When offered the chance to intern at the company, I naturally jumped at it! As I thought it would be interesting to work at Hadean, a fast-moving, innovative organisation moving into a truly exciting, developing field.
My time as an intern at Hadean lasted just a week, but I was able to interact and engage with many people and learn a lot about the workings of the company. One incredibly apparent thing is the high pace that a startup works at (especially Hadean!), but this is what cultivates increased learning and development for the employees. Even in my short time with the company, I learnt a lot. It was especially exciting to be visiting the company in the lead-up to the DSEI (a big defence industry conference at the ExCel happening in the middle of September), which meant that I had access to the preparations for this key event in the Hadean calendar.
Throughout the week, I was able to look at LLMs and how Hadean integrates these in their products, but also how they iron out the flaws that these LLMs come with to make them safer for a consumer.
At Hadean, a large part of the company works remotely, which was daunting at first; however, when I reached out to multiple different people, I saw the very friendly and welcoming office environment translated throughout the company.
When speaking to people from the HR team, we discussed the culture at Hadean and what the fast-moving startup is aiming for. From what I experienced and was told, they nurture a high-performance culture with the determination to bring in more clients with differing needs, to diversify the product’s use cases. This is one thing that Hadean benefits from: a highly versatile product with the potential for use in anything from fashion and retail to military and defence.
Before visiting Hadean, I had never been aware of such a thing as a Department for Innovation, a team solely focused on ideation and the cultivation of links with new companies. It is also responsible for thinking of new projects that Hadean could get involved in or potentially could propose. I was lucky enough to be able to work with the innovation team throughout the week and was introduced to the ideation workflow and the satisfaction that they get from being able to see this whole process through, from their meetings to a commercial product.
An overarching theme of all the conversations that I was able to have was that the collaborative nature of Hadean allowed for a more fulfilling role within the company, which was something that I experienced every day around the office and while shadowing meetings. This is somewhat perpetuated by the fact that Hadean takes on a wide variety of clients, and so there is an increased need for crossover between departments and teams.
Something that I can’t gloss over though is the amount of people who advised me to try my hand at working in a startup at some point during my career, which I think is a testament to the culture of the company and the team behind it.
Overall, it was a very enjoyable experience and not only has this taught me a lot about the uses of AI, but has also given me insight and understanding about the future of AI in the market.