Software Engineer Review

My day-to-day currently consists of having a morning meeting with my developer team at 10:00 (stand up meeting), where we all go over what we'll be working on for the day (usually 15 minutes), which then turns into a Pomodoro-styled working day with plenty of breaks. At Vodafone, it doesn't feel like a regular 9-5 job. As a Software Engineer, my role day-to-day involves designing User Interfaces and thinking of unique and modern ways to create user experiences on the web. This often includes web applications or even mobile apps. There's a wide range of responsibilities that I get faced with every day from verifying other people's code, to deploying and ensuring that our build pipeline is up to scratch. Sometimes I have to communicate with employees that work overseas or in different continents to ask for help and they're always friendly and helpful.

Having been self-employed running a digital branding agency before my apprenticeship, I had a lot of marketing and design skills under my belt. I then applied these skills to Software Engineering (UI/UX) and my job. It wasn't an easy process and being given the ability to "run wild" with the design of all the apps we were creating, let my creative mind go free and learn as I worked. In my last 8 months, I have been assigned to 2 medium/large projects (all modern web applications that will be used in a live environment, which is HUGE as it gives me the whole experience from developing the app, unit testing and even deploying the app to thousands of users.) have learnt new programming techniques: JavaScript (although I had some experience in the past), ReactJS, NodeJS, AWS, MongoDB and the overall MERN stack.

I think my apprenticeship is great as I've had a lot of experience working in a live office environment and met some great people on the way. My manager was really understanding and saw my strengths in design and helped me do the things I love while learning new things. I do really enjoy it and one of the main reasons why I joined Vodafone Group was because the company culture and values aligned with mine. It definitely met my expectations and although it may have been a rocky start with the learning provider, I think the overall process and meeting the team was wonderful. Because of my experience during my apprenticeship thus far, I definitely recommend an apprenticeship to everyone just leaving college as I've definitely gained the experience that I was looking for (real world working environment)

Induction - This went almost smoothly. There were a couple of hiccups here and there (mostly technical issues that were beyond the power of the guide) - It was definitely overwhelming and I thought that a lot of information was "crammed" into the three days. Some information, that I thought was not even necessary at the induction (such as an in-depth overview into the company employee tree, which didn't even apply to every employee, as everyone was in different teams) Training - Training has been very hit or miss. From the quality of the content not being very good and sometimes some passive-aggressive marks being left on the learning material. QA have sometimes not been the best in terms of communication, often forgetting to send out vital emails to a couple of apprentices. They also don't seem to want to take any responsibility for their actions and only recently did we get an apology for an exam question being written wrong and providing no correct answer. This hasn't affected me personally, but the overall impression of QA so far has been very hit or miss. The skills coaches are the best part of it and are very friendly and down to earth. Support - I get plenty of support from my line manager, apprenticeship leader, and my fellow apprentices working on the same team. I feel like, if I ever need help, I can get it. A lot of work is autonomous and often not governed by the line manager, so there's definitely some expectations to be met (which I actually prefer). Overall, the only downfall at the moment is the academic side, which often feels like this chore that you have to do on top of work. I'm not quite sure how that could be improved, but that's my general feeling.

If I ever need any help, my manager is very knowledgable and helpful (although also very busy). He will often come up during lunchtimes and talk about stuff he's been researching and it's great to have that interaction. In terms of any in-depth technical help, I can always rely on any senior developers, who will go as far as to set up a Skype meeting with you for an hour or two amongst their busy schedules. Overall, can't really fault the support.

The content is definitely there, however, it's not exactly up to scratch when it comes to being modern. It's actually the opposite of inspiring and often feels like I'm back at secondary school all over again. I understand that some training providers may not have the budget or resources to provide modern learning content that would fit today's Gen Z "expectations", but I think if an employer like Vodafone can be forward-thinking and provide their apprentices with modern tasks like developing web-based mobile applications with the latest technologies, I believe that the training provider should try and match that level. In terms of support, I can always rely on my skills coach. He is very communicative and always tries his best to help and if he can't help, then he will find someone who can.

So far, in the last 8 months, I don't feel like my qualification has helped me all that much in my role. Real-world coding and development have helped me the most and learning from other developers as well. This may just be my mindset as I'm coming from a self-employed background. As it stands, I still feel like I'm working towards the qualification for the sake of the "end goal", rather than to learn. The learning I receive from the job role and experiences heavily outweighs the things I learn from the academic side.

We sometimes have some social activities where we get together. This is something I've noticed Vodafone has started doing very recently, so it's something I can tell they're still trying to get to grips with. Which is fine. There have been some rather pleasant local community events such as the Stonewall LGBT+ conference that we had last year.

Yes

I think it's a very inclusive and modern environment to work in. The people are very diverse and come from different backgrounds, which means you can learn new ways of thinking and working with other people. As an apprentice, you don't get the usual "gradmin" work, but rather real-world work with (in my case) live environments, and a lot of trust is being put into apprentices to create awesome things.

It will be overwhelming. There's a lot to take in during the onboarding process and a lot to learn. You will feel like perhaps you're not capable of being in such a position, however, you will soon learn that you're more capable than you think and you can always work on things that you enjoy and have the most amount of passion in. You can also switch roles and the overall environment is very flexible to how YOU work the best. Want to take less/more breaks, sure. Need a coffee break even though it's not 12:00 yet? Go at it. The confidence and trust that is put into apprentices is immense and I feel like I've been 100x more productive because of that alone.