From May to October 2026, I was a junior consultant in Squarcle's Digital and Data Science team. The role has ended now, and before the details fade, I want to write down what it taught me. Because most of it, I couldn't have learned at uni.
Getting stuck in
The first week was mostly admin and training. Then we were in.
Work came in as tasks, and you could choose whether to take them on. I really put myself out there and took on tasks outside my comfort zone. The biggest one was Power BI. I didn't know much about it when I started. I was doing training on the side, but most of what I know now, I learned by doing the actual job.
What surprised me was how structured everything was. It was a proper corporate environment. And everyone was super friendly, so even when I didn't know something, I could learn as I went.
If you're the kind of person who gets your hands dirty, you come out knowing a lot more than when you went in.
My first code review
I'll be honest. When I handed in my first piece of code, I thought I was a bit ahead.
Then a senior team member went through it with me in a meeting and gave me a lot of feedback. All of it was good feedback. It still stung a bit. You think your work is good, and then you find out there's a lot more to do than you realised.
But every round got shorter. If the first review felt like fifty comments, the next had fewer, until eventually I'd only get one or two. I learned a huge amount that way.
Writing code for other people
The biggest shift was learning to write production code, not uni code.
At uni, my code only had to work for me and whoever was marking it. At Squarcle, someone else might pick up my code next. It had to be readable straight away, without them needing to ask me questions or spend ages working out what I meant. That meant breaking an old Python habit and writing with other people in mind.
Functions. We were taught functions briefly at uni, but not to this extent. At Squarcle, reusable functions were the bread and butter of everything. I built them to fit into the pipeline, so the same step never had to be written twice.
Docstrings. A short explanation at the top of every function, saying what it does. Such a small thing, and a massive help to whoever reads it next.
Standards. Everything followed the same structure, so any part of the code felt familiar.
pytest. Completely new to me, and pretty cool. Tests check that your code still works every time you change something.
Git, properly. I knew Git and branches already, but not at a professional level. Working through branches and reviews as a team is very different from pushing to your own repo.
Building dashboards for a real client
I built Power BI dashboards tracking HR KPIs for a client, and presented them myself.
It was a lot of back and forth. I'd make improvements, then go back and ask if this was what they were looking for. If they were happy, great. If not, I'd go away and change it. That loop taught me more about what a client actually wants than any brief could.
I loved that project.
What my MSc didn't prepare me for
I'm not bashing my MSc. It helped me a lot, and it gave me the foundations.
But it didn't show me how the industry actually works. How a team writes code together through Git. How much functions and docstrings matter. We did group work at uni, but not like this.
And the biggest lesson of all. You will get feedback. Don't take it personally. Take it professionally, and use it to improve.
What's next
It's a shame the role ended. But I came away with things you can't really get from an MSc, and I'm super grateful for the opportunity.
Now I'm looking for my next role, and I'm taking everything I learned at Squarcle with me. This is work I loved, and I want to keep growing.
