Technology Developer - summer intern Review

Given the COVID-19 pandemic, the internship got shortened from 9 weeks to 5 weeks instead. However, the HR team worked really hard to ensure that all interns got the experience they expected to have. And that was the case for me. I had the opportunity to work on a real project that is going to go into production and used by multiple teams within Barclays. The project was altered so that it could be doable within the 5 weeks of the internship. Overall, I really enjoyed the internship since I got to contribute to my team and I learnt new technologies.

Everyone within my team was really collaborative and open, and from the first day I was treated like an equal and not a mere intern. I was invited to all the team meetings, including scrum calls and sprints, as well as a relaxed meeting organised so that everyone in the team could just chat freely as an intervention following the virtual experience and working from home. Everyone I approached to ask basic questions and any other queries I had regarding my project or accessibility issues, helped me and solved my queries. Throughout the whole internship, there was not a time when I felt like I was just an intern out of the loop and not integrated within the team.

Before the internship, my initial manager assigned someone else in the team to be my line manager throughout the internship because he knew he would not have enough time to pay attention to me. I felt like this was a smart move, given that my new assigned manager was not as busy and I was able to contact him any time of the day, expecting him to get back to me and answer my queries immediately. I was also able to have daily virtual catch ups with this manager, which undoubtedly helped me stay on track.

The first week was not as busy, as expected, given that it involved trying to get access to the technologies I needed for my internship. This was made hard due to the virtual nature of the internship, given that I had to stay on a call with my manager and keep sending pictures to show what problems I was having. However, once the access had been sorted, I started working on my project immediately and knew what I had to do every day, keeping me busy enough so as not to sit around scrolling through the email doing nothing. It was also a good balance between work and regular 'rests' off work to attend the virtual intern sessions organised by HR.

Taking into account the short period of the internship (5 mere weeks), I was given quite a lot of responsibility to work on projects. Although my projects were not dependent on any of the other work, the projects I was assigned were actually useful and are planned to go into production. Therefore, I would say I had enough responsibility and did not just work on a random project that would just be stored and never be put into production. I was also given the freedom to choose how I wanted to approach the problem and solve it, including the programming language.

I learned new technologies I had never learned before, which I found helpful because I know that one of my courseworks next year at university requires good knowledge of this language. I also got the chance to apply some of the learnings I received from university and got the chance to develop my git skills. We were given access to Pluralsight and other internal training sites, in case we needed to learn any new programming language or technology; which was really helpful.

Since the internship turned out to be fully virtual, I did not get to experience the actual atmosphere and the environment in the office. However, during this virtual internship I got the impression that everyone within Barclays is super collaborative and always open to help other people solve their problems. The atmosphere in the daily calls and meetings is also quite friendly and not dull at all. Thus, I suppose that the real atmosphere in the office would be similar to the one I got to observe during the meetings I attended, if not better.

I believe that HR could have worked with each of the teams to get all the access to editors and other internal technologies sorted before the start of the internship. This would have saved a lot of hassle from the interns and avoided a waste of a minimum of one week trying to get access sorted and calling IT support, only to not get the issue resolved. Therefore, in terms of set up, it could have been much better and time could have been saved to work on the actual project immediately rather than interns themselves spending much of the time setting everything up.

The HR team organised a large number of intern sessions for our own personal development and to teach us what the regulations and procedures are within the company. We were also given optional trainings regarding other things like cyber security training and safety, to complete by ourselves. Moreover, we had the opportunity to talk to directors and managing directors on a one to one basis, which I found really helpful to learn more about the wider company and the journeys of each of these successful people within the company.

At the end of the internship, each of the interns is told whether they got an offer for the graduate program or not; with their decision mainly based on the feedback from the manager and your self-feedback on whether you achieved the objectives set at the start of the internship or not. A great number of interns usually do get an offer for the graduate program, which consists of a two year rotational program where you get to choose which areas you would like to put in.

Given the virtual experience of the internship, there was not a lot of opportunities to socialise and connect with other interns in the same program. I think this was mainly because it is much harder to socialise virtually than face to face in person. Moreover, the HR team did not organise many relaxed social meetings for interns, and in the cases where they did, all the interns from the US and the UK were invited, which resulted in around 400 people joining a session for socialising. I believe it would have been more helpful if social meetings had been organised by HR since the beginning of the internship, location-wise.

Since the internship turned out to be completely virtual, we were given the chance to work from our own homes and did not have to move to our work location. This was a really flexible opportunity with a lot of freedom, which greatly reduced the cost of living. However, we were still given the relocation bonus, which was a really good amount of money given that we did not have to relocate at all for this virtual internship.

This is non applicable to the internship this year given that due to the COVID19 pandemic, most of the pubs, restaurants and clubs were closed to avoid further spreading of the virus. However, had I been located in London, where my original internship would have been, I believe that the nightlife in the area (Canary Wharf) would not have been the best since it is a financial area and not well known for nightlife. But London is indeed quite big and known for good nightlife, and commuting to another part of London would have meant that the nightlife was amazing.

Again, any kind of social activities outside of work are non applicable this year given that each of the interns was working from their own homes and thus, most of the interns were separated and not close to each other. Therefore, there was not an opportunity to hang out or organise events. An attempt was made to create a social for London interns only, which was quite fun and we got the opportunity to get to know some of the interns that we would have met.