Software Engineer Intern Review

I really enjoyed it! There were definitely days when I didn't really want to be there, or it felt like the clock went slowly, but as time went on and I really got going there were way more days where the day flew by and I was content with all the work I was getting done.

Everyone I worked around was so nice, and they brought us cake in for the last day!

My manager was amazing. He was so supportive, and he really pushed me to assert myself and be confident in my abilities.

The first couple of weeks I wasn't too busy, basically just figuring out how everything worked and getting oriented. Once our projects really got going, though, I felt like I didn't have enough time to get everything done! I often worked a few extra hours (so like 9:30-6:30 or 7:00) to move forward on everything. We got to pick our own hours, though, so if I needed to leave early on a certain day I was able to.

Quite a bit. On one of our projects my teammate and I were literally given an assignment and left to plan everything basically by ourselves, down to which language to write it in. Our manager was happy to offer insight, but it was our responsibility. On the other project, it was more of a directed thing where our manager monitored the work, but we could choose what part of the project we wanted to do.

To a very great extent. I learned many programming skills I didn't have, such as React and using git, that I had no experience with. I also learned about time management and working in a professional environment, which was very valuable.

Most people focused on their own work and didn't talk to us too much, but everyone was pretty nice and open to meeting you if you wanted. On one of my first days I couldn't figure out how to log into my computer, so I walked up to some other employees chatting and one of them came right over and helped me fix it.

It was very well organised. They set up very clear, well-defined projects for us to work on and introduced us to them when we started. They were good projects, pretty manageable for the time we had. They also planned socials for us, and got us involved in their innovation week.

They have a very straightforward track: if you're graduating in the coming year, then you're considered for the two-year grad scheme. If you're graduating later than that, you are considered for an internship for the next summer. It's a good program, unless you don't want to do the internship two summers in a row before getting into the grad scheme.

Everyone in tech was pretty nice, and we would all meet up and get lunch together pretty much every day. Sometimes we'd walk to a nearby park, or go grab takeaway and bring it back to the canteen, otherwise we'd just buy food at the canteen. It was nice to have that network.

I mean, it's London. Love the city, but it's very expensive. Also we didn't do much socialising outside of work just because we all finished working at different times, and all of the interns were split between the different offices. Plus we all lived in different parts of the city.