Software Engineer Intern Review

Overall, I very much enjoyed my year with Oracle. Every day I faced a new challenge, so not a day went by where I felt bored. I was given the chance to fully experience my role, not only touching the surface. Also, the team that I was in is spread around the world, so it was interesting to work across different time zones. This whole year will prove to be very valuable for my career development.

Even though I was an intern, I was assigned "real" tasks, that were meant to be done anyway by someone else if I was not there. So, not only "intern" tasks. I was also trusted to pick up my own tasks from the list of available tasks, if there's nothing more urgent.

Most of the time, when I faced difficulties while doing my tasks, I could just ask help from my teammates. They also often gave me constructive feedback. For other issues, I usually reached out to the intern coordinator. More feedback from management would be useful.

I would say I was usually quite busy. There will always be tasks waiting to be done in the team's queue. It was actually really up to me, but usually after I was done with a task, I asked or picked up another task. By saying that, it doesn't mean that everything is urgent or high priority. There was not a lot of hard deadlines.

Quite a lot. For the first half of my internship, I was a main contributor managing a long-running application project. Other than that, most of the tasks were felt important, and some even critical. However, I didn't feel a lot of pressure.

Throughout the year, I've learnt a lot of technologies and tools that I hadn't even heard before. Clearly, only relying on stuffs from uni will not be enough in this tech industry. So the technical skills that I've learnt will be useful, both for my final year and my career afterwards. Soft skills such as working in an international team environment will also be useful.

Oracle is a mature corporate, thus on some parts of the building, there's a lot of people wearing suits. So the atmosphere can be perceived as quite formal sometimes. In contrast, my team is more relaxed, for example, there is no dress code for my team! Somehow, that makes working with each other more enjoyable. However, as a mature company, it also suffers from high average age of employees, although I heard they're trying to bring the number down.

There were around 48 interns during my year, and the company has done a good job organising the internship. There is one intern coordinator from the HR team dedicated to us. She managed the onboarding process and all of activities that interns can take part in. It's really useful for us interns to have someone with a dedicated role like that.

For the first few months, I was given access to some online courses for some technical subjects. The intern coordinator also organised a lot of soft-skills training sessions, such as for presenting, interviews, etc. I was hoping to do some training that would lead to certifications, but that didn't seem to be popular among the team.

Oracle is making its way to the front of the cloud competitions, so it makes sense for the company to be hiring new (young) talents. I know that some of the previous interns were offered a job afterwards, so it is absolutely possible to stay. My manager also seems to be pleased with my performance, as I was offered to stay longer for the summer.

Yes, as mentioned, there were around 48 of us, so everyone can find people that they are clicked with, if not with all. There's a long table in the cafeteria where the interns usually eat lunch together. Outside of work, some organised parties or sport activities. I always attended the bi-weekly badminton session with some of the interns.

Reading is cheaper compared to Brighton, where my university is located. But, I can't really say how it really is compared to the rest of UK. Housing is affordable despite the close proximity to London. There is a free shuttle that goes to the office complex.

I'm not much of a nightlife person myself. I've only gone out a couple of times in Reading. But hearing from others, it sounds like it's pretty average.

Yes, there's a lot of opportunities such as volunteering projects. We even have an intern dedicated to support volunteering. So, there's definitely something to partake in if you choose to do so.