Hi, I’m Dexter and I’m a software engineering intern here at RDT.
I’m just about to complete my ‘year in industry’, which is part of my computer science degree. However, it’s not my first time working at RDT.
When I was still in college, one of our teachers told us to sign up to LinkedIn. I was the only person in my peer group who did it, and a month later Fiona (RDT’s HR director) contacted me to tell me about the summer internship programme. My application to take part was successful and I came here for three months after I finished my Level 3 BTEC in IT.
I returned to RDT the following summer as well. Everyone in the HR team is really approachable and I asked if they would consider having me here for my year in industry, which they agreed to.
There are some overlaps in what I’m learning as part of my degree and the work I’ve done here, but equally there are some disparities. My degree covers a wider range of skills, other programming languages, and is more theoretical than the work I do at RDT. I mostly use C# here, but many of the skills I’ve learnt during my degree have been transferable.
I really enjoy working here. The people are friendly and a good laugh, I find them easy to work with. I enjoy listening to different opinions that people bring to the table and learning from them. I love RDT’s pool table and the relaxed atmosphere at lunchtime. People are easy going and I find it is a positive environment to be in.
The challenges I’ve faced here are all learning experiences and I have learned an awful lot. I’ve particularly enjoyed getting to grips with the technicalities of Azure, which is all about cloud computing. It’s new, interesting, flexible, and has a lot of potential. The telemetry it records about services mean that you can visualise anything that has gone wrong and enables you to find the root cause of any issue so you can resolve it.
If I could give some advice to my younger self, I would say talk to as many people as possible. I’ve met a lot of great people here and have learnt so much from them. It’s interesting and useful and you get new perspectives on life.
Working at RDT has given me a lot of confidence in myself. It really has been a great experience for me.
I’m feeling quite relaxed about what I’ll do after my degree, my experience and confidence from RDT has definitely widened my horizons to options in the software space.