Summer Intern at Ensigma Bluetooth Software Review

This placement was very enjoyable, with the level and amount of work being very well judged, and the team I joined being very friendly and helpful. It was great to see my work having a real benefit and being used in a proper real-life application.

The team was friendly and helpful - I think that the team being small really added to this (7 people). As the part of the project I was initially working on was quite focused and not completely involved with the general work being done, it meant that I became the team 'expert' on the subject, with people coming to me to ask questions as well as vice versa.

My manager set me broad but realistic goals at the beginning of the placement, and made sure I knew how to get started. He checked that I was okay regularly, and I fed back to him whenever I had made noteworthy progress or was stuck on something he could clarify. When I completed the initial targets quite early, I was immediately set on something new, with the same level of support available.

I always knew what I next needed to get done, and was able to continue on with it. However, I never felt pressured or overworked, and the general atmosphere in the office was quite relaxed in this regard, which was a welcome introduction to the level of work in industry. On the other hand, I did sometimes find myself a bit bored, due to slow compile times or waiting for tests to finish so I could find a bug. This was particularly notable when I had to regularly recompile a Linux kernel.

My contributions were being used in the main code system, so if my code didn't work then the whole system would fail testing! However, careful submissions meant that it was unlikely that this would happen, and only small bits of the testing would fail. The stuff I was working on for the first part of the placement was not particularly significant, as it didn't really impact on the main system and the deadline was not really important. However, when I had completed this and shown I was competent, I was given more responsibility in the later work.

Very good coding practice and structure on a massive scale is something I am and will apply on all software projects from now on. Also, experience using collaborative tools like Perforce and Git I expect to be useful in future. Finally, some experience of workflow monitoring through Clarity will be handy, as I think this is a tool widely used in industry.

Relaxed and friendly, in particular in my team there was a lot of conversation and cooperation, and everyone would help if someone had found some big problem. My team had regular social events too, with a pub lunch together at least once a week.

Pretty well - I was there for an optimum amount of time and there was a full scheme of work ready for me from day one, that I had already been made aware of prior to arriving. When I exhausted this work, there was immediately something else for me to do. I definitely felt I fitted in with the team, rather than being some temporary extremity. On the downside, my work station hadn't been set up before I arrived, and so there was quite a lot of organisation on the first day to get me situated and up and running. Nevertheless, I apparently was onto work faster than most new employees.

The company paid for me to go on a week-long workshop at the end of the placement, where many industry leaders and speakers gave talks and ran exercises for professional development. This covered subjects that I wouldn't expect to be taught on my university course, and were more general/soft skills, rather than specialised subject-specific info.

I already have a placement with them for next year in an alternate area, and expect to do this again for two more consecutive years. The chance of a job offer after that is pretty high.

At my location there was only one other placement student, who was there for a shorter period than me and was working in a different team. We chatted quite regularly, but I wouldn't have described there being a social scene.

The area I was living was normally fairly expensive and touristy, however I found a good deal with a local guest house, so the cost of living was entirely manageable. Socialising was limited to trips to the pub, so wasn't really cheap or overly pricey.

Barely any, I was in a small quaint town! If I had instead lived further afield in Bristol, I'm sure it would have been better.

A few, but many were a bit far or when I already had plans. Pub lunches and dinner at someone's house within my team was far more common, and far easier to get into.