Pros
It has recently been a year since I started the graduate program at Adaptive in London and it has gone by so quickly! I will share my thoughts and experiences after a year of working here.
Some quick pros:
- Great office space, great views (free drinks + coffee + snacks + games)
- Great socials + activities (Adaptive bake off, cocktail nights, movie nights, games nights, summer + christmas parties and many more..)
Coming from university with a technical background, I did not know what to expect when joining Adaptive but found myself pleasantly surprised. It instantly felt like I had joined a community and was encouraged to not be afraid to ask questions. Everyone that I encountered were very happy and keen to help out.
The way the grad scheme was structured was good. We started with the basics and gradually became more complex. We were encouraged to work agile and in distributed teams (LDN + BCN and NYC + MTL). For a more detailed description of what we did day to day there is a blog post that explains this. At first, I was quite overwhelmed with the amount of work and independent study I had to do but gradually was able to manage my time better to deal with workload. I would honestly say I have learnt more at Adaptive which I get paid for than I did studying 3 years at university which I paid to do.
After around 4 months, I was put on a complex project with a big client where my team was extremely good, helpful and friendly. I transitioned from a front-end developer to full-stack which was one of my goals. After around 8 months, I was put on another project with an even bigger client which I am enjoying very much.
The biggest pro of Adaptive which really stood out to me was how much they care about the individuals. Any problem that you may have they are willing to work with you to help solve it. Early on people around me including HR picked up on me not being myself and invited me to talk about it. After I told them about the issues I was facing at the time they were extremely empathetic and practically forced me to take some compassionate leave. That's something that is rare to find in a company. HR also contacted me and others personally during lockdown to check up on how we were feeling.
Overall, after a year I have definitely seen myself improve not only technically but grow as a person.
Cons
- Graduates with less technical experience and in other offices may not have got the support that they needed early on and felt a bit isolated. Although, this is something we have discussed and pretty sure improvements have been put into place for the next grads.
- Still waiting on visiting other offices...
