Travis joined Fifteen two years ago. Fresh out of school, nervous and bumbling. He initially joined us for a week or so’s work experience. I’m sure he won’t mind us saying, he didn’t have a clue.
What he did have was passion, and bundles of it. He’d dabbled with all sorts of programming languages, C++, C#, Java, Javascript, PHP and more. Furthermore, it’s clear Travis’ brain worked in a very methodical and logical way, perfect attributes for any developer.
We had just decided we were in a position to take on a new Apprentice Developer and were just about to contact a training provider and start the candidate selection process. It was a no brainer. Travis had all the underlying attributes I was looking for. I was lucky to have stumbled across him when I did.
After overcoming a few stumbling blocks we had Travis enrolled on an IT Professional level 3 course with Remit Training. Travis joined us on a full-time basis and soon rose to the challenge.
We took him through our onboarding process and started to teach him the basics. Whilst learning from our senior developers the skills and knowledge needed to be a competent developer, he also worked closely alongside me to understand the ins and outs of the industry. Travis learned a valuable skill, to administer our development operations systems (Servers and a lot of them!).
It didn’t take long for Travis to start contributing to production level pieces of work for our clients. He worked under the keen eye of our senior developers and myself. Working with WordPress, HTML, CSS & Javascript he soon mastered important skills. He worked with the likes of Advanced Custom Fields, SQL Queries, Media Queries, Google Lighthouse Performance Optimisation, Build Tools and everything else that goes along with it.
He would often come into work in the morning and excitedly show us what he’d been working on the evening before, usually, something gaming related. As time progressed the complexity of the games he’d been building as a hobby grew more and more advanced. It was soon becoming apparent, to us at least, that we have a gaming developer on our hands.
It came as no surprise to me at all when Travis came to us a few months ago and told us he planned to go back to studying full time once he had completed his apprenticeship. We weren’t shocked when he told us it was Games Development that he would be studying.
Even with the current global pandemic making things difficult, Travis has recently completed his apprenticeship and today sees his final day with Fifteen. We wish him all the best and can’t wait to see where he goes from here.