IT 2nd level server and network administrator Review

As someone who is very technically oriented, I really enjoyed working at 3M, due to the wide and varied role that I had, the people that I was working with, and the responsibility that I was given.

Colleagues were very pleased to have the introduction of my team, and I was very warmly welcomed and included in social activities outside of work.

My manager was very supportive and we had regular review meetings to discuss work that was going on to ensure that I was getting on ok, and that I was being given the experience that I wanted.

The level of busyness was fairly varied - sometimes incidents came through very fast, but sometimes support was very quiet.

My team was placed between a 24 hour operations team that monitored the servers and network links, and the 3rd level application and systems specialists. We were given a large amount of responsibility in terms of detecting potential major incidents, and on occasion, I ended up leading the resolution of major service impacting incidents.

Throughout the year I gained a great deal of experience in server 2003 administration, network theory and practice, hardware, and general computing theory, and all of these will help me at university and beyond.

Really good atmosphere within IT as a whole due to a busy program of organised social events. The number of students within the whole of 3M from marketing etc helped as well.

My manager had organised a full training schedule for when I arrived, and I was provided with great support all through the year.

No external formal training courses were provided, so most training was on the job by third level team members, however I was also taken to a warehouse to see the infrastructure in the ordering systems, had regular overviews of the work of other parts of IT, and people were more than happy to support any learning that I did want to carry out (eg learning Perl programming language)

If I decided to follow an IT career after university, I would definitely consider returning to 3M.

approx 30 placement students work at 3M Bracknell, so there is an excellent social scene, and there are also a large number of recent graduates within IT.

I shared a house with 3 other placement students that I met on facebook, and rent was a reasonable amount. Going out, however, required a taxi back from reading or wokingham, which is quite expensive.

Dead in Bracknell, but lots of pubs in Wokingham, and usual student fayre in reading.

Lots of organised and sometimes subsidised social activities within 3M IT, which were always well attended and good fun.