Openstack Developer - Intern Review

I enjoyed my placement quite a lot, one of my favourite aspects of the job was being able to move to a different country and experience somewhere new. My job required me to get stuck in, and I was not left making tea and coffee. This job was also in the field I wish to pursue a career in so was well suited to my interests.

Right from the start, I felt included in the group. There was little distinction made between me as an intern and the regular employees of the company. We were invited to many of the same opportunities that they were. The only differences were conferences abroad which would have cost the company money and due to a lack of space at the table the group of interns sat separate at lunch, but that was made by our own decision.

From a support perspective it was great, I was sat next to an employee who I could ask many of my questions to, and they would either refer me on or answer my question directly. I learnt a lot from them over the course of the year whilst discussing various topics. A management perspective was a bit more hands off, but this was typical of all employees and not a bad thing as it allowed the team to arrange ourselves better.

I typically had a few 'stories' or items to be worked on at any one time, given to me by the management. I would keep this ordered in a priority queue in my head with the more important ones getting more attention. However, sometimes I would not have anything to do on the company side, but that would be good because as I was working on an open source project it allowed me to work upstream.

Throughout the year my responsibility grew, at the start it was just the basics of responsibility such as personal time management. Over the course of the year I was left in control of the project, being the only developer working on it, as they felt I was comfortable about it, this was quite satisfying in some ways but stressful in others, however I'm glad I got the opportunity.

I learnt many technical skills over the course of the year, which I will not learn at university, such as using various command line software. For example vim, curl, ngrep and a whole lot more. I received informal on the job training for any issue I was working on at the time. I'm sure some of these skills will be useful in the future as I assume I will probably need to use this software again in the future.

The general atmosphere was very relaxed and calm most of the time, this was especially true for the interns as we were under less pressure from management to make sure all the software features were on time for the release. The employees were sometimes more stressed when important deadlines were coming up but that was to be expected.

The set up for the internship was okay, they had computers for us to use on the first days, where we were installing various pieces of software. However, after that it was a bit more confusing for a while as we were left to wrap our own heads around the project, even though that was a learning experience in itself. We had a meeting with the managers to give them feedback so should improve in future.

In terms of what they invested into me, was mostly employee time, teaching me various skills required to do my job. Other than that there was not much in terms of personal training. In terms of development they did leave code reviews on my code so I picked up how to code better, but this was true all developers and not specifically the interns that got the code reviews.

I did enjoy my internship, however the company is currently under some reconstruction due to it's recent split from HP. So I don't know how it will look after that is complete. However, the management did make it clear that they would be interested in hearing from me after I complete my final year at university.

There were other interns around the company, that I briefly interacted with. However, the main interns I hung around with were in my department. With these interns we had a great time, meeting up often outside work to have a drink among other things, it was really enjoyable with this group of people.

Galway is a rather expensive place to live, it has a real rent problem at the minute especially when the students are all looking for accommodation at the same time. On of the major problems with socialising is that Ireland has the highest tax on alcohol in the European Union. This really drove up the prices on a night out.

Ireland is expensive for going out. However they do have larger shot measures that the United Kingdom with 35.5ml compared to our 25ml. One of the things most enjoyable for me is the amount of live bands that would be playing across town, even in some of the late bars that stayed open later that the regular pubs.

This one is all up to you. Galway was filled with things to do if you go and join things. I joined a local dodgeball club which was great fun and even got me a trip down through Ireland. I know some other people have joined local sports teams before. But i think Galway had lots of clubs going on if you go looking for them.