Software Engineer Review

In general I found the placement enjoyable. The work was mostly fairly interesting, although could be slightly frustrating or tedious at times. This is probably varies between teams and people though. The atmosphere in the office and social events were brilliant, the company is very relaxed and clearly values morale very highly, so the non-work stuff was always great.

Metaswitch were very good at making you feel like part of the team; interns are invited along to all the team meetings and events, and you're basically treated like a new full time starter. The work you're given is always something actually helpful to the company, so you feel like you're being useful for the team.

Manager was good at and was very close to me, so I could casually ask questions at any time. I wasn't made to feel bad about doing this - manager mentioned they'd had time to mentor me build into their schedule. As well as day to day discussions there were also weekly meetings with my manager.

I wasn't doing anything with a deadline or that was urgent, so I didn't really feel any time pressure. You're expected to give updates on when you think you'll finish tasks by, but you're not pushed to meet this, so I wasn't ever really busy - it was quite relaxed. I didn't find myself with nothing to do, but I think I might have liked to be pushed a bit more in terms of time.

I was the only person working on the task I was set, so I was quite independent and was able to make decisions about my direction on that. All the code I wrote was reviewed by my manager and others working on the same software, but I was expected to self-review as much as possible.

My degree isn't computer science, so the coding skills won't be that useful, but there were some transferable skills that might be. We had a session where we practiced giving a presentation, which I will probably do in my course, and the experience of coding on a team project, and use of tools like Git will be very useful if I do software engineering as a career.

Very relaxed. Office nicely decorated and comfortable. Quiet enough to work but still plenty of discussion and collaboration. Frequent joking and laughter - people seemed pretty happy. There wasn't any politics, and the command structure is very flat - managers work with everyone else and are easy to talk to. Also casual dress code and flexible hours.

Very well organised - they have a lot of interns each year, so people clearly know what to do with interns. You get a assigned a manager and a project clearly decided before you arrived. Also an activity week for interns, with a hackaton and various other events. Only improvement would be to organise the initial training of interns - lots of interns are probably learning the same stuff in the first couple of weeks.

My manager spoke to me very often, so quite a bit of time investment by Metaswitch.

Am strongly considering working at Metaswitch in the future, they're a company with a great atmosphere and lots of amazing people. Most interns in their last year at uni get an interview in their last week for a graduate role, and you're quite likely to get an offer. They seem very keen on getting new grads into the company.

Very good social scene with the other interns. Most live in a company house, so meet that way, and there are also starters and leavers drinks where you can meet people. There are company event which most interns go to and intern parties/gatherings in the evenings. Everyone very friendly, and I had a really good time outside of work.

Company houses were £11 a night for a single room, £9 for a shared room. This is subsidised, and cheap for the area. Also, Metaswitch pays for pub trips and other things like takeaways during hackathon and barbeque after sports day. Still London though, so more expensive than I'm used to.

Not my thing, but according to others pretty nonexistent. Can get into London pretty easily though.

Yes, sports at lunchtime, pub trips, and an ongoing team competition with lots of events happening.