Intern Software Developer Review

I thoroughly enjoyed working at Capital One. The amount the company invests in its interns alone is staggering. I felt less like a newbie intern, and more like a proper associate as my placement went on, as I undertook critical sections of projects with full autonomy, and was trusted to deliver them, with all the support needed along the way. I always looked forward to coming into work, and left feeling like I was where I should be.

Capital One is a very culture heavy company, which shows in the attitudes that everyone displays towards you. Everyone you meet is incredibly friendly and always willing to lend a hand in whatever way they can. Whenever I achieved something my colleagues were always positive and celebratory. In both projects I took part in, I felt like a huge contributor and that the work I committed was appreciated and valued.

I personally felt like I had a fantastic manager and mentor during my internship. I regularly had catchups with my manager, set goals, and worked with them closely on my main project. Whenever we needed some knowledge or support from someone else, my manager would always be able to get us in contact with the right person and help out. My mentor was another graduate who was next to my desk, and was amazing at supporting and helping in anything from project to company questions.

In the first few weeks we weren't particularly busy due to easing in, getting tech and permissions sorted, and then introducing projects, planning, methodology and company practices etc. My workload ramped up each week as time pressure mounted and I became very busy towards the end of my internship, which personally, I quite enjoyed. I didn't feel totally buried or out of control at any point.

Quite a lot. Both projects I took part in were almost entirely shaped by the interns, and we had the autonomy to approach the problem and suggest our own solution designs and alterations. I felt like I was often taking the lead in both projects in driving progress, especially towards the end of my internship and tying up all the loose ends.

I was exposed to a whole host of new tech and skills beyond my job description due to how much I put myself forward into things. My dissertation is being written in the same languages I used at Capital One in my web team. The agile practices I picked up will also be useful in nearly any tech company I work in in future.

The whole office atmosphere is really good, everyone enjoys their jobs, and morale is kept up by frequent external visitors like book sales, food sales, freebies, tech roadshow visitors like Google, health product giveaways etc. My team itself was quite a close knit one, and so the chat and laughs rarely stopped around our desks, and that alone lent itself to a very positive and good-vibe office.

The actual scheme organisation at Capital One is top notch. We had regular sessions for training and internal/external speakers, visits to the London office, socials, and other events. The structure of the manager, mentor and buddy schemes are used well, and it felt like the placement was very seamlessly integrated with normal company work.

Interns are invited to all usual company events such as the summer festival and conference event, lots of socials and trips, other staff put a lot of time in to help out, providing workshops put on by other associates to help catch interns up to new tech. For a large group of interns who may or may not even come back as full employees, Capital One invests staggeringly high in trying to bring out our best.

I received a graduate job offer from Capital One, and I'm super excited to come back, hopefully to the same team. I feel like I'm particularly lucky to have landed a job with such a good employer straight of university, especially not having to worry about searching for graduate jobs during my final year.

The entire intern group was really friendly and quite tight. After-work drinks and events were regular occurances. I made some very good friends on my internship, and I'm really excited to see them again when we come back as graduates. My team was also quite close and had out of work socials.

Very cheap for me due to living in Nottingham as a student already, thus my accomodation costs were already taken care of from my student house, for a very good price and quality. Nottingham as a city has a really good range of places and can be cheap if you know where/when to go. Compared to other cities, Nottingham has a great property value currently. Some local pubs can be fairly expensive for usual drinks though.

Nottingham being 2-university city has a tonne to offer in terms of nightlife. There are tonnes of great bars and pubs with loads of happy hours and offers with really unique scenes. There are also plenty of nightclubs if that's what you're into. Public transport in Nottingham is top notch as well, with trams and buses running quite late, with nightbusses spanning through to early hours.

As interns only having 10 weeks, we only got to see a portion of the year at Capital One, however we were introduced to opportunites like groups giving programming lessons to children, getting involved with supporting Women in Tech etc. Had we been there longer, the company also has communtiy days where teams go and support the city's community and contribute to things like cleaning the streets, helping gardens and schools etc.