Working as a programmer in London!

Hello reader! Hope you are doing good these days and thank you for dedicating a little bit of your time to reading this post, it really means a lot!

Hippo is always there for you at the office!

As you may or may not know, six months ago I came here, to London, to take part of an internship. The company I was assigned to was called Vassit UK, one of the divisions of Vass, a spanish IT consultacy based on Madrid.

During the three months that the experience lasted I learnt a lot, met lots of new people and grew up a little bit as an individual. But most importantly, unexpectedly, I got hired!

Flying back to Spain!

After comming back to Spain to end the trimester, and after spending one month with my family and friends, I came back to the big city. I was really excited! I was still hessitant to leave home, tho, but I had already made my mind months back during my internship; having some time to prepare emotionally is really important!

A panorama of our little office at the Vassit UK headquarters!

Now that I am here the excitement is still strong, motivated by passion. Still, there are some problems that I would like to talk about. This is dedicated to anyone that likes programming as much as I do and are planning on working for big enterprises such as banks and international firms.

You see, these entities are governed by people with lots and lots of money, big whales to be exact. These people usually only care about profit and very little about others. Thus, you may be treated as a pseudo-slave of sorts rather than a real, valuable, human being.

As a result you may be assigned a desk with a computer and demanded to work for 8 hours straight on a project that very well may not even be ready for development. You will get tired of all the internal burocracy really quick, as they will guard your each and every step you take!

At least this is what happened to me, as I have to commute every day from London to Milton Keynes and work alone in a desk surrounded by dozens of other people I don't know and cannot talk to. It is extremely boring and I usually ask myself: what am I doing in here? I just don't feel like I belong to this place and it doesn't help that I am one of the youngest in this massive office!

The big office at Milton Keynes

But worry not my friend. Every problem always has a solution! In fact I am currently really happy working in London at the Vassit UK headquarters; I had to talk to my manager and we sorted things out, so that I don't have to go to Milton Keynes while the project remains halted and no more people joins the team.

This experience has made me realize how important it is to have things to do at work to remain motivated, make progress and learn, and how awful it is to feel like you are wasting your time when there is none!

I had the opportunity to see the reactions of newcommers to this same project and, so far, noone is happy working in there. We are now doing our own things and having fun playing around with code and learning together many interesting things that will help us in the future. It's really great!

This is a garden in Bath, a roman city near to Stonehedge. It gives me peace and hope looking at this picture :)

I honestly hope that you don't have to go through this but, if you do, please don't give up! Make a list of things you are interested in learning, bring it to work and share it with your team to do interesting stuff while there is nothing else to do! This is an oportunity to grow and learn beyond the scope of  the project, so take advantage of it!

And if this is your first experience abroad, don't waste it! Every minute away from home teaches you something new and strengthens your personality!

Take care my friend, and I wish you the best in this journey!