Gain Real-World Experience at Trade Me
What's it like to be a developer, designer, tester, or delivery lead at TradeMe?The team delivered a bootcamp to give students a taste of an internship at Trade Me. They were invited to learn and experience how developers, designers, testers, and delivery leads at Trade Me work day to day to create awesome features which millions of Kiwis use every day. Led by Full Stack Developer Aorthi Afroza, Trade Me's team of awesome professionals and SoT alumni guided the students through various hands-on activities.
What's it like to do a Trade Me internship?
At the beginning of the bootcamp, 2020 Summer of Tech alumni Lola and Lin talked about their experience as interns at Trade Me. Their takeaway - this was no coffee-carting internship. They were included 110% as part of the wider Trade Me team. 
Students then split into three streams of their choice: Agile, Developer, and Design.
The Agile Stream - Learning team strategies
Jaime and Lola introduced the team strategies used in projects at Trade Me. This includes talking about kanban, scrums, workflow, retrospectives, and understanding each member's value in the team. Students formed a group to create as many paper pizzas as possible within 5 minutes. Then they put the team strategies into practice: they went through a retrospective on the pizza game to reflect on what went poorly, what went well, and new ideas to try next time. Everyone was then given another five mins to improve from their first attempt. After using the team strategies, they did even better the second time!
Design + UX Stream
The team shared what a day looks like as designers at Trade Me. This involves designing products for the Trade Me website and/or apps, research and discovery, usability testing and analysis, and attending stand-ups & meetings. They had students sit with their assigned group to design the best product for the user to improve their morning routine through these steps:
- Understanding the user needs by asking them questions about goal, requirements, their current use of the product and what they like and what they do not like about their product
- Ideation time for the group, they needed to come up with an idea based on the information they gathered from the user interview
- Usability testing was done by asking feedback from the users by asking them about their expectations, whether the product meets their expectations or not, what specific features they are looking for, and most importantly: whether they know how to use the product or not.
Developer Stream
This stream gave students a closer look at what a developer at Trade Me does day-to-day. Some of the tasks include coding, testing, collaborating, learning, and awesome events like hackathons ...and attending themed parties! (e.g Trade Me’s 22nd birthday). Developers at Trade Me use agile methodology in their work. They receive work from the designers, development starts, and the iterative process begins.The team also talked about version control as it is used to keep track of changes in code. It helps to improve visibility and to keep a history of code if changes need to be reverted. This helps Trade Me collaborate between offices across Aotearoa.During this bootcamp students gained a good understanding of what it's like to be a designer, developer, and tester, so they can be better prepared for becoming future tech professionals in Aotearoa. Written by Yekti Crow