Software Engineering Intern Review

I had an absolutely fantastic time. Redgate has a very welcoming and inclusive culture. I was getting user-facing work released while meeting some pretty extraordinary people who were all so friendly!

Incredibly valued. It wasn't long before I was either doing independent coding or driving in a pair. Definitely by the end of the internship I just felt like any other member of the team.

I had regular one-to-one meetings with my manager and also sat next to him, there was very much the principle that whenever I needed help or guidance I could ask him and he'd jump over to help me. I felt our one-to-ones were useful, anything that came up was acted on. He was on holiday for two weeks (1/5 of my internship) and at this point I could still ask for help from the rest of the team, but it felt like there was less support there for that period.

Mostly I was completely busy. There were times in the morning before our daily stand-up meeting when I wasn't too sure what to do, however after a few weeks when I'd settled in I was easily able to find work for these periods and kept busy.

For one week there was a clash of holidays, a sabbatical and illness in my team which on several days left the dev team as myself and one or two other people. The other people then dealt with support and while they were there when I had questions, I was the only person doing development on our product. This was an incredible experience and I felt so trusted. Day-to-day my team listened to anything I had to say and I was able to review and sign off code as well as contributing my own. Just felt like I was another team member.

I learnt a lot, I fully expect that when I go into development as a career next year, I will draw on so much of what I learnt this summer.

The fact that Nerf gun battles were a thing should be enough to summarise this. Redgate has a really fun atmosphere which was awesome - everyone seemed really happy and then that happiness seemed to be reflected in their productivity. I regularly played Worms at lunchtime and a break for Mario Kart or table football wasn't uncommon either. The whole place was filled with smiling, friendly people and it was a joy to work there.

I turned up on my first day to meet my team before a HR briefing and then a meeting with the scheme coordinators, we were given key fobs to work the doors straight away and welcome packs were on our desks. Everything was waiting for us to just start using and was completely seamless. I had regular meetings with my manager, every day for the first week then every two weeks.

Every week 10% of my time (Friday afternoon) was given to me to do something to make me better at my job/benefit my team or the company. I used this primarily for learning various tools or techniques that my team or other developers had told me about and the fact I could dedicate time to this self development was amazing. I took place in code katas and the interns even had a "legacy code retreat" organised for us where we spend most of a day being taught refactoring techniques.

Very appealing, with the self-development opportunities within the company I think it would be a brilliant place to start my career after graduating.

We had an intern lunch every week and then there were regular pub trips with the other employees of the company. On top of this we had the opportunity to go punting with our colleagues. It was a very social place to work which made it very easy to fit into for me as I got to know people quickly.

Cambridge is expensive however I was in my university accommodation which was extremely cheap. Other costs such as at the pub with work or food for myself are reasonable but can get pricey.

Counting pubs and bars, very good. However if you're looking for a clubbing scene then Cambridge probably isn't the place.

There were a few different clubs, mainly sporting (football, sailing and bouldering come to mind but there were more). I mainly enjoyed chilling in the pub after work with colleagues.