Summer Placement Student Review

Overall, I enjoyed my placement. The work was challenging and fairly interesting. The people were great.

I felt valued both as a member of the project team, where I feel I made some important contributions; and as a friend. I really enjoyed the regular cake-eating sessions.

I didn't need too much guidance (after my first few weeks), but if I did, my Technical Manager and Line Manager were always available and happy to answer my questions, no matter how stupid the questions were.

I was slightly too busy. The project I was on had a very wide scope, and a short time frame over the summer in which to get it done. It would've perhaps helped if some deadlines or milestones were put in place for the project. However, this is a specific complaint about the project I was on, and not about the company in general. In general, I think there is plenty of work to be done at the company, but not too much to make people overworked.

I was responsible for the build system of the project I was on, which was a fairly important thing to be in charge of. I think this was the right level of responsibility, and gave me experience in fielding questions about that component from other members of the team.

A lot of the training I received was ARM-specific, but will still be useful in future due to the ubiquitous nature of ARM processors. The rest of the training I received was on Verilog and hardware design, which are highly reusable skills. The training was well done, and will be useful to me well into the future.

As an office of 11 engineers, it was fun. Cakes and sweets regularly appeared for public consumption, and the atmosphere was generally fairly relaxed. Across the Cambridge campus, a lot of interns got together for social events organised initially by the company, and then by the interns themselves. This was especially good for the interns who weren't from the Cambridge area, giving them a social group for the summer.

My internship induction was 3 weeks late, but that was due to my odd starting date. Apart from that, organisation was seamless. The payroll and contract stuff was taken care of promptly and without problems. IT got my computer sorted on my first day, and I was able to log on and start work immediately. Social events and training sessions were put on regularly by the company, and interns were invited.

Interns were allowed to go to some training events, but not all of them. I feel this was reasonable.

All interns are automatically evaluated for graduate positions with ARM, based on their performance over the summer (it's basically an extended interview).

There were a large number of interns working at ARM in Cambridge this summer, and they organised a number of social events after work and at weekends. A lot of the social events weren't interesting to me (clubbing, for example), but other people enjoyed it.

Cambridge is quite an expensive place to live and socialise in.

I can't comment on the clubs, but there's a wide selection of good pubs in Cambridge.

ARM has a few sports clubs and a (video) gaming club, but there isn't that much variety.