Software Developer Review

I really liked my internship. It was filled with actual work that made a difference for the product and many fun activities in between. It's important for me to have a job that makes me feel like I'm contributing to something important and working at Redgate gave me just that.

Teams at Redgate are fairly small, so each team member is expected to pull their weight. I was no exception, even though I was just an intern. I started working on tasks from the very beginning and that helped me feel like a functioning member of the team. My teammates were always willing to provide support whenever I felt like I was struggling, which made my time at Redgate much better.

My supervisor was helping me from Day 1 - both with getting around the office and getting settled at Redgate and with answering technical questions and working on the product. There were regular catch ups to make sure that I was happy at my workplace and that the internship is living up to my expectations.

There were more busy days and slower days as is to be expected, but I never felt overwhelmed with things to do and never felt the need to stay late in the office or take work home. You could always ask someone for help if you felt like you were struggling which took the pressure off of the work.

I was treated like any other team member even though I was an intern. From working on important new features, through fixing high priority bugs, to handling things like product releases, updating documentation and answering support queries, I never felt like some part of the real work experience was missing for me because I was an intern.

It's probably too early to tell, but I feel that I got many important skills from my 10 weeks at Redgate. I got to learn C# because I had no prior experience with it. Probably the most important skill I got from my internship is learning to easily read and understand code written by other people. I feel that this is something that is de-emphasised in most university courses.

Redgate has a wonderful open office, so it's easy to see what the other teams are working on as well. Having a canteen in the building means that you can see most of your co-workers during lunch time. A lot of video games are also played during the lunch break.

The recruitment process was great. You had to solve a coding exercise before being invited to an interview where you are asked technical questions and have to work through another coding exercise. Everyone you interact with along the way is extremely kind. In general, getting set up once you start work is easy but even if you encounter difficulties the support staff will be willing to help you.

My internship was absolutely wonderful in that regard! Need a license for any software? - we will buy it for you! Need a book, a training course or anything else for your personal development? - just buy it and we will reimburse you! You also get 10% time every week to use as you see fit - and the company offers different activity during that time as well.

A large number of the people currently working at the company started as interns and came back after graduating.

Renting a place in Cambridge for the summer was a bit more expensive than I expected, being around twice the amount that I am paying for my term-time accommodation. Thankfully the salary that I got from my internship was more than enough to live comfortably in Cambridge, go out during the weekends and even save money for the upcoming academic year.