Early Careers Developer Review

My role involves taking part in daily standups where we discuss what we are working on and any blockers, assessing our kanban board to see the state of play in our work. I then spend the majority of my time pair programming, developing and maintaining our core data-driven systems that the rest of the business rely on.

My development ability, as well as my understanding on java features, technology and frameworks such as Spring, Kafka, IntelliJ, Maven and more have improved massively. I am now able to take on relatively complex tasks by myself (or at least lead on it when pairing) with confidence even being able to coach others in some situations.

I enjoy the programme quite a lot. I wanted to get a degree but didn't like the idea of debt so not only am I able to get a degree debt free but I am also getting paid and am able to start my career early. I am able to still get some of that university experience at the same time which is great!

The structure is pretty good, with having a weekly study day rather than block learning I am able to constantly be with my team instead of having a super fragmented schedule which would lead to me not feeling as integrated with them. I am also able to easily apply knowledge from work to university and vice versa as a result.

My employer supplies me with ample support, from my manager to my tech buddy as well as the early careers specific staff at AutoTrader who are always making sure we are getting the support we need, are happy with our progress and help mediate any issues between both work and university sides.

The lecturers do a great job of being available all the time, ensuring any questions I may have are always answered to the best of their ability and I am able to remove any blockers I have to my work quickly. The resources that are always available via moodle help a ton with lots of live skills workshops available as well.

I am able to better understand the fundamentals of the work I am doing. For example I understood how Spring allows you to quickly setup a web application and reduces the amount of bulk needed. However through my studies I have been able to understand the underlying processes using servlets to receive requests and spinning up my own tomcat server.

Work has so many extra-curricular activities it is difficult to choose sometimes. There are plenty of sports networks where they organise weekly sporting activities. There is always something new going on from the film club where AutoTrader sponsor us going to see a new film or the language lunch sessions where people from the company get together over some country specific food and learn some of the language.

Yes

Auto Trader is incredibly diverse, catering to the needs and wants of people from so many different walks of life. They are incredibly invested in nurturing those who are starting out in their career and the people here are great, always willing to lend you a hand and the amount of extra things to get involved in ensures you never have a boring week at work.

Be yourself. Auto Trader aligns itself with its core values and if you as a person match with these core values you have nothing to worry about. The best thing to do is to always think about how you can facilitate those around you to perform even better, whether that's ensuring everyone is heard in a group setting or performing effective pair programming.