Software Engineering Intern Review

Really enjoyed my 10 weeks at Capital One. Despite being online only the internship programme team worked really hard to try and make the programme engaging and fun. They organised events like murder mysteries, escape rooms and WiFi wars as well as having weekly challenges as part of a work from home games competition. Everyone in my work teams were also really nice and good fun to work with and helped me settle in quickly.

I was part of a small team with one other intern and a project lead. We tasked with implementing a new feature for the mobile app. Because it was a real feature and I was the only android developer in the team I felt incredibly valued. It was up to me to do all of the android implementation work so if I did not complete the work the feature would be unfinished and massively delayed.

Before starting I was put into contact with my manager, mentor and buddy. This meant I had three different people to turn to for help at all times as well as getting lots of support from lots of other people including the internship programme team and the project leaders of my team. I had weekly meetings with my manager to discuss my progress and to help me plan how to get the most out of my internship.

Initially I was very busy with online training sessions ran over zoom with any gaps filled with online training courses. Despite all of the training sessions being interesting, there was sometimes a few too many of these packed in. After this training period, I was working on two projects which at times left me very busy trying to work on both and at others without too much to do while I was waiting for code reviews. Overall though, I would say that for the most part the balance was really good.

Throughout the internship the main project I was working on was related to android development. I was in a team of three people, two interns and a project managers. We were working on a new mobile feature and as the only Android dev in the team I was completely responsible for all of the Android implementation. As a result I felt really responsible for this new feature and felt I had a lot of input in helping to design parts of it.

Before the internship I had never had any experience with Android development so I had to learn this from scratch. I also had to learn a new programming language in Kotlin. I also learnt masses about how to properly test code as well as how to work well in teams. This includes great experience with the agile workflow which will be hugely useful for me if I was to pursue a career in software development anywhere.

Slightly hard to answer properly since the internship had to ran fully online owing to covid 19 but, everyone I have spoken to at Capital One has been super friendly and supportive. They always been willing to help with my problems and have tried really hard to make it as fun as possible despite not being able to meet face to face. Everyone has also spoken really highly about the culture here so despite not being able to properly experience it, I still feel it is a really great place.

There were a few technical difficulties initially getting setup with the technology (work laptop, VPNs etc) but overall it was very well organised. This was the first (and potentially only) time that the internship has been run remotely so it was obviously a challenge for Capital One to organise but it clear how incredibly hard everyone involved has worked to try and make it as good as it possibly can be. Overall I have been very impressed.

Ran lots of training sessions initially including technical skills as well as soft skills relating to personal development. Coming in, I had little to no experience in the areas I working but Capital One were happy to train in these first. They also offered to pay for qualifications like AWS certification as well as offer training to pass those qualifications. They also advertised the schemes they have (aimed more at graduates) to allow grads to take additional training of their choice funded by Capital One.

Very good, the assessment process for the graduate positions they offer is pretty much the same as for the internship (I actually did my interview day with a couple of graduates) which means interns are treated as being ready to be grads. As a result, it seems a large number of interns are offered graduate positions. Quite a lot of the current graduates were past interns so it seems this is quite common across years.

Was hard to be too social given the enforced social isolation and working from home but, Capital One tried really hard to put in hangout sessions to let interns chat and socialise. They started a new work from home games competition with the sole purpose of allowing interns to socialise, this has been really fun to take part it . There is also a very good graduate community who organise events for grads and interns.

Living with parent so had free accommodation. As a city Nottingham is a lot cheaper than other cities like Bristol I have spent a lot of time in.

The nightlife was very quiet due to Covid 19 so can't comment on the nightlife during my internship. However, I am from Nottingham so have experience the nightlife before the internship and before lockdown. My experience of the nightlife in the past has been great. There a large number of nightclubs covering lots of different music genres all of which are very reasonably priced. Nottingham also has a number of great music venues that attract lots of amazing bands.

There were lots of fun events put on by Capital One to take part in. There were also opportunities to help out with community events such as helping teach kids to code that I could have got involved in.