Software Engineer Intern Review

Redgate offered a very well organised internship. As an intern you get placed into a team around the company and work on the product they are responsible for. You don't really work with the other interns, but there is plenty of time to get together. Redgate is very focused on learning and sharing knowledge, so you should expect that there are lots of opportunities to get involved around Redgate with things such as presentations, and facilitating meetings.

I was a little worried at first that I would be looked down on as an 'Intern', but I soon realized that they really did value my opinion and I never felt like I was treated like the new guy. I felt like I settled in really quickly, and the team did start feeling like family to me.

Everyone at Redgate offered their support and advice. Each intern has their own manager whom they can go to for advice, and is there to guide you through the internship. You will probably feel like you don't want to bother them, but don't do this. Your manager will be there to help you through the work and they are very understanding and really do care about your personal development.

During the first week I had a little bit of a planner set up so I knew just what I had to do to get going. Once I had pretty much finished off the planner, I started to integrate more with the team, and started taking the team tasks off their board. As I was a member of the team around a release, there was plenty of work to do, but I can imagine that some other teams may not be as busy. Towards the end of the internship there was a lot less work that I felt that I could just pick up and do, but this was felt across the team as the final week was after the release of the product, and a lot of the tasks were just clean-up.

I felt that I had a lot of responsibility during the internship. I facilitated a few meetings, including one of the sprint reviews where you demo the application to other people around Redgate (around 10-20 people are usually present at these), and also had the opportunity to facilitate a sprint retrospective, where we had a chance to look back on the past 2 weeks of work. Other than that, I was a member of the team, and helping the team accomplish their goal, so lots of responsibility.

I went to Redgate to learn more about agile software development, and if you are doing the same then you will take a lot away from the job. You will learn a lot about the processes within a large scale software company. You will be introduced to CI/CD pipelines, GitHub pull requests, sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives. You will learn a lot about how massive applications are built, and you will come away with a better awareness of working with a large code-base. I feel that everything I picked up at Redgate will be useful, not only in my professional life, but also throughout my personal life too.

Very relaxed. It is a huge open office, so expect a lot of conversation and interruptions, but this was the thing I liked. You are never really sitting at the desk all day, behind a screen. You have the chance throughout the day just to get up, and go fetch a coffee, or relax elsewhere in the building. You will often be encouraged to do so. At lunch time, expect a bunch of different activities to take place. I became quite addicted to playing Worms with the team during lunch, and we had a great little leader-board, and trophy to track who the best players in the office were. Sadly, I was almost #mostlyHarmless at one point, but that's an achievement in itself. If you read some of the other reviews, you'll notice a few people mentioning NERF wars. This isn't really a thing anymore, sadly, but you can still spot the odd NERF gun around the office.. and sometimes they're used if you're late to your stand-up.

The first two weeks are likely to be mainly meetings for you, but once they're out of the way, you will be working alongside your team for the remaining duration. All your meetings will be tracked and organised using Outlook, and you'll also have Slack (many, many, many channels) to keep you up to date around the office. I really found the overall internship very well organised, and I have a huge admiration for the people team, who were swift in their reply and procedure from recruitment, and up until the end.

You have the chance to take part in the monthly open space, where people around the company are presenting new and interesting technologies. You also have the bi-weekly lightning talks that are held in one of the meeting rooms and streamed internally online (I believe they're also on YouTube now, if you want an example). I had bought a few books throughout my internship, and I was told to claim them as an expense through the company. Every Friday, you also get 10% time, where you can spend the afternoon learning something (as long as it's relevant to the company), although you'll probably find a few people around the office not taking part in this.

Near the start of the internship, we were informed that they often make offers to interns (in the last week of the internship), but the conversation doesn't always happen. I believe that MOST of the interns were picked up this year to come back next year as full-time engineers.

Redgate has a Feel Good Fund for events and activities that can be used by your team. If you're lucky, and the team still has budget left, you'll probably get a day out (we did an escape room, had a trip to the garden, and also had a meal). Not only this, but Redgate also has an annual summer event, which takes part usually around the start of the internship. Throughout the internship, you'll usually have other things popping up now and again. Punting was planned at one point, and also ice-cream trucks would come now and again (it was a hot summer). For a bit of after work fun, some of the people at Redgate often go to the pub on Thursdays, so you can always head there (drinking not required). Interns were also given a budget through the Feel Good Fund, and we all voted on what we wanted to do. We also did an escape room, and went out for a meal after, which was great fun.

I think Cambridge is quite expensive, especially as I'm from a part of the country which is much cheaper. You'll have enough money from Redgate to rent a place, and to buy food though, so you won't go without, and since they offer free breakfast and lunch, then you won't go hungry.

I didn't go out on weekends, but from the nights I did go out, Cambridge is very much pub life, and not much club life. This was ideal for me, as I prefer the atmosphere of a good pub, so yes, was awesome!

I have already mentioned that Redgate has a Feel Good Fund. You'll have countless opportunities to get involved at Redgate, and take part in anything that the full-time Redgaters get to do.