Installation Engineer Review

I had a fantastic summer working for MetaSwitch. The work was interesting, I met loads of great new people and the pay wasn't bad either! Since the company hires so many interns over the summer, there were plenty of people my age and it just felt like an extension of university life.

In the department I was working in, I was treated in exactly the same way as a new full-time starter would be, so I was doing valuable work from the first week. By the end of my internship, I felt that my manager could turn to me and ask me to complete a task with faith that I would succeed, and I was able to provide helpful suggestions on how to improve their processes.

Each intern is assigned a manager and also a mentor, who provides the majority of technical assistance required. My manager was in charge of a large team during their busiest period of the year, but he still found time to make sure everything was going ok for me. My mentor could answer any question I threw at him, but also allowed me to get on with my work independently without too much interference.

The daily workload varied greatly, from struggling to find things to do from eleven o'clock in the morning to being pushed to complete several complicated tasks in parallel in the last couple of hours of the day. This was unusual for an intern, as I was working on installing and testing hardware to be shipped to customers, so the work rate depended on the sales made. I was working during the final stages of the final quarter of their financial year, which is generally the company's busiest period, so most of the time I was kept busy, and the added challenge of managing multiple tasks with strict deadlines made the job more enjoyable.

I was given the same amount of responsibility as any other member of the team to install, correctly configure and thoroughly test hardware that was being shipped to customers, and when you investigated how valuable some of the customers' business was to the company, this felt like quite a lot of responsibility!

The department I was assigned to work in didn't give me as much opportunity to learn computer programming skills as I might have anticipated, but I still learnt a lot about using Linux and troubleshooting network problems. Far more important though were the other more general skills I developed. This being my first 'proper' job, I gained experience working in a team, working to strict deadlines and improved my communication skills. I also gained a lot of confidence from my experience that I can succeed in the working world!

The atmosphere in my office would be best described as "hard-working", but it certainly wasn't oppressive and I never felt unable to chat with other members of my team. The intern's mailing list provided an endless source of distraction to ensure we didn't get too bogged down in work...

It was generally very well-organised: they had a lot of interns and were clearly well set up to deal with us. All interns were given a full review with their managers at the end of the placement, so we were made fully aware of how well we'd done.

I was assigned a mentor, who was assigned a large proportion of his working time for training and assisting me for the whole time I was there.

I have been invited back to do a second internship next summer, and I will certainly consider the company for full time employment after finishing university.

One of the best perks of the internship was that the company offers subsidised accommodation in a variety of houses around the area. The quality of this accommodation was mixed... but the important thing was it meant I was living with a bunch of other intern students, so the social scene was just like being at university. We did a bunch of stuff, from barbecues and pub quizzes to laser quest, and of course spent plenty of time thoroughly investigating the local pubs...

The company accommodation was heavily subsidised, so the cost of living was pretty cheap. Another benefit of living in the company accommodation was that we took it in turns to cook evening meals, which reduced the food budget and ensured that you only had to worry about food once a week or so! Other things (beer mostly...) were normal London prices, so not particularly cheap, but it was nonetheless affordable.

There were several excellent pubs in the area, a couple of which provided decent entertainment in the form of weekly pub quizzes, which were great fun. As for clubs, there weren't really any in the area, but central London was only a 20 minute train ride away if that's what you're after.

So many opportunities. There were all sorts of sports clubs, there were drinks at one of the local pubs whenever anyone joined or left the company (given the number of interns there were, this was essentially a weekly occurrence) and the company provided a morale budget for the interns to use for an activity.