Maria-Livia Chiorean
I joined the Guardian two and a half years ago as part of the Digital Fellowship. Back then I was just another computer science graduate with lots of theoretical knowledge but little practical skill. Things have changed quickly. I moved teams three times: I was first part of the content API team where I was first introduced to Scala, I then joined the apps team with the intention of trying something new and learning iOS development, and finally I decided to go back to my first love, Scala, and join the editorial tools team where I have been ever since. I went from struggling to write any Scala code, to writing bad code, to working on more and more apps and systems, to eventually presenting my own talk at conferences around Europe.
Being on the fellowship scheme helped me gain insight into how the department works as a whole and make the connections I needed to improve my work. For more than a year now I’ve been a software developer and I feel my career path has immensely benefited from starting as a fellow. Having the opportunity to contribute to so many projects and interacting with people from all across the teams has taught me how to adopt new projects quickly and how to approach challenges.
One of the things I enjoyed the most in the last year was attending and speaking at conferences and meetups. As a member of the Guardian digital department you are encouraged to share knowledge and spread the word on the amazing work that is being done every day here. I had great support from my colleagues while practicing for my talk – some even sat down and listened to my talk more than three-four times. And seeing all those smiley faces in the front row definitely helps with the nerves. As a result of being a speaker I’ve become more confident, made some new friends and I’m now a mentor at Google Summer of Code.
Calum Campbell
Before I joined the Guardian, I had a background working as an engineer on oil rigs, I didn’t have a degree in computer science and only started coding six months before. I decided to make a career change and completed a 3 month coding boot camp at General Assembly in London. Following this, I joined the Guardian on the fellowship scheme despite my relative lack of experience. The great thing about joining on the scheme was that I received the time and support to develop my skills with the complete understanding that I didn’t have much prior knowledge.
My time at the Guardian has spanned four teams in a little over two years; this is mostly due to the rotational set-up where fellows spend a period of time on different teams over the period. During this time I’ve worked with colleagues from multiple departments, on numerous code bases and across a number of technologies.
All this exposure meant that I quickly developed skills and knowledge that I may not have been able to have acquired had I been taken on as a regular associate developer. As well as great exposure I was also given a lot of room in each role to concentrate on aspects I enjoyed or found interesting.
Being able to experience many areas of software engineering early on meant I could work out what suited me and what I enjoyed, so as my career at the Guardian progressed I had a good idea of where I wanted to go and how I could go about achieving it. This has led me recently to specialising in backend development, something I never thought would be my area of specialisation when starting out, but I found over the course of the fellowship was my preferred area.
Susie Coleman
I interviewed for the Guardian Fellowship scheme in March 2015. The day before I’d watched Bristol City win the Johnstone’s Paint trophy and I hoped to mirror their success. Sadly no one let off any fireworks at the end of my interview but I was offered a place on the scheme and was very excited for my first day.
The Guardian has been a great place to start my career. I’ve worked on many projects across a range of teams. The fellowship was an opportunity to move from the theory of a computer science degree to the reality of the tech industry and find out what interested me and where I wanted my career to go.
The ability to move teams regularly during the scheme really helped with this and enabled me to get to know people across the department. Building these relationships is key, especially as a fellow, as it provides you with a network of people to ask for help and advice. I have now been at the Guardian long enough to see two new cohorts of fellows join. The belief that once you’re a fellow you’re always a fellow has created a community within the Guardian where new fellows are always greeted with enthusiasm by those who remember just how daunting those first few weeks were.
Despite Bristol City not being an ideal role model for my career in the past couple of years the Guardian’s digital department has offered many alternative role models. The belief that everyone will break software in production at some point and that this can be treated as an opportunity to learn is a key part of the department’s culture. It means that individuals are quickly given responsibilities not typically given to junior developers as well as being encouraged to move outside of their comfort zone. This is something I have continued to embrace as my career progresses.
I have been a tech lead, spoken at conferences and worked with a wide range of technologies and I think that it’s thanks to the Guardian’s willingness to take a risk and give responsibilities to more junior members of the team that I’ve been able to do so much.
Jonathan Rankin
I joined the Guardian on the fellowship scheme in October 2015. I was, unknowingly to me, what the data and insight people call a “super regular” user of the app; it was the first thing I checked when I woke up and the last thing I looked at before I went to sleep. So naturally I was thrilled to join the apps team, where I spent six months working on the Android app.
Having developed an Android app for my university dissertation, it was a great team to join as the learning curve wasn’t quite so steep. That said, I quickly learnt that my code style was, to be kind, rather unsightly. But the great thing about joining a team of super-talented developers (and believe me, the devs you get to work with here all fit into this category) is that you have a hivemind of experience looking at all of your code and pointing out ways to improve it, so your coding skills improve quickly.
After six months I rotated onto the team which I am on now, the contributions team, whose job it is to solicit financial support from our readers. If you’ve seen those messages at the end of articles asking you to give to the Guardian, that’s us. I joined at the team’s inception, and at the time it was an experimental team whose remit was to test out the idea of asking our readers for financial support and see whether it would be a viable business model.
We had six months to come up with an answer, so we started running A/B tests on a tiny percentage of the audience to see if the idea had any legs. Right from the start it was a very cross-functional team – a mixture of UX designers and researchers, marketing people, developers and data analysts. Working closely with all these people and such a different range of skills has been a real advantage of being in this team, as you learn a lot about different ways to tackle problems.
The experiment was a success and the contributions project became central to the Guardian’s mission plan to sustain itself financially. As such, the team is an incredibly exhilarating place to be. Knowing that the future of the company is dependent on your team’s success is a real motivator.
We spend our days devising and testing new and improved ways of persuading people to give to the Guardian, developing the software architecture that supports the team’s objectives. Every day is different. Every now and then a big news event breaks, such as the Cambridge Analytica story – we get into action mode to make the most of the moment, by making sure that our acquisition channels are all set up to capitalise on the uptick in acquisition that occurs around these types of stories.
2019 Fellowship Scheme
If this sounds exciting, we have just launched the 2019 Fellowship scheme. To get started with your application, follow this link. Closing date for applications: 30th June 2019. Good luck!
