Intern Review

I really enjoyed my internship. The work was interesting, and I got on well with my team and with the other interns. There were lots of great events outside of work, including free pub drinks every week or so, a 3-day Hackathon and the "Enger Games": a competition between the departments in a variety of sports and games. I'm definitely coming back next year

I felt quite valued. I felt included in team discussions and meetings on an equal level. The work I was given was actual programmer work, which would have had to be done by someone else on the team if I wasn't there, and was interesting, not just menial tasks or busy work. They were also very good at being inclusive, stopping to explain inside jokes which came up

I had a mentor and a manager, both of whom I was sat near, and could easily ask for help at any time. I had weekly status meetings with my manager, where I kept him up to date on my work, and I was welcome to ask him any questions I had then. My work was all from areas my mentor was also working, or had experience, so he was normally able to help me with any issues I came across. There were issues only when my mentor or manager were on holiday, as this was during the summer, when a lot of people were taking holidays, but I could always go to the rest of my team for help

The work was at a fairly manageable level. I always had work to be getting on with, but no one minds if you take frequent breaks so long as you still get your tasks done, so I never felt overworked. I didn't feel that I was being given too much work, and didn't struggle to meet any deadlines, or feel much pressure to do so

I was given a fair amount of responsibility throughout my internship, increasing towards the end. At the beginning I was very inexperienced, so my mentor and manager checked up on me several times a day and gave me a lot of guidance. But as I became more experienced, this slowed a great deal, and by the end I was largely working independently and keeping them updated on my progress, as they trusted me to just get on with whatever I was doing

I plan on doing a degree in maths, so the work I was doing, while interesting, doesn't seem especially useful for that, beyond general similar skills such as problem solving. However, I plan on coming back to MetaSwitch next summer for another internship, and so the training I've received here will be useful then

It was a great place to work. Everyone in the office was nice and friendly, and there was a very relaxed atmosphere. People often took short breaks from work to talk about random things, or to play an impromptu game of office catch

The company has been doing internships for decades, and this showed in how well organised everything was. There was a streamlined application process, with prompt responses, and I learned that I had gotten in within a few days of my interview. There were no real areas where the internship felt poorly organised, with a well established induction and a review system for when I was leaving

There was a lot of training for things outside of only what I was working on. There were interesting weekly presentations on a variety of topics unrelated to work, including on how the underlying hardware which actually runs your code, and on how to contribute to open source software. There was also a presentation and feedback session, where everyone gave a presentation on a topic of their choice, to help with our presentation skills. The highlight of this training outside of normal work was definitely the Intern Hackathon, which was especially interesting since I had never done a Hackathon before

I'm still uncertain what career I want to go into, so I don't know if I will be applying for a more permanent position at MetaSwitch. However, it definitely seems a fun place to work, and if I do decide to go into software engineering, MetaSwitch would be near the top of my list

I got on well with most of the other interns, and we spent a lot of time together. We tended to eat lunch together, and sat together at the around once a week company funded pub drinks, whenever an intern joined or left MetaSwitch. The other interns were just generally fun to be around

I was staying with my parents, so my cost of living was effectively 0. For interns who didn't live in London, the company provided cheap housing nearby for £9/night. There were company funded pub drinks every week or so, but anything else was quite expensive, as these were London prices

I didn't really partake in any, but there were nearby trains around half an hour from central London, where there was presumably a great nightlife

There were several clubs organised by people at the company in their spare time, for various sports like badminton and games like Magic: The Gathering and bridge. There were also frequent sports/games events as part of the "Enger Games", the aforementioned competition between the various departments which we were encouraged to take part in, and the company organised an intern-only Hackathon