Together with John Wall and Mansi Manoj, I spent this summer on Caplin’s internship programme, and I can say that ten weeks of the summer spent working for Caplin in London is the experience that every second year Computer Science student looks for in an internship.
But the internship certainly had its challenges! Caplin was moving offices and its staff were to work remotely over the summer while they waited for their new office to be fitted. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I would be living in London, working on a bigger project than most of us were used to, using a tech stack I had very little experience with, and working remotely? It sounded like it could be overwhelming, but with the help of each other and support from Caplin, all three of us soon found our feet.
The first week of our internship was Caplin’s final week in their old office, and we made the most of it. We interns got to meet each other along with people from the company. Following Caplin tradition, we chose an animal name for our team (Kangaroos), and Caplin’s UX team designed a logo for us. Going out for lunch, having drinks, taking part in Caplin’s Hack Day, and attending the farewell party for the old office, was a great experience.
Our summer project was to create a rich dashboard for Caplin’s FX Sales application, a web UI for corporate bank sales-dealers. Getting to know our internship project quickly was key. So, early on, we had meetings discussing not only project requirements and direction, but also wider topics such as foreign exchange and Caplin’s clients, to help us see the bigger picture and where our project would fit in. We couldn’t wait to get started!
The people we met at Caplin were eager to hear about us and our project, and they were always quick to offer their help. Most of them had similar academic backgrounds to ourselves, so their advice for the future was greatly appreciated.
After the first week — ably assisted by Caplin’s Anshuman Singh — we were ready to work remotely. We kept in contact over Slack and Google Meet for daily standups and sprint retrospectives. Despite working remotely, we didn’t feel isolated: we met each week with the CTO and Head of Engineering, and each fortnight we presented our progress and plans at the company-wide Sprint Demos. And it wasn’t all remote. Caplin organised events to bring the company back together, including a treasure hunt at The British Museum, and Anshuman organised team social events, including a bowling evening and a trip to the Notting Hill Carnival.
The weeks rolled by quickly, sculpting away at the project, dealing with problems, making decisions as we went, and meeting up in London just for fun. We got our wish to see what it is like to work for a company like Caplin — an opportunity we couldn’t be more thankful for.
