Extreme Blue Technical Intern Review

This placement is a fantastic opportunity. All the other students on the placement were fantastic like-minded people and will remain long term friends. The work you undertake is interesting, driven by you and unique.

In a team of 4 students every single member is important and we jelled very well into a tight knit team. All the students live together and you basically spend 24 hours a day for 3 months with 15 other people so you end up like a family! As well as this the students on Extreme Blue are supported well by IBM employees and they value your contributions highly.

The management team is great, the manager of Extreme Blue that in my year was only a few years older than us and was very keen. He supported our work but also was friendly and approachable in a personal context. Each team gets a group of IBM employees who have knowledge that relates to the individual projects assigned to them and they provide great support as well as allowing you to get into contact with anyone else from Hursley Labs who may have expertise you require. The support is great, if you want something it will be found.

We were incredibly busy throughout the 3 months and this is definitely not an internship for those who want to slack off for 3 months whilst earning some money. Although this may sound like a bad thing, it brought us all closer together and because the projects are managed by the team and not overseen by some higher entity in IBM it really is up to you if you stay till 5 or leave at 3. We worked hard because we cared about the projects we were working on and when you can care about your work it is much easier to push yourselves.

As I have said in previous sections, the teams of 4 manage and develop every angle of the project. The teams are made up of 3 technical interns and 1 business student. Obviously the business student is expected to manage the project while the technical students develop it but you work as a team to complete these goals. The entire thing really is down to you. There is a lot of trust from IBM.

The team skills you develop are great; I learnt more about working in teams in this project that I ever could at university. I learnt more than I had in the handful of team projects I have worked on or even while I did the IBM year placement (a different placement actually working as an IBM employee).

All 16 of us were in an office together for the 3 months which helped us to build up some friendly rivalry. We had a lot of fun and supported each other throughout.

It was well organised, everything we needed we could get and everything was available from day 1. The trip to Nice was also organised well.

As I've said, each team had a set of specific IBM employees to lend assistance and also anyone in the lab was approachable and were willing to help too. There were specific training sessions for some teams who needed it but most of the time we picked skills up ourselves. IBM definitely invested heavily in us. From the fact we were managing and developing entire projects on our own to the trip to Nice there was definitely time and money invested as well as trust that we could get the job done.

Each of us on Extreme Blue was offered a job after the placement finished however the information available wasn't all that good which was surprising given the amount IBM had invested in us, I would have expected them to push harder for us to stay on with them.

We all became very good friends and we all maintained a great relationship throughout. This was kind of inevitable as we were living together and working together for 3 months, however we all got on fantastically well. We were housed together in University of Winchester student accommodation and it was like being a fresher again.

The accommodation is provided by IBM and hence all you have to pay for is food and washing machines (Sainsburys down the road and washing machines on Winchester campus). This accommodation is on top of your salary so it is essentially free!

Winchester is a really nice place to be, especially in summer. It's not the biggest of places and if you are looking to rave it up in massive nightclubs then you're going to be disappointed. If that's more your style then Southampton is not very far away and has all the big clubs you'd expect. In terms of pubs, Winchester has a lot of them and they are all pretty nice really. Good for a pint after a hard days work.

Due to the amount of work there is not much time available to do things outside of work. However there are a lot of activities at Hursley Labs such as sport clubs which can be participated in.