The lowdown on Cube Academy from our recent graduate

I heard about Cube through word of mouth. Mainly about how they have a Lego wall in their office which they huddle around and use as a project management timeline.

Naturally, this interested me and after looking into their culture more I found on their LinkedIn that members of their team had been with them for a number of years. Knowing that staff turnover is high in tech I knew that this was a good sign that the culture wasn’t just for show but in fact they live up to their values and put their staff first. I sent over my CV without even a position available just hoping my keenness would shine through. If you don’t ask, you don’t get, right?

To my amazement, I was told an opportunity had just opened up in their Front-End Development (FED) team and I was offered an initial chat with their Operations Manager, Jen.

Perfect I thought, I’ll get first dibs on the role! Unfortunately, the role was way above my level of understanding and I was disheartened to think that maybe I wasn’t good enough for Cube? Thankfully I was told that they have training programs in place for just my situation and I was given a programming task to complete so that they could really understand where my skills lay. I said yes to the task and was given three days to complete it.

Needless to say, I poured hours into the task. I was never confident with interviews so this was the perfect chance for my work to speak for itself. Of course, I worked through the night on the final day of submission. “I am going to get this job!” I repeated to myself while I drank yet another cup of coffee and put on another Lo-Fi mix.

A week after submission I got an email from Jen offering me a final interview. On the day of the interview, I paced around my flat going over interview questions out loud, hyping myself up in the mirror and trying to pretend that I was a nervous wreck… The interview went well and a few days later I was given the opportunity to join Cube as part of their Academy. I had done it! I was going to be part of 3 Sided Cube, but what exactly was waiting for me in the Cube Academy?

The offer was to join Cube as part of a three-month in-depth training programming that would sharpen my skills in development and introduce me to the processes Cube uses. This would be fully paid and I was able to do it full time, what an amazing way to boost my career and at the same time still pay the bills! 

On my first day, I joined Phoebe, who was starting her first day of her three-week internship, and together we got to work introducing ourselves to everyone. Cube has thought of the perfect way of doing this quickly, Speed Dating.

Using the classic icebreaker game of two truths and a lie we quickly got to know the team. I had never experienced such a fun and welcome experience right from the start. I had already learnt about people’s hobbies, interests and humour and now it was just a matter of remembering it all!

Next was for me to be on-boarded onto my first project. This was to develop a weather web app that would let users know the current weather conditions in their local area and let them know which clothing they would need if they advanced out. Simple yet filled with all the areas of web development I needed to learn.

The project was set up in such a way that it was treated like a real project, even though there was no client associated with it. This meant real designs, real UX workflows, real testing and actual deadlines. There could not be a better way of understanding Cube’s process than this. I was given a monitor, Kiri, and with her knowledge in development, I learnt more in my first month at Cube than I did in my last year as a developer.

Originally, I hadn’t thought I was going to be given a project to work on that was for a paying client. But there I was attending my first project meeting for The Ocean Decade website alongside my mentor.

I was given breathing space within the project and it was respected that tasks could take slightly longer for me to complete compared to the rest of the team. As the project progressed I became more confident completing tasks while still having my mentor to reach out to if I needed help.

We delivered the project on time and I had caught the bug for building tech for good. I’m not sure about other developers but this was possibly the first time I had seen a project delivered on time and on budget. Something I would later realise Cube excelled at.

The time came for me to move onto my next project, EarthHQ. A staggering interactive globe demonstrating the climate emergency in real time, a tool that will be used at COP26 in Glasgow.

For me this project came with more responsibilities and slightly less breathing space. However this didn’t parse me and it made me realise how far my learning had come within just three months. Without the Academy I wouldn’t have had the knowledge or confidence to work on such a project and keep up with the pace of development.

As the three months had already come round the offer of a full time junior role at Cube working in the Front-End development team was offered to me. I feel very lucky to have been given the time to grow and at the same time been able to integrate with the team I am now fully part of.

What’s amazing about working at Cube is that even though I am out of the Academy my learning is far from over.

The culture here actively encourages learning with the use of a program they call Free-ish Time. Every few weeks I am given time to work on any new idea or project I like providing I share or apply my learning afterwards. This also comes with a budget for training courses or any equipment I need for my ideas. Some Free-ish projects have gone on to be used by the wider company and even used by some of our clients.

I’m excited to continue to grow at Cube, to see where my learning takes me and to write some more blogs for you guys! See ya around.