Technology Analyst Review

Coming from an entirely technical background in Computer Science, working in finance was a new challenge. Although I worked in the technology department there was still loads of exposure to the business side of things, for some this may be a great thing but I found myself preferring the more technical challenges. That being said the technical challenges still far outweighed the business challenges.

My colleagues had me working on important and real problems for the business and seemed to treat my work like that of any other employee.

My line manager was fantastic, giving me the right balance between independence and support. The HR supervisors responsible for managing the interns were also great, in particular they were well organised and catered to the needs of the interns.

Due to the nature of software development most of my work was open ended so there was always work to do. However the establishment of clear objectives and deadlines allowed me to know how much work I needed to do and how to exceed expectations.

The philosophy of developing at J.P. Morgan is that small incremental changes to a codebase allow no individual change to make much of an impact, but with thousands of changes in a day from all the developers the system can come to life. As an intern my process for pushing code into production was the same as everyone else's, this along with the nature of the development gave me the opportunity to take responsibility for live parts of the system whilst also having a bit of a safety net.

The primary skill I feel I've developed is the ability to work on a large system effectively. Whilst this won't necessarily help with my studies, it will certainly help with my future work in the industry.

Everyone was friendly and helpful.

The internship organisers did a fantastic job setting objectives, running webcasts, socials, networking events, presentations and seminars. The only thing I would say is the first 5 days of the internship involved too much training that was totally irrelevant to my line of business.

There were mandatory training sessions over the first two weeks, some of which were really helpful and some of which were totally irrelevant. There were also optional training modules on the more niche technical systems and developer forums every two weeks to see what other employees were working on.

Very appealing, the work is enjoyable and there is clearly a lot of room for motivated people to find their own place within the firm - be that through moving teams or creating your own role.

Among the cohort of interns I was with there was a very good social scene, there was plenty of opportunity to make friends during the many socials. Being in London also obviously presented a great social scene too.

London living prices are not cheap, but it is the best place to be.

Most of the London nightlife is quite expensive, but there are still some reasonably cheap places.

There are many sports clubs that can be joined, however they weren't very well advertised at the start.