Work experience – good for who?

posted by Graham - 14:30 27/06/11

It’s 8.30, trying to get through morning emails before Niall arrives. Not quite made it – bell rings and  Niall is safely delivered into our care for the day.

Day before staff had met to prepare what they hoped would be a good day’s experience. Using an existing site with a racing game Niall is to re-skin it for his own project and amend the code to suit his own design.
Morning went well and the cake he brought in appreciation of the work experience day was gone practically before the lid was off the tin! Why is it programmers and designers  are always hungry – although I did see several of the marketing team in the scrum too!

D2 have provided placements and experience for well over 30 people in it’s short history. We find it’s helpful for us, for the ‘experiencee’ (I know it’s not a proper word – but maybe it is now!) and for the balance sheet! We’re big believers in ‘karma’ or ‘what goes around comes around’. It’s been a gentle approach to organic growth too – 5 recent graduates who have spent time with us are now full time employees. And I for one am pleased and proud to have them on board.

After drafting his own designs and learning Illustrator moves in a 20 minute tutorial from Nic our lead designer – Niall goes on to adapt them for his own ideas for the game – a bike becomes a moon buggy – a race track becomes a lunar landscape. And on to lunch! Favourite part of the day for all d2 staff I think!
Interestingly as Niall is doing his work Kate is dealing with enquiries from the new Apprenticeships scheme.  Andy is responding to the Salford University  MBA support scheme. And we’ve two inbound enquiries for work through our website.  It strikes me that recruitment is a far cry from when I started with job vacancies posted in the Manchester Evening News.

So .. back from lunch (well most of the team eat at their desk and I noticed Jon was about to launch into an online game) – no rest for the wicked! Nick comes over to give his expert advice as one of d2’s lead programmers. Niall is quiet for a while listening intently to Nicks pearls of wisdom – and then asks him questions (that’s the bit I love – it forces programmers to think ‘how can I explain that!’ – a useful skill when surrounded by clients who also want to know how you’re going to programme something they’ve never seen before.  Handy skill development this work experience!

Back to Niall and he’s racing away now (a poor pun Graham) attaching his own code to the programme. Time seems to fly and his moon buggy is now spinning round the track he’s created and with the controls he’s adapted to suit his own software needs. He’s had time with Lisa learning about the dark arts of CSS (and the not-so dark arts too) and met Rob, Lee and Adam who were willing to share their experiences of Uni – although Adam could barely remember it. Rob and Lee talked phone talk and Adam talked servers, networks and ISP’s. Niall could barely finish his banana (he’d brought some good programming food!) before he was back with Nick to finish the game and his project for the day.
Mum arrived to pick him up (aren’t mum’s great!) and Nic ran across to give him a CD with his work – and our bill – just kidding Niall if you haven’t opened the CD yet!

As an ex-teacher I thoroughly enjoyed watching Niall interact with the team – and watch the team talk with him about their work. Life is too short not to share the things we learn. And as for Niall – at 14 he’s a world ahead of him that we can only guess at. Time moves fast and we hope to design and programme some of the things that will help make Niall’s world a better place.

Thanks to Niall for coming in and thanks to the team for ... well ... for everything today and everyday; work experience certainly never stops for me – I’m still learning and I guess pretty well all of the d2 team are too!