Technical Specilaist Review

I believe the IBM placement was an invaluable experience where I learned a lot about the commercial world, as well as my role in particular. My role as a technical specialist majoritively involves website design as well as keeping certain tools and team areas organised. Although I learned a lot about website design perhaps the role wasn't ideal for me and so negatively affected my experience at IBM.

When starting IBM I was worried that I wouldn't be welcomed and my colleagues may be hostile. However, luckily when arriving it was the complete opposite everyone I seemed to meet was very helpful and answered any questions that I had. So, although I have had a few disputes all colleagues at IBM are kind, respectful and very welcoming.

When starting IBM I was set up with two different managers an EPM and a task manager. The EPM was available to make sure my mental state was always happy and that I was content with my job, in my experience she was kind and very helpful. My task manager was in charge of making sure I kept up with my role and although we had our disputes he was an alright manager

With my role comes the requirement to meet clients needs with both design and time scales when it comes to building a website. Therefore to produce high quality, consistent sites I was always kept busy carrying one out and when that was finished there would always be another waiting in the list.

When starting my role it was clear that the level of work was above my skill set at the beginning. Therefore, it was difficult to task me with any high degree of responsibility at the start of the placement. However, as I improved at my job the importance of task I was given increased, but never quite to a huge level.

During my placement, I received very little personal training other than answered questions from colleagues. Instead, I had to learn how to construct and manipulate HTML code using IBM tools as well as the internet. However, once I had learnt these skills it provided me in depth understanding of how coding works and so led to increased ability with code at uni.

The IBM offices are always very relaxed with a healthy helpful environment produced by the nice people who work there. In my tech department in particular there is a very formal environment when it comes to clothing which makes the work environment easy to work in. However, I’ve also head other departments are just as relaxed.

Overall the internship has been well organised from being tasked with a consistent work stream to always having the right tools and equipment. I also had four three monthly reviews that were used to check on my progress at IBM that I am happy with my role and that I am setting and hitting new goals every quarter to improve my growth.

In terms of my own personal development that was predominantly improved and worked on by myself. IBM helped by providing me with the necessary tools and financial support to help me, however, there was minimal personal help with my development and so I had to use the IBM tools and the internet to grow my understanding of my role.

IBM offers a huge amount of opportunities and a wide range of job prospects when completing the placement year. Due to this wide range it makes easy to find a role that would suit me best. However, as the current role I am undertaking doesn’t quite fit my desires it means that it causes me to worry that perhaps future roles might not fit me best.

The intern group that I was involved in was a very fun sociable group who often met up for events and social activities on the odd weekend. However, the majority of the socialising was carried out at lunch times when we would always sit together and discuss our plans for weekends and how we were finding our jobs.

To my knowledge working and living in Portsmouth wasn’t too expensive, with the cost to rent a student house ranging from £300 to £500. Also the socialising in Portsmouth is mostly at a relatively affordable price allowing a wide range of socialising opportunities ranging from mini golf to cinemas and shopping centres.

As Portsmouth is quite a well populated area the nightlife is well accounted for with a wide variety of pubs and clubs in and around Portsmouth. This makes it quite easy to go on nights out with plenty of different types of pubs for everyone to enjoy and a good amount of public transport that helps you get in and out of town.

The majority of interns and people I worked with didn’t seem to get involved with many things outside of IBM, perhaps apart from their local gym. However, I looked to integrate myself in the local community and got involved in about 3 or 4 different clubs as well as a gym. I believe this really helped me socially providing me with many new close friends.