All posts tagged with 'internship'
Wiggling my way to a win
The work calendar At FreeAgent, we work in intervals of sprints (2 weeks) and cycles (which are made up of 4 sprints – adding up to roughly 2 months total). In a cycle a team typically aims to complete 1 larger project, and during a sprint a team aims to complete sub-tasks of that larger project. This helps construct timelines and structure for product managers and engineers to work within. … Continue reading
Switching to Swift: The iOS Migration
Apple released the SwiftUI framework at their Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2019. The new framework was a significant shift in iOS app development, promising faster development and more reactive user interfaces (UI). At the time, the FreeAgent iOS codebase was in much the same state as other iOS apps - using UIKit, an entirely different framework that had been in existence since 2008. Whilst UIKit was, and still is, a… Continue reading
Building the bridge from education to real-world application
You’ve just hung up the phone and you’ve received an offer for an internship. The excitement is overwhelming as the countless months of applications, assessment centres, interviews and rejections become obsolete. You’ve done it! This is your first step gaining valuable experience about being a software engineer and bridging the gap from theoretical university to real-world application. You’re faced with excitement and questions. What is it like to work on… Continue reading
Building the building blocks: My summer on FreeAgent’s Design System Team
As someone hoping to find a job within the UI/UX field of computer science, I was amazed at how little I knew about how a design system team works. My classmates at university were the same. They too didn’t realise the scale of these teams and had never come across the phrase “design system”. This internship has been a crash course in why design systems are so important. I think… Continue reading
Uncharted Waters: a guide to exploring unfamiliar codebases
Some companies' codebases are massive. FreeAgent’s, with its monolith Rails application, certainly is no exception. The first time you clone one of these codebases onto your machine and see the sheer number of folders, files and complexity, your eyes might just widen and your jaw may just drop - letting out a yelp. As you click through the first few random files, noticing that you don’t understand a thing and… Continue reading
From QA Engineer to Software Engineer: my journey
At the start of the year, I was a Student Quality Assurance Engineer, testing educational games at an educational technology company. Fast forward to now, and I’m navigating the complexities of accounting software as an engineering intern. How did I make this change? Why did I choose this path? And what insights can I share with others considering a similar leap? The starting point During my third year studying computer… Continue reading
Blasting away with Jetpack Compose: Android development at FreeAgent
FreeAgent’s talented mobile app engineers work within their own specialised technology stack. Unlike the developers for the desktop version of FreeAgent, we don’t use HTML, JavaScript, or Ruby. Instead, we work with Kotlin for Android development, and Swift for iOS. The FreeAgent mobile app developers work to keep feature parity with the desktop version, whilst juggling unique mobile-specific considerations. These considerations are vital to empowering mobile customers and their businesses.… Continue reading
Hybrid working: finding balance in flexibility
Recent years have shown that we no longer have to be chained to our offices. Particularly for those who do everything on a computer, remote working has brought welcome changes, and many people have adapted well to this new environment. Adopting hybrid arrangements, people can get the best of both worlds, and FreeAgent is an excellent showcase of workplace flexibility. Coming into my FreeAgent internship as a student accustomed to… Continue reading
It takes a village to raise an intern
Let me tell you about my worst day at FreeAgent. At the start of June, I was eager to get started as the newest workflow intern, the team responsible for user-facing admin features. The first couple of weeks were spent bouncing between inductions and tech issues, but I finally found my feet at the beginning of week 3. Ruby was starting to make sense, my tech was up and running,… Continue reading
Breaking the coding doom loop: lessons from my intern project
Tell me if this sounds familiar. You get a project idea that you’re excited about, create a new GitHub repository, and dive headfirst into coding. Instead of coming away with your new pride and joy, you end up with just another repo in your archive. Well, this has happened to me too, too many times! With my university projects, I could always produce a good piece of work. But university… Continue reading