Dev Engineer I Review

I have never worked before. This was my first job opportunity and I was pretty blown away. In term of enjoyment, I loved the work I was doing. I was developing a service that lived in the Capital One internal ecosystem, which I thought was so cool. Everyone on my team were great people, each and every one of them taught me something. Don't think I was ever bored, as my knowledge was constantly challenged.

In my team there was a big push to make me feel like just another member. By the end of the internship I felt like I belonged on that team, and felt pride in being part of it. Self-doubt and imposter syndrome constantly battled in my head, but at the end I felt like I had valuable contributions and was being heard by my team. My team had no issue with me leading some of the ceremonies, and provided valuable feedback on ideas.

I had weekly catch ups with my managers, who would enquire if everything was okay and if I needed something. I felt comfortable in my team, so I had no issues talking and asking questions to my managers. Inside the team I also had a mentor and a buddy. 2 people that were constantly there to provide any support I needed. I would have daily catch ups with them, and they would actively encourage me to ask questions if I was stuck ( I'm kind of stubborn and like to figure out things for myself, so I didn't do that as often as I should have ) .

I was pretty busy. I always felt challenged and there was always stuff to do. I had to projects to juggle at the same time, meaning that if one project was freed up a little, I would spend more time on the other. I do think that there was a culture of not being overworked. My mentor encouraged me to take the whole full hour lunch break to relax, and there were constantly email from the CEO who would talk about how breaks were important in the virtual working environment. When stuck or a bit stressed, I would take 10 minute breaks that would make the next work session a lot more digestible.

This rating is a bit confusing because it wasn't a constant amount of responsibility from the get go. It was a nice gradual build up, where I would receive guidance on how to get started with a project and what steps to take at the beginning, which eventually led to me taking over my main project completely (almost like I owned that piece of work) and taking over my side project with a group of other interns. I think by the middle point of the internship I was pretty independent and felt like I had complete responsibility of the projects. I would check in periodically with my team to know if I was on the right track with things.

There are two big skills that I developed during this internship that I think will assist me through my career. The first one is perseverance through tough problems. I always have had a problem with sticking to things when they get tough, as I lose interest because progress wasn't being made as fast. Capital One was an opportunity to see what happens when I have the motivation to follow through, which I thank them for. The other is the mindset of a developer in industry. I learnt how to search for solutions to a programming issue efficiently, and developed the soft skills necessary to interact with tons of other teams to try and meet a goal quicker. This is on top of the multitude of technologies that I got the chance to learn, including but not limited to: AWS, Spring, Jersey, Maven, Gradle and CI/CD

Wasn't really an office as it was all virtual! The early careers programme pretty much tried its absolute best to have social events every week, in combination with events organised by the current graduates. These included team building exercises, socials (where we would really just have a conversation as a intern cohort), games and talks. In addition to that, my team would also organise similar events but limited to the team members. There was quite an open minded attitude towards messaging people in the company, which meant that it was also pretty easy to end up meeting new people across the whole company.

My expectations were honestly blown out of the water with this internship. I was wary of what a virtual internship would look like, as it seemed like quite a hard task to carry out. However, we got a great introduction to the company and onboarding sessions, tons of training for both working at the company and for preparing to work virtually ( I thought that was really thoughtful of them ), tons of weekly events and games. I currently live in Spain due to coronavirus, and they even got a Mac with peripherals and everything shipped out to me so I can continue with my internship! My team was very prepared to take me in, and they did a great job on getting me started with my project.

I would say quite a lot. We had 2 weeks worth of personal training, that covered technical aspects of the job like particular technologies we would be using, but also got training in personal growth and with dealing with virtual working. I felt like there was a ton of time and effort invested into these sessions, and that continued on throughout the internship in the form of events throughout our week. Anytime I was confused or needed help, I had people to reach out you and take time our of their day to help me understand and in turn improve my developing skills. I don't think I could have asked for more if I tried.

Capital One from the beginning has expressed to us that this placement could lead to a graduate offer. I am definitely interested in the graduate position as it offers a good amount of rotations around areas in the company that I am interested in. I am interested in both security as well as data science and software engineering, and these are all rotations that graduates can do in the graduate program.

I think this is the area that was most impacted by working virtually. Relatively speaking, there was a good social scene amongst us as a cohort. We would meet up regularly throughout the week in events or just general scheduled hangouts. I think the early career programme did a great job organising these, but compared to what it would be like if we were physically at the company, it was probably lacking. I don't think this is on Capital One though, we did get a lot of time together, I think it was just harder because of circumstances.

Again, I feel like these questions are tough when we are speaking about a virtual internship. Cost of living is limited to my cost of living in my family home. Really cheap relative to working at the office physically. The socialising wasn't really an issue because I grew up in the place where I am working from! However I do live in Nottingham when at university, so I do think the area is pretty cheap and the socialising cool as it is a university city.

I'd like to reiterate the feeling in the above question. We are virtual working so it doesn't really make sense to talk about this. However I do live in the city where Capital One is located when I am at university, so I can probably comment and say that the nightlife is a lot better than other cities of similar size, and I for one quite like it.

I think we were pretty limited as activities outside work would still have to be virtual. There were opportunities to give speeches to graduates and interns and virtual meet ups outside working hours to socialise (even some fun stuff like wifi wars, which was a gaming session outside hours). Taking into consideration what the circumstances, I really don't think much more could have been done.