Work Experience: Will McDonald

Foreword by Ian Outterside the Development Team Lead at KOMODO

Will joined us as the latest student in our work experience programme. He turned up bright and early on Monday morning, well prepared and eager for the work ahead during the week. KOMODO strives to ensure that the experience students have during their work experience is beneficial, and represents what working in the real world for real clients is like. As such, Will was tasked with supporting us on a customer project for Intelligent Services Group. During the week he contributed to a number of key client-driven changes – which are now live for the public to see and use.

Beyond this, Will has helped KOMODO improve our own website, and spot QA and QC issues on a number of projects. Will has been a pleasure to have in the office, eager to learn and with an enthusiasm to get the most from the experience. We wish him the best of luck at school, and hope he keeps in touch in the future!

Work Experience

My name is Will McDonald, I am just finishing Year 10 at Whitley Bay High School. I was given the amazing opportunity to do a weeks work experience at KOMODO.

When I arrived on Monday morning I was greeted by all the staff here at KOMODO. This supplied me with a great first impression. Within the first hour, I realised how kind and funny the KOMODO team was and this made the atmosphere of the office a great place to work.

Over the duration of the week, I worked with the KOMODO team on their current project and helped complete various tasks on the ISG project which were improvements requested by the customer. I also took part in website testing on KOMODO’s website to test all the code behind it was to the standard they expect it to be at. I used an application called BrowserStack for this which allowed me to test the website on different browsers and devices to check everything was up to standard. Finally, I shadowed one of the staff members here at KOMODO, where I got to see how everything worked and fixed any bugs I found on the website during my testing.

Although I wasn’t familiar with the applications KOMODO used I still managed to persevere and use all my knowledge I had to complete the tasks given with assistance from the KOMODO team. I learned many new skills that I wouldn’t have if I didn’t take this invaluable experience. I learned how to work as a team and what an office job was like, giving me an insight into what may come in later life.

I really feel as though I have had the best experience of what working as a software developer is like with a great company. I have developed my knowledge in Computer Science and seen new programming languages that I wouldn’t of without this opportunity.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time here at KOMODO and learned many new skills from people skills to developing my Computer Science knowledge.

Thank you very much to all the staff at KOMODO for taking the time to look after me during this week and for helping me when I’m stuck throughout the whole week. I couldn’t have had this excellent week without all of you.

Thank you for everything,

Will