what you can learn, and in turn teach your peers.
