Software Engineering Summer Intern Review

Overall I had a great experience and would recommend it to everyone, as my project was interesting, relevant and planned to be deployed to the end users. I was encouraged to explore new technologies and job shadow people within the company whose work I found interesting. I was also provided with numerous opportunities to network and met a lot of lovely people.

My project reached over two services and several teams, thus I often needed advice. Both my team and other teams were always happy to help, repeatedly explain and demonstrate things or refer me to an expert with the technology in question. I was always welcome and invited to all the activities, team lunches and chats, so I always felt like part of the team.

My manager was very helpful as he was always available for a chat, be it concerning the project, the internship or my future career. There were two recent graduates in my team, who were happy to help us with any coding or technology questions. I addition to this, I had two mentors. One helped me with any general questions and concerns pertaining the internship, and the other provided insight on my career options, encouraged me to do shadowing and assisted me in choosing my classes for next year.

Besides the numerous intern and employee events, I arranged my own schedule, with the project in mind. I spent most of my time coding, but there was always enough free time for lunch/break and a chat with the team. I never felt extremely busy and rushed, but was never bored or short of work to do. I was encouraged to go to events that interested me and never had an issue with my schedule.

I worked with another intern on the project - a micro service. We were provided with an architecture for the project as well as a recommended technology stack, but were free to change them (within reason) to suit the project requirements. Any suggestions for additions that we believed would help the project were always welcome, even if we didn't implement them, as they would be put into the backlog, for whoever was then assigned to support the service after the internship.

I gained more experience working in a small to medium sized team, collaboration, presentation, peer programming, debugging, coding as well as was introduced to new technologies. All of these skills will be immensely useful for the group project at university as well as in my career, as they are all necessary skills of a software engineer.

The office was open plan, which meant there was always some chatter and people running around talking to colleagues. No one was ever too loud, and people didn't mind others talking aloud, so it was quite relaxed, friendly and fun. Teams (and across teams) people would bring snacks and have large group lunches together, encouraging an easy-going attitude, where it was easy to meet new people.

The internship program events and overall were well organized and planned, but were a little rushed at times, as things tend to run later with a large amount of people. The project was well thought out, bar a few misunderstandings on the technologies to be used. Overall everything seemed thought through, most possibilities were accounted for and there was no trouble with things throughout.

I had a large selection of training to pick from and was encouraged to go for any (and all) that drew my interest. The sessions were both technical, pertaining the company lines of business in the company and the banking industry. There was also a few lessons on agile, presenting and other soft skills. For more detail, I was encouraged to job shadow people whose work I found particularly interesting.

Considering the project I worked on, my manager and colleagues as well as the culture in the office, I would definitely be keen to join the company full time after finishing my degree. The thoughtful way employees are treated, as well as the benefits of the job are a great motivation to return to the company.

All of us interns got along great. We had regular lunches together, met up after work for drinks and pool almost daily and became friends in general. On each of the intern events/socials, there was never a dull or unpleasant moment; we were always chatting and having a great time overall.

I lived in the university area, which is the more expensive and popular and further from the office, thus not completely reflective of the area. In general, the cost of living is relatively average considering the entire of the UK. Socializing tended to come about average as well, as we mostly chose to go to student unions and venues mostly frequented by students.

I am usually not very keen to go for nights out, thus I found myself mostly not joining for these activities. From what I've been, it's decent, as there is always a place to go, quite a few festivals and concerts go on throughout the summer and we always had options on what we wanted to do.

There were three separate socials arranged for the interns, our mentors and managers. These were each with different activities (ex. bowling) and were enjoyable. There are also societies for different sports that arrange trips (ex. hiking). Many people in the company also have other hobbies and would often do so together outside of work; finding someone who shared an interest was very easy. Personally I went for a cycling trip with a colleague and had a lot of fun.