Software Engineer Review

My days were made up of plodding through the small amounts of remedial work that I could of completed during GCSE's. Virtually none of the work was valuable to my own education or learning, as it was either writing documents in word or copy and pasting data within excel. The work was rarely challenging or interesting.

I got on well with my teammates and enjoyed working along side most of them, and as such the majority of what I learnt was from them, however by management I was treated as another pair of hands which they used just to get work done that they didn't have anybody else to do.

Although my manager did attempt to support me lightly, there was virtually no guidance throughout. There was no training or any personal development and the information I picked up was from the teammates I worked with. When I asked whether I could move project to something where I could learn for my future I was told that my current project was lacking people and such I wouldn't be able to move.

There were times when the basic tasks did occupy my time, and by volunteering along side doing work I was able to fill my days out. However mostly I was seriously under worked. My project lead was often gone,too busy to spend time with an intern or simply didn't show up to meetings we had planned and so I was left with very little to do, which often led to very boring and unproductive days.

During one project another intern and myself seemed to take on the project lead role. Although this was a good experience, the circumstances were not. We took on responsibility for it as none else would and due to it being unofficially in charge it was difficult to get certain team members to cooperate and to get tasks complete. When we needed things due to an absent team lead we had none to turn too.

The placement was almost a complete waste of time as I almost learnt nothing being here. I did learn some soft skills such as working in a team, being under management and how to work in an office environment. I did not however learn or develop any skills. Due to being in a computer science degree and being in a software engineering role I hoped I would be learning to program but this was completely the opposite. I looked at some old code in a language (ada) which is only used in very unique places due to it being old and unless its in a safety critical environment, its very outdated.

Had a big office which was dependent on who you were sat with. Very little was ever done as an office or even as a team.

Before we came the management of the internship was changed. This lead to virtually no organisation for us whatsoever. Previously the interns were given a mini project which they worked on together, giving them a foundation for the work and initial training. We did not get this whatsoever. The most we had was a presentation given to us explaining further opportunities the company had to offer. When I turned up to my project I found out they were only aware I was joining 30 minutes before me, meaning for the first few weeks I only had to sit and read dry and unfinished documents, that in the end had no relevance. Once on the project I was simply their responsibility, and so I was handed work without any official training or guidance.

Absolutely none. The company never invested any training into me as I was seen as a temporary and disposable pair of hands. The bare minimum was given to me just to complete a job, and at times wrong data was given to me and then other people questioned why I had completed the job wrong. - but without training on how to get the right data I was unable to check my work and was unaware wrong data had been supplied.

The other interns was the only thing that enabled me to complete my placement. Quite early the ones located close in the office soon formed a bond within a group and regally had meet ups outside of work. The area had bowling, various restaurants as well as various bars although only two (slightly sub-par) clubs. The company offered maybe one or two social events in the year I was there and so the social scene was completely self-created.