All aboard the Digital Apprenticeship
Meeting the team
After the impossible became possible, I secured my place at AJ Bell as a degree apprentice. It was finally time to meet the team. Daunting – or so I thought. Getting to meet my manager and coworkers didn’t feel as scary as I had expected. We all went out together for a coffee, and really got to know each other. It broke the silence, it made me feel comfortable with the team, to see the “human” side to them. It felt as though we had met each other before because of how much we were talking. I loved the characters in our team: big, bold, and fun personalities. So, it wasn’t a problem at all to get along with them! On top of that, as the team is still growing, new people joined after us, and it was nice to make them comfortable too whilst at work. All in all, a friendly environment, working with nice people around me.What did you work on when you first joined?
Once I had joined the team, another apprentice and I were tasked with a project – to create a simple website; a frontend, a backend, and a database. Scary stuff if you haven’t come across it before! Nonetheless, our manager and co-workers helped us immensely, by allowing us to get stuck straight in, first teaching us the importance about planning before you do anything. We decided on creating a “simple” to-do app. Or so it seemed. As simple as a to-do app seems, we underestimated the amount of code needed for this project! We learnt the programming languages needed as we went along creating the website. Learning amongst practicing code – the best way to learn. It allowed us to gain experience of coding as well as understanding the concepts behind what we were doing – genius! I had never touched C#, Angular, and Mongo DB, but by the end of it we made a pretty neat project, if I may say so.How did you learn to code for work?
Great question. Before joining AJ Bell, I had some experience of coding at A-Level, but in all honesty it wasn’t much. After joining, I was given access to Pluralsight, which is an online learning platform, and it allowed me to choose any courses on whatever programming language I wanted to learn! However, what I found as the best way for me to learn was practicing alongside learning. You have to be actively doing something for information to sink into your brain. And that is why the project I was assigned at work was an amazing opportunity, it taught me so much in a relatively short amount of time. Reading up on articles and going through tutorials probably taught me a lot more than watching countless videos, which is something I didn’t expect! But in all honesty, I'm still learning. That's what makes programming fun – it's a skill for life, a skill that you can master with time and practice.What do you enjoy the most?
Personally, for me, it’s coming into the office and getting to speak to my co-workers! Don’t get me wrong – hybrid working is definitely a thing, but for me I need the interaction from senior members. It allows me to pull bits of their knowledge and apply it to whatever work I’m doing, it helps me to see how more experienced people approach problems and what they do to come up with solutions. And if I ever do get stuck on something, it’s easy to reach out to co-workers who are available, and they’re more than happy to help! On top of that the problem-solving aspect of coding intrigues me, it gets me in the zone, allows me to focus and put my energy and time into fixing a certain problem; and the satisfaction of coming up with a solution and seeing it work is truly unbeatable!
By Yasin , Digital Apprentice