How to survive imposter syndrome in your software engineering internship
Hi there! My name is Fiona, and I am an intern at FreeAgent. I got my offer and dodged returning to the monotony of bar work that I endured last summer. However, I was only in my second year of studying Computer Science. How was I chosen from what must have been a sea of applicants? They must have overlooked someone! Had I lucked out? In hindsight, this was a… Continue reading
A view of technical leadership from across the industry
It has been over two years since FreeAgent introduced staff engineers into the IC track. The intention was to align ourselves with the wider industry by renaming the previous Senior II level to Staff. At the time, no changes were made to the expectations for the role. Since then, we have overhauled the expectation framework (for our learnings on how to do this, see Dave's post here), and the folks at LeadDev… Continue reading
Five principles for writing an engineering progression framework
In this article I’ll share five principles that became apparent during the process of updating our progression framework. These may be helpful if you’re thinking about introducing a progression framework or making improvements to an existing framework. It’s not an exhaustive list! Continue reading
How we hire in engineering
Applying for a new job can be daunting, especially when you’re not sure what the recruitment process is. At FreeAgent we try to be as open as possible about how we hire and make sure there are no surprises, so that you can be well prepared. Application ✍ Our application process is simple: just upload your CV and cover letter, and answer a few questions about why you are interested… Continue reading
My experience as an Analytics Intern
I was really excited to begin interning at FreeAgent and after 9 weeks in the Data Analytics team I feel I’ve learnt a lot about working in a team inside a company, and about the culture here. I thought I would write a bit about how it was getting set up, working on my project and communicating my findings to the rest of the company. Onboarding/set-up There were a lot… Continue reading
Fixing my first bug – the experience
As a computer science student, I obviously fixed bugs in code before. However, the first one I had to fix at FreeAgent felt significantly different from the corrections I had to make in my university assignments and other small projects. I think that was because whenever I worked on a project, I either wrote the whole code or the project contained just a few files. That meant I could skim… Continue reading
So you’re going to be an intern
After months of nerves, interviews and one too many LeetCode questions, you’ve done it. You’ve landed an internship, you’re free from the dread of a long, empty summer and your brain is filled with vague notions of what your internship might be like. I’m here to gather up your brain clay and sculpt it into solid ideas of what things will be like. Before we start, it needs to be… Continue reading
How to boost your confidence as a beginner software engineer
Every engineer has questioned at least once in their life whether they are skilled enough for their chosen field. I experienced these doubts when I started my computer science degree at university, and despite the fact that I got through the first three years successfully, I still wasn’t fully confident in my abilities when I started my internship at FreeAgent. However, this is entirely normal. Every engineer faces challenges on… Continue reading
What a data science degree doesn’t teach you
When I enrolled on my data science master’s degree I had limited statistical and coding knowledge. This course was designed to teach these skills from the bottom up. Having now worked as a software engineering intern, I have come to realise a lot of things were missed. Moving beyond ‘if it works… it works!’ Learning to code can seem very daunting. There are so many resources and even languages. Where… Continue reading
10 tips and tricks for a good intern job application
We’ve recently completed the hiring for this year's cohort of summer interns and as a result we’ve processed hundreds of applications; just across our data teams we had over 600 this year! For many of these applicants, who tend to still be at university or have recently graduated, this is likely to be one of the first ‘professional’ roles that they are applying for. As such they might not be… Continue reading