Having just sat his GCSEs, student Nicholas Piachaud-Moustakis spent a few weeks working with the Attomus team - in his own words here are his thoughts on the experience!

“I worked with Attomus remotely over a period of three weeks and completed two main tasks for the company both relating to the new app Semafore. Semafore is a highly secure communications service, targeted for the use of enterprises and government agencies who need more security than your average company.

One task, which I completed by myself, was to update the Semafore website to make it look sleeker and more dynamic by changing the images on the front page of the website. The other task, which I worked to complete with my friend, was to interview professionals from around the world about Semafore. We then used the feedback we received to write up several Use Cases on how different professions could benefit from using Semafore. To help with this, I got my first company email as well as access to the Attomus Jira management page where I saw the concept of a to-do list in a working environment. I was given tasks and communicated with a Senior Member of Staff who helped me complete my assignments for the company. This was all very new and exciting to me as this was my first experience in the corporate world, and even something as simple as getting a new email felt like a big deal to me.

For my first task, I had to get to grips with new apps and websites, some of which I had not even heard of before such as Jira, GitHub, Visual Code Studio, Hugo, and the Command Prompt. This proved to be initially challenging and resulted in a moderate amount of googling, trial and error and asking for help but once I understood the basics, it became easier and more logical. Firstly, I had to find two high quality images that would fit on the website, which also proved to be more difficult than I had anticipated. I didn’t expect finding images to be so challenging as I thought there must be millions on the internet but once you narrow the search down to a specific topic, your options become more limited.

Once I found some images that I thought were a good fit for the website, I sent them to the Senior Member of Staff to see which two he would choose. However, I did not expect him to ask me to decide. I then realised that the front page of the website was completely in my hands and felt a sense of pressure to make a good choice. In hindsight, I thank him for that as it was nice to see the images that I found, and I chose to be on the website. I then used Visual Code Studio to change the code for the website, which I downloaded from GitHub, and ran the code using Hugo from the Windows Command Prompt. When it didn’t work the first time, I realised something had gone wrong and that the code needed to be debugged. When the Senior Member of Staff said the code looked good, he then concluded that I was using a different version of Hugo than what the website’s code had been written on. I downloaded the correct version, the problem was fixed, and I had a working local model of the website. I felt a great sense of achievement seeing the final version as I realised that whenever I go to the Semafore website, I can say that I contributed to the design of it and coded a small bit of the website myself.

For my second task, my friend and I were working to inform and interview professionals in different fields about Semafore. The challenge here was to find a suitable time for all parties as we interviewed people in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Australia. This resulted in some early morning and late evening interviews to find an appropriate time for everyone. We wrote down some questions to ask our interviewees and created a PowerPoint to display them. After all the interviews were complete, and we got the feedback we needed, my friend and I wrote up the information into Use Cases for each profession and sent them to the Senior Member of Staff for him to upload onto the website. I found the experience very interesting as sitting down and interviewing someone in a professional way was a new concept to me. I felt myself get more confident with each interview I did and by the last one, I noticed a big difference in my mannerism and body language, even though it was done remotely.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time working with Attomus and wouldn’t change much. The two tasks I had to complete were very different but were both very valuable experiences to me. I felt I really benefited and learnt from the tasks. They served as introductions for me into the real world and I feel very privileged to get the chance to do some work like this at just 15 years of age. Finally, I want to express my gratitude to the Senior Member of Staff who helped with my work at Attomos, as without him, none of this would have happened.”

Editor note: Nicholas, we loved having you come and help, you applied yourself very diligently, committed to the work given without any complaint despite the challenges, and conveyed a very professional outlook with third parties far beyond your years.

And now you can see the results of that work on the webite. Thank you!

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