It’s summer, it’s hot – you’d be forgiven for wanting to spend every waking hour next to a fan / water fountain / igloo. But one young woman, shunned the sun and braved the Northern Line every day just to join us at HQ for a week and find out what it’s really like to be a 101-er. Here she shares what she learned.
Take it away Danielle…!
I’m Danielle, a 17-year-old A-Level student studying Maths, Computer Science and Biology. I love 
programming – creating plugins and modifications for games using Java, Python, HTML, CSS and JavaScript – and gaming (one more than the other!) and hope that I’ll have a future working in technology.
At 16, I founded my own consultancy company sourcing and recruiting talented freelancers across tech and creative industries, to work for me while I acted as a sales representative in order to find clients and commissions for them. I set the business up after I worked as a freelancer myself (in design and writing), where the work was incredibly varied. I made avatars and business logos and writing product and service descriptions, game lore and even a fraud report for the state of Oregon, which was an amazing experience and involved a lot of legal research.
I promise that it’s not all work and no play. Outside of tech, I love boxing, having done it weekly for over a year now. I find boxing a really fun and challenging sport, although I don’t think I’ll try my hand at competition level yet – I value my face too much!
With my background, I knew that 101 Ways was a great place to do work experience when I discovered that my business model was similar to the way the consultancy operates (but obviously, at a much larger scale). I had also been toying with the idea of doing a computer science degree at university for some time, so relished the opportunity to see the different roles at 101 Ways.
My favourite part of the internship was meeting the people working there; everyone was incredibly friendly and passionate about their job. I really enjoyed spending time with each member of the HQ team and finding out how they contribute to the success of the company as a whole.
Throughout the week, I did so many awesome things, from programming Conway’s ‘Game of Life’, through assisting the Talent team with finding great consultants, to working with the Content Manager on writing this post for the company blog! I spent my first day learning about the running of the company and was even allowed to join a client meeting. It was really beneficial to see and understand the different sides of a business and how they interplay such as recruitment, content production, product management and more; it was eye opening.
My time at 101 Ways has confirmed to me that technology is definitely the industry I want to work in once I’ve graduated. There is a large demand for computer science graduates at the moment and a lot of great career options so I’m very excited about starting out on the path..
Technology is fascinating and ever-changing, so I would like to thank the 101 Ways for having me this week and creating an interesting and educational week about the world of tech. I would love to come back again!
