This review was submitted over 4 years ago, so some of the information it contains may no longer be relevant.
Rating
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The Role
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The Company
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The Culture
- 1. To what extent did you enjoy your work placement or internship?
- 2. To what extent did you feel valued by your colleagues?
- 3. To what extent were you given support and guidance by management/your supervisor(s)?
- 4. How busy were you on a daily basis?
- 5. How much responsibility were you given during your placement?
- 6. To what extent did/will the skills you developed, and training you received, assist you in your degree studies and beyond?
- 7. What was the general atmosphere in your office?
- 8. How well organised was the overall work placement or internship set up?
- 9. In terms of personal training and development, to what extent did the company or firm invest in you?
- 10. What were the perks on your work placement?
- 11. How appealing are future employment prospects within the organisation?
- 12. Was there a good social scene amongst any fellow placement students/colleagues?
- 13. What was the cost of living and socialising in the area you worked in?
- 14. What was the Nightlife like in the area you worked?
- 15. Were there many opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work?
The Role
My placement year at Expedia was an amazing experience. Throught the year I was involved in a lot of events, organised for all interns as well as other employees of the company; to include ice breaker exercises, term based hackathons, team building opportunities such as potluck lunches (where I improved my baking skills to a very good standard) and offsite outings.
The team I worked for were welcoming and supportive throughout the year. I got to learn a lot from them. From day one of the placement I got to contribute to the team and felt like a part.
I was given excellent support by my entire team. I got to work with different areas of development such as backend, frontend and QA. This was carried out usually in a paired programming style so there was always someone there to guide me no matter what I was working on. My manager made sure to catchup with me and get my opinions about my experience occasionally.
I always had something to do, if for instance I did finish my assigned task early then the team was very flexible in bringing in new tasks for me to start on. Also, if anybody else needed help with anything you can always join them and pair program.
I was giving as much responsibility as all my other team members. I felt that I had good ownership of code base and was trusted enough to make code changes, add new features, fix bugs etc.
The placement year has definitely given me an edge over others at University, as now I feel more confident in picking up new technologies and applying them to problems. I approach problems now in a very trial and error manner i.e. finding different ways to fixing a problem. Also, the quality of my code has improved considerably as I follow a couple of rule of thumbs I picked up during my work.
The Company
The office atmosphere is amazing. It is culturally diverse from the minute you walk in and full of friendly people.
Awesome work was done by [This section of the comment has been removed by a member of the RateMyPlacement Team because it did not meet our site terms and conditions] to help everyone settle in. She helped a lot throughout the whole process from beginning to end!
They invest a lot of time and energy on interns as there are always things to do externally such as attend company talks, get involved in hackathons, Expedia Code Academy etc. All ways in which interns can develop themselves.
Company Parties/Events
Working from home
There is an opportunity to come back as a graduate. There are numerous brands you can work for and it is made easy to move between them. I was given a graduate offer in my final week of the placement. Can't wait to be back!
The Culture
Yep, there were plenty Ice breakers and other intern events.
It is in London city area so can be expensive, but is affordable given the salary.
Wasn't involved much in this scene, but its London so there is plenty of places you can find.
We usually had team outings for things like team building events or sometimes just casual lunches and picnics.
Details
Placement (10 Months+)
London
October 2017