Ferranti Thistle.

10 years ago today, I started my first ever full time job! It was as a Trainee Professional Engineer (though some might say that I became a Professional, Trainee Engineer!). It was for a company that was called GEC Marconi which then became BAE Systems and is now Selex Systems, but to everyone in Edinburgh it will always just be known as “Ferrantis“.

They say that you should never do something just for the money, but for what you can learn. That’s just as well because I used to get up at 6am and come home at 6pm everyday for the stunning wage of £6600 a year.

I did learn a lot though, as well as getting paid to complete my Honours degree. The best part though, which I didn’t realise at the time, was getting out of the little box of experiences that I lived in and discovering that there is a big world of opportunities out there.

It’s a bit funny because I never actually applied for the job in the first place. I was on holiday in Tongue in the very north of Scotland when I wrote a very cheeky letter to the company asking them to sponsor me to study physics at Heriot Watt university. They sent me a letter back saying “Naw!”, but inviting me to an interview for the trainee engineer position. I went along completely relaxed because I knew that I had absolutely no intention of taking the job, even if they offered it to me.

I stayed at Ferrantis until August 2004, so almost 7 years and taking that job instead of going down the purely academic road I had planned was one of the best choices I’ve ever made.