Short answer? Pretty great honestly. Since graduating from Keele University in the summer of 2015 I took a bit of time out to work out what exactly it was that I wanted to do with my newly acquired Computer Science degree.

After dipping my toe in a few different proverbial waters and giving some thought to what I enjoyed working on the most during my time at university, I arrived at the conclusion, that web development was definitely the field for me. And so the hunt began.

Of all of the graduate roles and internships that I came across, the Unitemps PHP development internship at iWeb jumped out at me immediately. Relaxed atmosphere? Open plan, modern offices? The opportunity to sink my teeth into Magento with the support and guidance of a well-established team? Unlimited brews? Sign me up.

Fast forward a couple of months and here I was on my first day at iWeb. After a quick induction and tour of the office from MD Nick and my developer mentor pembo, I found my place at a desk and got ready to hit my head against Magento’s notoriously steep learning curve until it did what I wanted it to do. Fortunately for me, the training plan that the team had put together did a great job of easing me in. Starting with creating an eCommerce site in raw PHP, through to starting to develop my own basic MVC framework and finally on to working with Magento itself. The whole process was very well thought out and did a great job of introducing me to Magento’s core principals.

Working through the training plan also doubled up as a great way of getting to know the team as any questions I had were directed to the member of the team that was most knowledgeable about the thing that I was working on. Front-end layout question? Ask Rich. Problem extending a core controller? Tom. Cache not clearing correctly? Anyone but Ricki.

Overall I’ve had a great time working at iWeb so far, the whole team have been really welcoming and the laughs come almost as frequently as the brews. I’ve learned so much in the last 6 weeks and am really looking forward to learning more as I take on more and more real work for clients.