Six years of data science and analytics interns at FreeAgent
It’s hard to believe we’ve been running internships in our data teams for six years now, and we’re about to start recruitment for the seventh time. Things have changed a little since our first intern started, as last year saw more than four times as many staff in the wider team and our first remote internship during the coronavirus pandemic. I’ve always tended to think of our internships as a… Continue reading
Return of the intern
A year on from my first data science internship at FreeAgent, I’m about to start my second one, and I’m getting ready for my second first day. It’s different this time though. Aside from the fact that I am now a fully fledged graduate (scary!), this internship is going to be based entirely within my living room, as the entire company is now working remotely. I have never worked remotely… Continue reading
What is a Business Intelligence Analyst?
The term Business Intelligence Analyst (or BI Analyst for short) can be a confusing one. Broadly speaking, the role of a BI Analyst can overlap with lots of other job titles that you might see out in the wild, such as: Data AnalystData ScientistInsight AnalystProduct AnalystMarketing AnalystCommercial AnalystReporting AnalystMI AnalystWeb AnalystCRM/Customer Analyst In general - and especially in the data world - job titles can often be inconsistent and subjective.… Continue reading
Transaction Taxonomy: Spending the Summer Studying SVMs
A company faces some unavoidably arduous tasks when taking control of their finances. One such task, which currently takes up a lot of time for our users, is explaining bank transactions. This is the process of assigning an accounting category to transactions, which is important both for internal reports generated by FreeAgent and for external submissions, for example to HMRC. At the end of June FreeAgent launched a suite of… Continue reading
Uprooting the Binary Tree
You’re a talented software engineer looking for your next position. Maybe you’re eyeing the FAANGs so you start researching how they do their technical interviews and you discover they like to ask algorithm-type questions - Reverse a linked list in place, Print the kth level of Pascal’s Triangle, Does string contain substring - and have you design Dropbox, Twitter, or some other system of their choosing. Then you apply to… Continue reading
Starting from Home: Remote Data Science Internship at FreeAgent
Starting a data science internship at FreeAgent was going to be a completely new experience for me and I was super excited. It’s a lovely warm day in Edinburgh, Monday 1st of June, I’m standing in my kitchen looking out of the window and wondering what the next few months will hold for me. It’s 9.28am and my first meeting is supposed to start in 2 minutes. Am I going… Continue reading
How I made personal development work for me
Taking regular time out to focus on self-improvement can have concrete benefits for both you and your organisation. These benefits could include becoming more confident in your role, getting that promotion, or helping you become a more collaborative and communicative team member. It surprises me that lots of people I speak to aren’t nearly as excited about personal developments as I am. If you feel guilty about taking time out… Continue reading
Rails Girls London 2019: A fun weekend of coding
Fast becoming my favourite event of the year is Rails Girls London. Every event is different as you get to spend it with a whole new group of interesting people from a huge variety of industries and backgrounds. This year we headed to the offices of Simply Business in the City of London for the one-and-a-half day workshop, and happily with FreeAgent sponsoring for the first time. Between the pool… Continue reading
From Computer Science student to Software Engineering intern
Hi folks, my name's Iain, and I'm one of the few interns you haven't yet heard from this summer. In my last three months on the intern team I've embarked on a whistle stop tour around the FreeAgent application, from user facing emails to developer only APIs. In that time, I've learnt a few softer skills that I never would have had the opportunity to whilst I was at university,… Continue reading
Delivering Practice Insights: My internship at FreeAgent
The phrase ‘practice insights’ was something that I heard very often in my first couple of weeks at FreeAgent, between wrapping my head around the data model and trying hard to remember everyone's names. The reason I mention it in the context of the first couple of weeks is because at that point I didn’t fully know what it meant. Of course I knew what the words meant, and I… Continue reading