Brad Sutherland
Web Developer : Apprentice
Business / Employer :UKNetWeb
Location : St Agnes, Cornwall
Years working in tech : 1
What does your company do and what’s great about working there?
I work at UKNetWeb Ltd. which specialises in Web Development. We create websites and web applications ranging from small local businesses to large national businesses.
The best thing about working at UKNetWeb is the relaxed and transparent atmosphere. This makes it very easy to express our opinions and ideas without the fear of feeling stupid. We are more like a group of friends rather than colleagues.
When the weather is nice we like to chill out and have a BBQ on the beach. We also do fun activities such as go-karting every now and again and have recently been asked to get my passport ready! 😉
Job Description
As a web developer I am tasked with completing high level projects and helping clients.
Working on projects requires me to produce software that is of the highest quality ensuring that it looks good and also works.
I am also pleased to say we have great clients that understand the Agile approach which makes it easy to communicate effectively with each other.
What are your favorite products and services you have helped to develop?
My favourite product, that I have had the privilege of working on, is John Lewis’ new employee benefit web application. It has helped me gain much greater knowledge of the latest frameworks, such as AngularJS, Foundation5 and SCSS.
Career Pathway
I came to Cornwall on holiday last year, and took the opportunity to look for routes into web software development in the region.
A friend introduced me to Toby (my employer) and we had a discussion about apprenticeships and how apprenticeship schemes could benefit businesses and school leavers much more than current college courses.
Toby took our discussion further with Cornwall College and my apprenticeship with UKNetWeb began.
I studied IT at college and sixth form.
What’s your favorite part of the work you do?
Working with the front-end side of projects (such as the user interface) is the part I enjoy the most. It allows me to experiment with my creative side and come up with some funky designs.
What piece of advice would you give anyone considering a career in the Software sector?
From personal experience I would recommend trying to find an on-the-job type of education such as an Apprenticeship (which is what I am currently doing). I work alongside some really skilled coders and this allows me to inherit their skills and learn the best practices when it comes to programming.
I studied IT at college and sixth form and realised that what they teach is often out of date information.
If someone was interested in doing the job you do what advice would you give and what resources might you recommend?
I would definitely start early. In my teens I watched YouTube videos and looked at other guides on the internet which initially got me started but now there are great websites such as Codecademy which is free and makes it really easy to learn the basics of many computer languages.
What’s the best thing about living and working in Cornwall?
“I love working in Cornwall and the fact that I can walk about 30 seconds to the beach to go for a surf at lunchtime really tops it off.”
I used to live in a city and everything was so fast paced which I didn’t really like. It’s nice to live in a place like St Agnes where it is so laid back and chilled out but still get work done.