I clearly remember my early days in the Guardian’s Digital Fellowship as a mixture of excitement and being totally overwhelmed. I had joined the editorial tools team, which builds all our digital tools for our journalists. At morning stand-up people were mentioning more acronyms than I thought I could ever remember. Like many of the fellows from previous years I don’t have a computer science degree, or even a STEM background, and getting thrown into a department with more than 80 engineers can be intimidating!
Fast forward a couple of months I had written my first AWS lambda, contributed to various projects and was regularly deploying production code unsupervised. The value of the fellowship lies in the fact that while you are given the time to develop your skills independently – you might choose to attend workshops run by other members of the department, learn a new framework and give a talk about it or work on a personal project and present it on the amazing Hack Day – from day one you are treated as an integral part of your team. That means that you get your hands dirty on real projects, learning and improving at an incredible pace.
Of course it also means that you will fail often and break things – my lambda did in fact break the Guardian’s main video tool in production – but with continuous deployment and your teammates to support you, you will not be afraid to make mistakes.
You will also be encouraged to contribute to strategic decisions and voice your concerns about technical and non-technical issues within the department and the wider organisation. The department’s structure and practises make it possible for everyone, regardless of their experience, to speak and be listened to.
Just as you start feeling confident in your means and newly acquired skills, you will have to rotate to a new team, to ensure that your mind stays challenged and that you work on the things that you are most passionate about. In little less than a year I have worked on a variety of projects, from writing Scala code to make changes to the Guardian API to creating data visualisations with d3 and writing a new map tool for the journalists in React.
You can get involved with loads of different groups that tackle specific topics and work to ensure that Guardian Digital stands out from both technical and human standards. The department’s diversity group constantly discusses and takes actions to make life more inclusive and fair for everyone within the organisation, and for those who wish to join.
One of the main reasons the fellowship exists is precisely to foster the department’s diversity by bringing in people with non-traditional career paths, or who are generally underrepresented in tech. The idea that people with unique backgrounds will bring fresh points of view and revolutionise the ways we go about solving problems is a pillar of the Guardian’s company culture.
I believe this is what makes the Guardian such a unique place. The company’s ideals are truly reflected in the people who work here. Everyone knows that they are contributing to something good for society, that it is thanks to their collective efforts that the Guardian’s journalism can keep having a real impact on people’s lives and bring about a positive change in the world.
I couldn’t think of a better environment to start your career and grow.
The media industry has never faced greater challenges or gone through such dramatic change. If you want to be part of that change, to contribute to the innovations that will ensure that liberal journalism maintains its global voice, the Digital Fellowship is your foot in the door.
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: 30 June 2019. Good luck!