Software Developer Review

I enjoyed my internship to a significant extent. We had the opportunity to learn a variety of new technologies, especially for the project our team were working on. The most important part for me, was learning to communicate and collaborate with other engineers on a non-trivial project. The only improvement would perhaps be to let us know what the internship would entail (in more detail) in advance, however, this was likely only a problem due to COVID.

Interacting with colleagues was definitely a highlight of the internship. We started working on the project in pairs, so we could navigate the codebase together, and it definitely helped to a notable extent. Also, our team got together to meet in person later in the internship which was cool. We would ask each other for help when needed and it was useful to let each other know if something was blocking another. I definitely now realise the value of 'over-communication'.

Each team was assigned a trainer and each intern was assigned a line manager. Our trainers essentially acted as the technical lead for the project and gave detailed guidance on which tickets to prioritise , when needed. Our line manager answered our questions and provided an additional ear to talk to about general work. This was an added benefit, but wasn't directly related to our project. In summary, I was more than satisfied with the support from management/supervisors.

On a day-to-day basis, I found the workload to be a perfect balance. Having a (virtual) kanban board was instrumental to organising work. It also provided a way to see the status of the project each day. I found the pace to be somewhat fast initially but it was useful since it allows us to get hands-on as soon as possible. This also gave us an opportunity to get a feel for what day-to-day work would be like.

The project was already decided, so we didn't have *complete* freedom. However, this had its benefits - the plan was to include our work into the production app. (If it was a pure intern project, it is unlikely that it would be published.) Also, I think most of us were looking for a fair amount of guidance, but we would've had the freedom to carry out the tasks any way we wished if we desired to.

This was the first time I got to work on a sizeable software engineering project and the most valuable part of it was learning how to collaborate and work with other engineers. A notable part of it was learning more advanced git features (such as resolving merge conflicts, rebasing, and squashing commits) which will definitely be useful for the future. However, I did not give 10 stars since we worked on a fair amount of front-end development, which was cool but only would be relevant if you decided to pursue front-end dev in the future.

The atmosphere was very pleasant, and everyone appears to be very friendly and helpful. I also enjoyed the weekly 'morale' events where we get to partake in some fun activity. I am also taking into account the constraints of COVID-19, so although it was mostly remote, I think they did a great job making sure we had a good time. I also think the environment makes it really easy to ask anyone for help or strike up a technical conversation if desired.

Again, considering the constraints of COVID-19, the internship was very well organised. The 8 weeks we had what's just enough time to complete the project. We had one or two weeks at the start just for learning the technologies that we were using, which gave us enough time to get familiar with them. I think it would be a challenge to someone completely new to Software Engineering but I was quite comfortable with the pace.

We had weekly personal development goals that were discussed with our trainer. This could be anything, but I usually mentioned some particular problem or technology that I wanted to learn more about (and generally anything that I was having trouble with). We also had weekly "knowledge sharing" sessions which were often quite interesting as watched one of the interns present on a topic they were familiar with. I also presented on a topic I wasn't familiar with (Gradle), but had a weekend to research, so I developed some presentation skills.

Likely.

Not sure what the question refers to, but the colleagues were indeed friendly.

N/A, it was mostly remote.

N/A, I'm a Computer Science student.

There were plenty of opportunities to get involved in things outside work. This includes "morale events" that are just fun events such as board games or a puzzle solving evening, and there are also some cool tech related events such as a Game Jam that I attended. Some of these events were also intern-specific (like the board games evening), which was a useful opportunity to get to know the other interns (outside of our teams).