Software Engineering Intern Review

I really liked the internship. There was a lot of development involved in the project and a lot of challenging problems to solve. However, in my opinion this is what makes a good internship because it teaches you a lot of things

I was working as part of a small team. Everyone was very kind, friendly and helpful and made me feel like at home. Also, my opinion was always valued and taken into account when making important decisions.

I was always given support when I required it by my supervisor. Even if he was not available, My other colleagues were willing to help and share their knowledge. Also, I really liked the fact that people trusted my work!

Most of the times I had plenty of work to do but also plenty of time and even though there were deadlines, there were more about estimation and management than actually to make me uncomfortable. There was only a couple of times that I felt completely jobless, but asking to colleagues you would always get some work.

I was very lucky to be in a very small time in a brand new project. This meant that people relied a lot on me to get the work done. My team trusted me to get the work done properly and on-time always.

They will definitely be of use the rest of my life. I not only learned a lot about coding tricks and practices, but also project management and relationships with other people at work. Finally, I also learned how progress is reported to managers and how to conciliate with other development teams to keep your own project afloat. These are definitely skills for life that can only be learnt through experience!

The atmosphere was always very friendly and relaxed, but there were some dull times as well. Sometimes I wished people socialized a bit more with me which would have made me feel more like at home. That being said, nobody would turn his back on me and everyone was very friendly when I approached them for any reason (even if not work related!)

The original internship was originally organised in a very specific way. However, a couple of weeks after I started I was allocated to a different project and I felt everything was poorly planned at first, but to be honest it probably turned out to be better because this project meant that I was given a lot more responsibility than with the original one.

ARM always invests a lot in training all its employees. There are many resources available in the internal network as well as lots of talks and discussions pretty much every day. Most of them are recorded so you can see them at any time if you wish.

Provided that the company feels I did well in my internship I would definitely consider applying to ARM in the near future. I think the job conditions are great and there is definitely a lot of interesting work and progress here.

There were regular intern events and lots of opportunities to get to know each other. Also, there are special mailing lists for interns which makes events and plans a lot easier to organize.

I was based in Cambridge and I would say the cost of living here is considerably higher than in most places. In my case I found it particularly hard to get decent accommodation in a good location. I think this is because Cambridge is full of tourists!

ARM's office is towards the outskirts of Cambridge, which means that there arent many thing to do around the office itself other than a couple of restaurants/pubs. However, Cambridge is not big enough for me to complain about the city centre being too far away so that I cant be bother to go where there is very active nightlife. But again, Cambridge is not particularly big....!

There are quite a few activities to do within ARM such as basketball, football, video games, etc. Also, in the city there are a number of things to get involved in from dance lessons to music, etc