Software Development Intern Review

My team was fun to be in. Very sociable persons and with a good sense of humor. I enjoyed the daily chats and jokes. I also enjoyed the freedom of exploring on my own different frameworks and concepts that I could apply to the projects I was working on. I also got the chance to enrich my knowledge of the AGILE(particularly Scrum) working model and had the opportunity to apply it in my work.

The people in my department were very nice in general, with a few exceptions, but everybody seems to be treating each other with respect. During my placement time I felt like a complete part of the environment, although my responsibilities were limited, as it's normally the case for students.

I think my colleagues gave me all the support they could, which was indeed of great assistance. Most of the times I had an issue there was somebody there to help me, and if they didn't have time immediately they made sure to find some later on. I wasn't given too much support when researching different frameworks, but this is understandable as my colleagues were not familiar with the ones I decided to check out. However when I put forward the idea of using them for future projects(currently proof of concept ones) they have been really open and supportive to the ideas, while of course expressing the natural concerns that would come.

It's not easy to estimate, as I had very busy days as well as days in which I didn't have so much to do. However I tried finding something to work on whenever I got some free time. There have been days during which I stayed late(till 6pm/7pm/9pm) in order to sort out pressing matters or to further explore some ideas I was pursuing, but there have also been days in which I left quite earlier due to various reasons.

I was tasked with the maintenance and further development of internal tools and applications and recently I took upon myself the development of a new one and rewriting of another. The above mentioned were not production critical as those type of application would required top notch skills and precision, which would be hard for a beginner. I consider I've been given the right amount of responsibility.

I'm not 100% sure how much they will assist me during my final year, as I will not be working on web applications (but who can know for certain till then). However the concepts, frameworks, design patterns etc that I have learned here, helped me grow as a programmer in general and will be undoubtedly useful in the future.

Working in a big company involves of course a lot of responsibility which in turns puts pressure on people. However, the people here seem quite relaxed.

I think there are a few things that would need some improvements, one of them being the handover. I think it's not easy for a student to introduce the next one to everything in just a single month and currently there is no formal training or handover plan, which makes the first few months a bit chaotic, or at least this is how I felt. However, the student should also take care of how he adjust to the environment, and should ask questions from the very beginning as the whole placement depends on everybody, not only on the team/department/company, but also on the student. In this regard I find that I didn't make the most out of my first few months maybe.

Not very much, as for example I wasn't allocated a spot in the trainings that were organized for my team by the company. I can understand that due to limited budget they can't afford to train people that are here for a limited amount of time, but at the same time they can afford to invest a decent amount of money to give everybody plastic cups, which in turn everybody complains about that were not actually that good or useful... I really appreciated however when I was invited to a workshop on Unit Testing, during which I tried being as active as possible, but this was an independent event organized by my team.

From what I have been told in the first month, but this by the previous student, there are not so many job prospects, at least not for IT. And from what I understood there's quite a limited number of job cards that can be given, even to apprentices.

I'm not so sure about what this question is about. However I can say I did enjoy going to the social events, which are organized by the other interns and not by the company. I also enjoyed going on a trip with some of them in Wales. It was deffenetly worth it. The pub crawls organized by my department were also fun, although I could only attend one of them in December

The costs in Oxford are very high and unfortunately there's not much support from the company. My rent takes up to 1/2 of my monthly salary and then buying food and all the other necessary expenses leave me with not too much in the end. I won't be giving the exact figures in here though.

There seem to be many places to go out, but I'm prefer staying home during night time.

Yes, there seem to be plenty of clubs nearby and the interns also organize some as well. Since I'm here for just an year I spend my free time mostly going out with other interns and pursuing my own activities.