Three of iDelta’s latest hires came here fresh from CodeClan, the digital skills academy which provides training to bridge the digital skills gap in Scotland.
We’ve interviewed the most recent CodeClan grad to join our ranks, Becky, who joined us in July, to find out more about her journey to iDelta and her time here so far.
Please introduce yourself, tell us about your previous education, work and life experience prior to joining iDelta.
Hi! I joined iDelta straight after finishing the Professional Software Development course at CodeClan, where I learnt the fundamentals of software development.
Before that, I worked as an archivist. I was working with historical records varying from seventeenth-century estate maps to the contents of 5 1⁄4-inch floppy disks, making them available to researchers by adding structure to the records and providing descriptions of their contents.
I have an MSc in Information Management and Preservation, which means I’m a bit of a nerd about data and records, what defines them, and how they have been or will be created in the past, present and future.
What was it about iDelta that made you think you’d like to join?
The thing that stood out to me about iDelta, aside from the great people, was how it seemed to provide some nice continuity with what I was doing before, whilst also being an opportunity to try something completely different!
Archivists take broad, often unstructured collections of data, and pick out the useful strands of information to make the data more accessible, and what we do here is quite a similar concept, though with very different data.
As I mentioned before, I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to changes in how data is generated and used, so getting to work in a company which works with machine data is pretty exciting.
Which aspects of your CodeClan education have you found to be of most use in your role here?
Coming from a non-technical background, I think that CodeClan has equipped me well for this role in teaching me how to think in a ‘computery’ way, especially when it comes to problem-solving. Creating websites has made it a lot easier to customise dashboards, and knowing some basic Unix commands has come in handy too!
When a friend/family member asks what you do now … what do you say?
I tell them that I work for a company which helps businesses to analyse the data they are creating so that they can monitor their systems and gain new business insights. I work using a tool, Splunk, to enrich the data and produce visualisations which make the data usable in a new way.
What have been your highlights so far?
I’ve been doing a lot of training, and one of my highlights so far has been passing the (quite difficult) Splunk Admin exam on the first attempt! It’s been great to get to grips with Splunk and see just how powerful it can be. I’ve also enjoyed getting to know my colleagues and learning more about what they are doing within iDelta.
What are you looking forward to in the future?
I’m excited to get started on working with customers on their projects, where I can put the knowledge I’ve gained so far to good use. Additionally, I’m fortunate enough to be able to travel to Splunk .conf this year with the rest of my colleagues, where I’m looking forward to learning what is happening in the wider Splunk community.
