Technology intern Review

I extremely enjoyed working at M&G. The people here are very willing to help. You can ask lots of questions and further your knowledge on specific things such as machine learning or certain financial instruments. It was a bit hard at the start to get all the correct permissions for different projects but once we got the ball rolling, it was very enjoyable!

My colleagues always appreciated the work I did. I had limited knowledge on how to code in c# and so the things I could help were limited but they always showed how impressed they were when I managed to fix something or tell me how I added value to the projects. I definitely feel very valued by my colleagues. Everyone was also very receptive and we all bonded very quickly.

There was lots of support given here. I had a personal development manager, two line managers and some graduate buddies. There were more people to go to if I ever had any trouble with my internship. Weekly meetings were arranged to check whether I was happy with everything. They took the initiative to brief me on matters that I wouldn't have known about before going into client meetings.

It varied a lot. Some days it was very busy but on others I had capacity to spare. This was due to the fact that some projects require responses from your business clients which would take a bit of time and so while waiting for a response, you could be left with less to do. I always occupied myself by studying coding languages that I wasn't familiar with.

A fair amount of responsibility was given to me during the placement. I would start off with small tasks such as preparing data for meetings and then slowly build my way up to planning a meeting and running it. I had a large responsibility to hand over my work but there were always people I could fall back on if I ever got stuck.

I learnt c# and typescript coding as well as a bit of SQL. This helped me in future projects where I needed to apply a bit of machine learning for models. I also improved my presentation skills and team management skills. This helped me improve performances of teams and recognise their strengths and weaknesses and where/how to improve.

The general atmosphere in the office was nice. People seemed very happy to work at the office and because the company has a hot desking policy, everyone moves about. This helped people mingle with each other. There are also breakout areas where people can have more open meetings and socialise with each other.

It was well organised by HR. The internship followed a structure such as insight sessions and social events. On a team level, the internship could be organised slightly better. It would be nice to have a project set up in advance for the incoming intern to take up. I took part in lots of different projects which helped me understand the different roles but having a set project would be good. Getting permissions took almost 2 weeks to be completed which slowed down my work pace a bit.

The company did lots of sessions called insight days. These helped the interns understand more about the financial and technology teams in the company. Since people have differing interests then after that, specific training should be sought by the individual. For example someone could have an interest in AI but another person could be interested in Swaps. Both can go to the intranet and find lots of training on those topics. The resources are there.

The students would always meet up for lunch everyday and HR organised many social events for the students. Colleagues were also very sociable and went to places such as the pub or going out to eat. Everyone was very sociable generally. They would always say hi whenever you met them walking around the office.

I already lived in London and so the cost of living didn't change for me. The cost for socialising can vary depending on what activity you do. There is market next to M&GPrudential called Leadenhall market. The prices there are slightly above London prices but everywhere else it is normal London prices.

N/A

There was a running club at work where people would meet up after work and go running every week. Lots of socials were also organised by HR. London has lots of things to explore, near to M&GPrudential there's the sky garden and Borough market and further away there's all the London city attractions.