Technical Placement - Infrastructure Review

Lots of mixed feelings about the placement. I did gain quite a bit of experience and knowledge about working in a large corporate environment and worked with great people. I felt like I mattered in my project and had a sense of responsibility as well, working in support/infrastructure to make sure everything is running good and thinking up ways to improve the IT infrastructure of the project. However, I didn't feel as though I had much of a choice in what I ended up working in and couldn't apply much of what I learned in university to my placement. The other placement students had more 'relevant' roles to a computer science degree such as software development and testing, or

The people within my project and team were great. I felt welcomed during the first few weeks and still get on well with my team/project. Lots of banter and camaraderie. Managers were alright but didn't interact with them much. Didn't socialise much outside of the project apart from other placement students and the placement staff.

My team leader was excellent - taught me what I needed to know about working in infrastructure and what I would need to do on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis. My team leader provided lots of help with most of my tasks early on but as I progressed through my placement naturally I was left to carry out my tasks independently.

Varies day by day. Some days I would struggle to find things to do or would remain too focused on a task that I should leave for another day. Other days I would have lots to do, which can sometimes be too much or overbearing. I imagine this happens in most placements.

Working in infrastructure I had many responsibilities and obligations, such as ensuring the servers were running and attending to any issues as soon as they pop up, providing support to developers with their workstations or equipment, and planning and carrying out improvements to environments, servers, and/or overall architecture. I'd also end up implementing changes or adding new servers/to the existing infrastructure that would be used by others even after I leave!

While I don't plan on pursuing a long-term career in IT or IT Infrastructure, I think these skills would come in handy in other ways, such as at home. The soft skills developed will definitely help with future job prospects, however, especially what I've learned about working in a Scrum/Agile environment.

The project area would get relatively busy throughout the day and I wouldn't have much time to make small talk apart from lunchtime or when getting coffee. The rest of the office, however, didn't have much of a community that I know of. The office does have a SSC, however.

The placement team was very friendly, helpful, and managed to set me up in a project a few days after the placement began. They checked up with me and other placement students in the middle of the placement (5-6 months in), and made sure we were doing alright within our projects and within CGI as a whole.

Didn't really have to attend any training courses or needed any personal training/development apart from what my team leader would teach me about working in infrastructure.

Not sure at the moment. Although my time at the company so far has been good, I'm planning on pursuing a more scientific or research-based career in the future so it's not likely that I would want to work for an IT consultancy like CGI that doesn't carry out much technical research.

We all preferred to socialise among our projects and other placement students in the same project, so there wasn't much of a "social scene". The first month or two, we did interact with each other, but as we got more within our projects we hung around with each other a lot less.

There's a reason the place is called LeatherDead. There's not much to do around there apart from a pub night/leisure centre. For some reason I didn't think of moving to a closer city such as Guildford to live in and just having to commute, where it would probably be cheaper, have more things to do, and have more opportunities for professional house sharing or with other students. Left my search to last minute and ended up taking a very expensive studio flat in the town. The only benefit I can think of is that I didn't have to travel far to work, but that's it.

Again, LeatherDead. Nothing to go on.

The office has a Sports and Social Club, with different clubs and sports such as football, basketball, film, and yoga. I didn't find anything I wanted to do apart from basketball for the first few months, but you're bound to find something. P.S: if you like running you'll definitely be sorted as the office has many different running routes.