Technical Intern Review

Overall, I really enjoyed my time at HP. I was hoping to have more of a development role initially as we weren't informed exactly what kind of thing we would be doing before we started. For the first half of the year I was carrying out more hardware-oriented tasks when I had been hoping to be more involved in the development side of the company. However, in the latter half of the year my mentor gave me more jobs centered around development such as adding some new functionality to a piece of software my team used on a daily basis. I felt happier about what I was doing by the time I reached the end of the year.

For the first few months I didn't feel as a valued as I did by the time I was reaching the end of my twelve month placement. As I grew in confidence and had more experience with the hardware and software at the company, I was given more complex tasks that had more of an impact on my team.

I had a mentor during my placement who was very helpful and knowledgeable. He was the one to give me support and tasks to complete. His insight was very useful. I had less contact with my manager as I was doing different tasks compared to the other members of my team.

For the first month or so I wasn't all that busy but I was given more jobs to do over time. The tasks I was asked to complete also grew in size. In the latter six months of my placement I was given larger tasks to complete which would take several weeks to finish instead of just a couple of days.

To start with I wasn't given much responsibility but over time as I became more useful and knowledgeable about the HP products I was given more responsibility and more important tasks to complete. I would have liked to have felt more of a part of the team but this was difficult when my colleagues were working on quite advanced solutions to customer issues.

I definitely feel that I have expanded on my existing skills whilst at HP. Whilst I only had basic knowledge of technologies such as virtual machines and backups and no real knowledge of technologies such as NAS or deduplication when I started, I have a much better understanding of these technologies, their usefulness in the industry and how they work. Though I didn't do as much development work as I was hoping to do, I also felt that my programming skills improved while adding new features to tools that had already been created by another employee.

The general atmosphere was friendly and relaxed. I was seated with colleagues who were working on different things to me so it was sometimes a little quieter than I would have liked but it still was a good working atmosphere.

After I attended the assessment centre it took three weeks to hear back from HP before they offered me the placement which was a bit too long to wait really. As for how the placement was set up, there were a few training days when we started which gave us a brief overview of the different teams at the site, the different technologies and an idea of what we would be doing. We were also told what our roles would be during this part of the process. Ideally it would have been better if they had informed us of our roles before we started the job. When accepting the offer, it was described as a Software Engineer placement. When in fact it was slightly different from that. I was concerned about this at first but the tasks and projects I was working on were still enjoyable. I would have a weekly meeting with my mentor where I discussed my progress on what I had been working on and new tasks were assigned to me if any were available. The placement felt pretty well organised overall but it could have been better.

There were a few mandatory training courses but no real investment in any training or development.

I certainly enjoyed working there but if I did the have the chance to go back, I would prefer to be working in a development team. Software development is where I hope to work in the industry so that would be my preference if I was to return to HP. The site was a really nice place to work as well.

There were a few meals and gatherings occasionally but there were only a small number of placement students at the site where I was working.

I lived at home during my placement so accommodation wasn't a concern. As for socialising Bristol isn't too expensive and is a nice place to work.

Bristol city centre is the main area for nightlife and has a good variety of places to visit.

There were a few celebrations when a new software release came out. These happened a few times every year and brought all the employees from the site together.