Internship Review

Working in Metaswitch as summer intern was really a great experience. The work was interesting and challenging, and the office atmosphere really friendly. I got to learn a lot during the internship and work on a meaningful task almost from day 1.

From very early in the internship, I felt like a part of the team, working on and contributing to a real project. I took part in team meetings as well as unit meetings just like regular employees, so I never got to fell like 'just an intern'.

I was assigned to a mentor to guide me throughout the internship. In the beginning, I had a session with my manager and mentor where they explained me my task and what I needed to know to start working on it. I was encouraged to ask anything regarding my project and they were happy to answer my questions and help.

Generally speaking, I had always enough work, but hardly ever felt overwhelmed. The work was interesting and challenging. Given how dynamic the work was, some days were obviously more busy than others.

I was given quite a lot of responsibility. I worked on an open-source project and from the very beginning I worked on actual code, contributing to the project. Clearly, my task was not a key part of the development, but was meant to be fully integrated and used.

Studying Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics, I am afraid that software development is not really directly related to my studies. However, a lot of knowledge and skills I gained will most probably turn to be useful - whether it's python, or developing software.

From the application process, through interview, to internship itself all steps were accompanied by great support from the company. They did a great effort to make me feel welcome and part of the Metaswitch, which made working there really nice.

The day I started, I new close to nothing about networking (that's the areaI was about to work in) and had very poor python programming skills (that's the language I was about to code in). I was provided a lot of great learning materials and time of my mentor before I started to work.

Very appealing.

Since I have been in one of the smaller offices, we were only three interns. Despite that, the atmosphere in the company house was very friendly and nice and we had something to do and did not get bored often. Also, we got to spend few days in main office in Enfield and met other interns (more than 30), which, too, were really friendly and cool.

No idea.

Quite a lot of things to do. Cambridge offers plenty of student organizations and sport clubs running during the summer. It probably also helped that I knew quite a few people staying in Cambridge for summer.