Software Intern Review

It was a fantastic learning experience working at Red Gate; I was treated as a normal developer and was exposed to a professional software development environment from the beginning. I felt great satisfaction when fixing bugs and completing "stickies". There were some frustrating moments where I didn't know how to deal with a problem, but the team always did their best to dig me out of those situations. There were also lots of opportunities to have fun with work colleagues; activities I got involved with included foosball, frisbee, table tennis, chess, bouldering and poker!

I was given a warm welcome when I began the internship and was treated with respect throughout. By the end, I have felt like I have truly become part of the team.

My manager was incredibly attentive and was very patient in guiding me through difficult tasks and teaching me new skills and techniques.

Most days, I always had something to do and I was still able to take regular breaks for foosball and table tennis! There was a brief lull halfway through the internship, but that was only because the team had just finished a release and had no new development tasks to do.

I feel like I was given a level of responsibility that closely reflected my abilities. I feel that the team would have been comfortable giving me any level of task if I could show that I was confident to perform it. Within a couple of weeks, I was doing similar kinds of tasks to the other developers; it rarely felt that my work was being 'dumbed down' for me, which I appreciated.

I have learnt a fantastic range of software development skills here, including use of version control systems, debugging, unit testing, test-driven development and dependency injection. These should prove to be useful during my project at university next year and for any other software projects I work on in the future.

It struck a good balance between being professional and being pretty chilled out about everything. There was no dress code, so people often came in wearing shorts and sandals, which meant the office didn't have an overly formal/oppressive atmosphere. Everyone was free to walk around the office and talk to whoever they wanted. Often, people would eat cereal at their desk.

The whole process was very smooth.

Everyone in my team took the time to teach me new skills and frequently encouraged me to push myself out of my comfort zone.

Red Gate will definitely be among my first choices for graduate jobs.

Maybe it was because I lived with three of them, but me and the other interns spent a lot of time together (going out to pubs and restaurants, punting in Cambridge, etc.).

Red Gate rented out a very cheap house for us, though I doubt that's representative of houses in Cambridge. As for socialising, it depends where you go. Wetherspoons is a good bet for a cheap drink.

Not that great, but this is not particularly important to me anyway.

Think I've already covered these, but you could pretty much do sports/social activities every day with the company if you wanted to.