Summer Intern Review

I was able to settle fairly quickly in the relaxed company environment and most of the tasks I was assigned were really interesting for me and definitely enjoyable. I had insight into the way things get done at ARM and I gathered a vast array of knowledge while having a very good time.

I was welcomed by everyone and I felt very valued by my colleagues from the very first day. I was assigned real, actually useful to the company, tasks and I can say my input was appreciated a lot during meetings. I believe the work I did had some meaningful impact and was valued by the people I worked with.

ARM does encourage you to figure out a lot of aspects of your tasks by yourself. Help is always there if you need it but generally no one will hold your hand and walk you through your work - you're thrown in at the deep end! For me, this was great as I enjoyed the challenge and it shows that you're treated much more like an actual employee than an intern, although other people may find it daunting, especially the first few days.

Managing your time is entirely your own responsibility at ARM. It is a really flexible company so you can reasonably adjust your schedule around your preferences, and as long as you work well and deliver your tasks everyone will be happy. I believe this flexibility significantly reduces some of the stress usually associated with the typical work environment.

You genuinely feel like an actual employee, well integrated into the ARM family just after a couple of weeks into your internship! This means the responsibilities you get are important and impactful to the company. It was even a little scary sometimes to be responsible for things that other teams are counting on, but overall you are kept motivated and excited!

I expect the skillset I have developed from working at ARM to be extremely helpful for my university projects over the next years of my degree. The technical knowledge is certainly key to success in labs and practical assignments while the time management skills that you acquire assist you significantly as a student. Most amazingly though, the environment at ARM is so sociable that I sure feel like I have improved my communication and networking skills significantly!

The atmosphere is so lively in the office that it is almost a distraction from your work! Colleagues are happy and easy going. There is a very big number of interns in Cambridge each year so you meet people just like you, with lots of shared interests. ARM itself organizes a lot of events for interns and encourages us to socialize and have fun. During work you can make friends and talk over lunch, have games of pool with the other interns, go for pokemon hunts (as of recent developments). You won't be bored!

The internship objectives were initially somewhat abstract but within the first couple of weeks after I had become familiar with a range of projects going on I was assigned specific tasks on the areas that I liked most. The first week was well organised and the on-boarding process was smooth, thanks to great efforts by the HR people here at ARM.

For me, it was more of a self-learning and development approach during my internship. Of course, pointers are provided by your team and you can ask anyone for help and guidance but I liked having control of my own training. There is a vast collection of training material available to ARM interns online and HR organizes a number of interesting talks and other personal development opportunities every week.

It is my impression that ARM aims to employ the interns as graduates later on so I would say you are almost guaranteed a job in the company if you believe in the company values and are willing to invest your talent.

The social scene is simply unparalleled here at ARM! They seem to somehow find and pick the most brilliant people. Almost every intern I've met has a very unique, broad personality. Many interns were outgoing and we kept organising meetups all the time, like pints after work, walks and runs, nights out, house parties. I'm sure I've made more friends over the summer at ARM than during my time at uni.

Cambridge is certainly not the cheapest place to live, but with a little planning it is manageable. To put it in numbers, you can expect to pay about £400-600 per month for accommodation and £20-50 for transport. Restaurants, pubs and clubs are on the more expensive side. For a night out you can expect to pay about £20-40.

Cambridge has lots of bars and clubs to suit everyone. The atmosphere is generally nice. There's not that many students going out over the summer, but we were so many interns at ARM that we were self sufficient on nights out! And yeah, we did have some really great and memorable nights out so if you're a typical student, you won't miss any of the term-time fun.

Definitely. Even though personally I didn't take advantage of all those opportunities, ARM organizes multiple events that are certainly going to get you involved. For example, specifically for the interns, ARM runs a global Innovation Challenge over two weeks where you can work with people from all over the world to achieve the given task and win the competition.