Technology Apprentice Review

Software Developer - I attend daily scrum meetings and in between these meetings I work with my team to develop new features to add into the product I work on. I also spend time fixing bugs that are in the application to improve our customers experience.

Working whilst learning at university has allowed me to develop my programming skills. This course has also helped me develop my teamwork, resilience and resourcefulness. Skills in particular are: C#, C++, Python, PHP, SQL, HTML, CSS, JSON. As well as networks, project management, software methodologies and others

I've really enjoyed this program. At work I have always been made to feel apart of the team with them always offering a helping hand if needed. Company culture at Sage is amazing, everyone works together with the ideal of 'One Sage'. In terms of the university side, the course covers a large range of areas but I wish it went more into depth with some. However, it has given me a really good starting point to learn more.

This program has been decently organised, but the communication between workplace and university has always lacked. For instance, the course end date was extended beyond my contract end date without work being informed until I brought it up. University work was also bunched together having multiple large assignments being due at once.

At the start of my course I was assigned a 'mentor' which was one of the principle developers. However due to his work load I had little to no input from him. However, the other developers on the team picked up this slack as best they could. Support from my manager has always been amazing, during my time at Sage I've had 3 managers and all have been amazing and have supported me in the processes that are in the workplace that I have never experienced at school.

University have always been pretty good when it comes to support/ guidance for the work that we were set. However, contacting (most) lecturers was always a bit of a challenge as with only seeing then on Fridays and them rarely replying to emails. It was also meant to be the case where university lecturers were meant to have meetings with me and my workplace to monitor my progress but this never happened.

My qualification has been good to cover a wide range of areas in the software development field, this has therefore gave me some knowledge around a lot of areas. However, it would have been good if some of the more important areas of the course were more in depth.

There has been many apprentice events held to try and create a community of apprentices. There is also Sage Foundation which is a very rewarding scheme where you can volunteer to help the community and Sage will give you the time do do it (5 days a year). There are also some activities you can do such as a quior group.

Yes

Sage have given me the perfect start to my career and I couldn't be more thankful to them. They have been incredibly supportive of my development and have given me the opportunity to progress within the company. Sage also has a very good community which is great to be apart of.

You have to be extremely self motivated as there is a lot of work throughout the entire course which will take up a lot of your time and to be aware that its not un-ordinary to have to work late into the night to complete university work even after a 7 hour shift at work. However, the pay off at the end is massively worth the work as you come out the other side with a degree and 3 years experience that will put you ahead of those with just a degree.