RDI Application Developer Review

I certainly learnt a lot on this placement that I wouldn't have learnt if I'd have stayed on to do my third year. The site I was at was in a really nice area (Alderley Park), the staff were nice, and the work wasn't too tricky. There were times when I didn't have much to do, but this was remedied relatively quickly when I let someone know about it.

My colleagues were really friendly and were always asking what I was up to. They made it clear that the work I had been assigned really was important and was helping people in the grand scheme of things.

In the first few weeks of my placement we were helped out by an existing placement student, but once assigned our proper work, it was left to us to find out how to accomplish something. We weren't really provided with any training, but then again we didn't really need any. We were expected to research any new technologies we needed to learn, but this in itself makes sense given that this is what any other employee would have to do, unless the technology was massively complex.

Usually I really didn't have that much to do. I had to actively look for work in some cases and in others, because I was waiting for someone else to get things sorted, I just did my own thing, be it University work ahead of my third year or just research into technologies I was interested in. It wasn't the sole fault of my employer, because of how long it takes to get someone working on a project, but I feel as though I really wasn't given as much work as most of the other employees had. You might think this would be a good thing, but the days tend to go pretty slowly when you don't have much to do.

After the first couple of months working there, I tended to work on projects by myself and was expected to more or less engage with the customers myself. As such, I would say I was given quite a lot of responsibility, especially to work to certain deadlines and to complete any other assignments in a timely manner.

It's pretty amazing how much going on a placement has helped me both academically but also in the way I approach more or less any problem. Coming back into my third and final year, I feel as though I'm a lot "wiser" in many ways, and that the decisions I make about how I solve certain problems are made from experience I would not have if I hadn't been on a placement. To be honest, I would have developed most of this experience no matter where I had worked, hence the 9 rather than 10 star rating. The key point, though, is that I feel like the experience and knowledge I've gained from my placement will definitely help me in my final year and also beyond that. Having a year's worth of relevant work experience on your CV also sets you apart from students who don't, which makes finding a job somewhat easier.

Whilst everyone was friendly and they did have a laugh every once in a while, everyone was almost always focused on their work, and it was pretty quiet most of the time. The background and expertise of the people in my office varied quite a lot too, and not many of the staff were working with each other, which also seemed to contribute to the fact that the office was usually pretty quiet.

The majority of the placement was organised quite well, apart from just after I started. When I got there, there was no PC set up for me, so I had to use a company laptop until this got sorted. The rest of the placement went pretty smoothly though and everything was set up quite well, apart from the usual lack of work.

Apart from the fire training we received in the first few weeks (which I'm pretty sure was for health and safety, anyway), I didn't really receive any training (bar one day of training which consisted of a lecture, mostly). My fellow placement students did go on a few training days during one week, but apart from that, that's pretty much all we got. You could say that they'd trained us to use new technologies, but the training in this context only really consisted of reading books and going through tutorials online, the latter of which we had to look for ourselves.

For me personally, not too appealing, but that's really because of two reasons. The first is that I don't really find the domain that AstraZeneca deal in (Pharmaceuticals) that interesting. I recognise thta it's an important industry and that it's very profitable, it just doesn't excite me too much. The second is that during the year I worked for AstraZeneca, there were a number of announcements of job cuts, and each function had its funding cut pretty substantially, which made life harder for a lot of people and made almost everyone question how much longer they'd be employed there. As such, it sort of made a job at the company seem somewhat risky and probably not long-term, which is not something I'd want.

Among the chemists and bioligists, definitely. They seemed to be going out almost every night. I, however, was a software engineer, and the 4 students in my department didn't really go out much as a group. That said, we had a number of opportunities to, and the chemists and biologists would definitely have welcomed us if we'd wanted to go out with them.

I lived at home when I worked there so the cost of living was pretty low. From what I heard from my friends who were living in the area, it didn't seem too bad, assuming you lived in Macclesfield rather than Alderley Edge.

Apparently the nightlife in Macclesfield wasn't that great, but people still went out there every so often. The majority of the time, it seemed people would get the train into Manchester, where the nightlife tends to be much better.

There were loads of different clubs for various sports and hobbies. I didn't join any, personally, but there were definitely lots of opportunities. There were also different sorts of classes on that you could pay for, such as learning Japanese.