Developer Intern Review

The internship was very enjoyable. The project was chosen well: our team of interns worked on an internal application which meant we were able to take a lot of ownership over it. As it was also a real product intended to be used by all employees, we had to deal with the challenges of producing production quality code.

We were all made to feel part of the company, taking full part in all team-building and social events that took place and enjoying all the perks that full employees have. The project managers cared about our development and wanted our project to succeed. A lot of effort is put into making the company a comfortable place for everyone.

We had two weeks of training with lots of guidance from the tech lead. There were technical talks with question and answer sessions, and people were generally on hand to help. Everyone is assigned a line manager, with whom they have weekly status chats to discuss how things are going on the whole.

The contract is for seven and a half hours of work a day. In practice most of us were around a bit longer than that but took regular breaks for other activities. There was certainly enough work available for us to do something meaningful for our contracted time, but there was also scope for reading for personal development.

Our team of seven interns work on an internal project which we had lots of influence over and which will be used by all employees of the company. The managers held the final say, but out of necessity we had to make conscious design decisions over the course of normal work.

I expect that the skills (computer programming) will not directly help my degree subject (mathematics), but the skills I picked up should certainly be useful training for a future job in the software industry and the experience I have gained should be to my advantage in a future job search.

The atmosphere in the office is relatively laid back. The dress code is informal. A lot of money is spent on making sure there is plenty of space to take breaks. As long as the work gets done, everyone is free to play the company video games consoles or parlour games, and there are frequent office tournaments.

Interns started on two different dates a month apart, which meant each group was able to have two weeks of training and then a two week gentle start on their team's project. Each team sat at desks arranged in one island with a manager nearby, so working together and getting help was really easy.

We were given regular tech talks and encouraged to take breaks from writing code if we felt we should read around the subject more. Our wishes to work on certain aspects of the project for personal development were taken into account. We were also encouraged to make use of the tradition of "lunch and learn" where employees talk about any topic they find interesting.

There were very frequent social events, at which interns were welcome to attend. Many of these were subsidized from the "morale budget". Interns often organized sport, gaming or cultural events and were able to apply to the morale budget for a subsidy. The office is near some sports centres and also Hampstead Heath where volleyball and tennis are sometimes played.