• Question: What was the first thing you ever worked on? How did you get your job?

    Asked by Phee to Emma, Andrew, Angela, Eleanor, Withdrawn on 14 Mar 2016. This question was also asked by HaNnAh :|.
    • Photo: Andrew Pidgeon

      Andrew Pidgeon answered on 14 Mar 2016:

      I worked on a traffic signals controller electronic circuit boards by programming and installing them as a technician. I decided not to go to uni but to study through distance learning 🙂

      I applied online and I managed to get through the interview stages and offered a job

    • Photo: Eleanor Sherwen

      Eleanor Sherwen answered on 14 Mar 2016:

      The first thing I ever worked on was for CIP, when I was an A level student doing some free work experience in the summer.

      I worked with a really experienced, skilled and generally lovely man named Jim learning how to mill out brass casings for photonic chips. Whilst I was there, I made a template for their CAD program which would make it take 2-3 hours instead of 1.5-2 days to draw up a new brass package. I also designed my first ever part – a new size of injection-moulded rubber boot to carry an optical fibre. It was a really really simple little bit but I was so pleased to do it and see it made real. It was scary signing the first tooling order for something like £900, it seemed like so much money and I was terrified I would have made a mistake. Now I work with tooling that’s worth about £10k per part but I’m still always careful to try and get it right first time!

      My Dad works at CIP as one of the physicists, most of the company is precision clean room labs and loads of scientific equipment so not relevant to my field at all. But I found out on a “child to work day” that they had a separate workshop for making the brass casings and asked if I could come back to watch and learn. I went back to CIP several times, on lots of projects, it helped that I was initially willing to work for free! Eventually, in my final year and after I graduated, I was working for them freelance and getting paid a pretty decent rate.

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