Assistant developer Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my placement. I got up to interesting things and learned many new skills which will help me in the future. The atmosphere and work ethic was very comfortable, and I felt like part of the team from day one. In my initial search for a placement, I was looking for a role in which I could have a hand in many different areas and learn and apply skills that I did previously had little knowledge. I was provided with this opportunity daily at ProspectSoft. I never felt like I was out of my depth thanks to the knowledgeable and very approachable people on my team, and in fact on other teams.

It's a really good feeling to work on a feature and gather a lot of knowledge about the processes behind that feature, and then, to be able to answer questions about it by the next person who is doing work on it. I had some experience with this on various things that I worked on throughout my placement. Knowing that you can be relied on makes you feel very valued also, especially when that reliance is autonomous. If you know how to fix something, so you say "I'm going to fix this thing", and you manage to fix it, that's great. Even if you can't fix it, which is the case when you start, you can still do an investigation and relay information to your team, which also makes you feel valued.

At the start of the placement a month is spent learning about the products and how to work on them, and the processes you need to go through. So when you get to work on it you have an idea of where to start. Along with this, I was appointed a mentor who helped me with anything that I was struggling with and answered any questions about anything I wanted to know. Really though I felt I could ask anyone for help if I needed it, whether they were on my team or not.

It depends on the day, sometimes you will have days where lots of things are going on and you're particularly busy. Other days I could spend the day testing various things, which is not particularly strenuous. However, if I had a lot on, then I could always ask for a hand and it's more than likely that I could work through what I was doing with someone. Since dev works in sprints, there is a list of the things that need to be done. So when you have finished with one piece of work, you can pick up the next, you never find yourself lacking in work to do.

The amount of responsibility I was given scaled with time, as you would expect. When I started, I didn't interact with live data very often and mainly stuck to dev. However, as I got more knowledge of the processes, then I started interacting with live data more. Also interacting with support was something I was able to have some interaction with, which was interesting. Along with this, I was handling the early stages of the recruitment process for next year's placements, so I was given quite a lot of responsibility which I liked.

Something which I learned very quickly is that I knew nothing about the development process. You do coding in university and learn the basic concepts, and you feel like you have a good grasp of how things work. Then you do a placement and realise that you know very little. I got to work on a wide range of things at different ends of the product and was taught a lot about full-stack development. This will help me immensely in my studies to come and, I believe, will make projects like my final year project, easier and better structured.

The atmosphere is great, it's not uncommon to hear laughter coming from across the office. It makes you feel at home, and welcome. It's nice to be in an atmosphere where you can get work done and have a laugh at the same time. In my opinion, having an atmosphere like that allows you to work better, it's not stressful, and you don't feel like you're on a deadline, even if you are. Coupled with this some events happen where everyone can be sociable and interact with each other such as beer Fridays and the Christmas dinner.

The placement is very well organised from start to finish. As I have mentioned, there is a month of learning about the products before any work is done on them. So you are never left to just get on with something whilst not knowing that thing. Being in dev you work in sprints based on Scrum, so you always have a list of things that need to be done, and can pick them up as soon as you finish doing the last thing. This is good, as I mentioned there is always something you can be doing.

So for the first month of my placement, I was learning about not only the product, but about the customers, and how they conduct business. This shows how ProspectSoft products can aid customers and how the product will be used, which is a great thing to start off learning. Once I had learned that I went on to learn about the programming languages and frameworks that I would be interacting with. I wrote a few test programs alongside the other placements, to learn how to use various aspects of the frameworks.

Future employment prospects are very appealing. Being able to come back and apply everything I have learned throughout the year, would be great. And that's not to mention the great people and company that I would be coming back to. It's also very nice to know that you have secured your future. Having said that, if you don’t get offered a job, you still walk away with a year of industry experience, which makes you a cut above other graduates looking for a job.

The social scene was very good amongst fellow placements and colleagues, as I mentioned events are going on which give you a chance to socialise. These include beer Fridays, going to the pub, I even went climbing with a few of the others which were good fun. The Christmas meal was good fun too. Also if you would like to do something like play squash, there will usually be someone willing to do it with you.

I was living in High Wycombe throughout the majority of my placement. Based on the location, the price of living was a bit high, all of my fellow placements were living in Oxford which has a high price of living. But I didn't feel like it was too high to put me off doing a placement at ProspectSoft. I was paid enough to cover my rent and the price of living, as well as socialising, so I didn’t see the cost of living as a problem.

The Nightlife in High Wycombe was ok, I prefer sitting in a pub and having a few beers as opposed to going to a club. There are a few pubs in High Wycombe that are good to go down to, and colleagues go down there too which is nice. However having said that Oxford is half an hour away, which has a great Nightlife, considering there are 2 universities there. So if you wanted to have a night out, there was something for everyone.

So as I mentioned there are lots of opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work. I took up climbing at a local climbing centre with some of my colleagues and fellow placements, which I enjoyed. I also went down the pub whenever everyone was congregating down there. I even spent a day playing golf, which I was terrible at. There are lots of things going on that you can take part in, even if you only want to try it out. If nothing is going on that you want to do, you can always start something.