Test Engineering Intern Review

Despite a tough initial learning curve, I have immensely enjoyed my time at Mentor Graphics, and feel I’ve learned a huge amount. This is both in terms of my technical and inter-personal skills; as I’ve learnt about software development and coding, but also how to work in a professional environment and within a team.

As I worked on using internal tools to ensure quality and consistency of the product, I wrote help materials on how to use these tools more efficiently. I feel my efforts were greatly valued by the team as many people have commented that they found them very useful in their testing efforts. I also worked on making our internal suite of test plans easier to use for testers, which again received good feedback from a variety of test engineers.

Although I feel I could have had a better introduction into the tools and processes I’d be using over my placement, that is not to say I did not have a very strong support network to rely on. Within the office, developers and testers co-exist and talk daily, so any issues I faced with coding were easily dealt with as I could as subject experts were very accessible.

Working in an Agile environment, I got used to having lots of smaller tasks to complete, as opposed to large chunks of work. This meant that I was very busy a lot of the time, working through and logging tasks. This also really helped my sense of progression throughout the placement, as I could see how much work I had completed.

Aside from running internal tools on a regular basis, I also produced reports on the software’s performance and tested and recorded bugs. This afforded me a decent level of responsibility, as any tests I performed successfully were taken as evidence that that area of the software is working correctly. I also produced reports on the software’s performance that were used in performance report by the Quality team.

I believe the organisational skills I have developed over my time at Mentor will be of great use to me in my future studies, in particular using the Kanban approach to managing workload. I also intend to use a lot of the knowledge I have gained using computational fluid dynamics simulation software in my degree studies, and final year project.

The atmosphere in the office was extremely welcoming and relaxed, which meant that I was never hesitant to ask questions or advice on anything I became blocked on. Most of the teams in the office were in close proximity, which allowed for easy access to anyone from whom I needed any information or assistance.

My role in the company was well defined, and I had no trouble with my main responsibilities. In terms or management structure, a flowchart and presentation were provided to help me understand where I fitted within the company. I had my own work backlog to pull work from, and attended regular meetings that helped ensure my work was going smoothly.

I feel that Mentor Graphics provided me with a great deal of opportunities for personal development, including subscriptions to various professional learning sites. A great deal of internal materials were also available to me to enhance my understanding of the subjects on which I was working. There were also a few days dedicated to specialist training, which definitely contributed to extending my background knowledge both in terms of engineering and beyond.

Despite the subsidiary of Mentor Graphics that I worked in being relatively small, I feel there is a lot of opportunity for working again in the company in the future. This is because as a corporation Mentor deals with a variety of different softwares and hardwares, meaning that if I gained different experience in future studies then it is likely that a section of Mentor would still be applicable to my skills.

While there were not sufficient interns to deem it a social scene, I was very happy with how we all got on. This was bolstered by the fact that most of us lived in close proximity during the placement.

Despite the park that we worked at being a bit remote, all those who needed to move away for their placement found reasonably priced housing in nearby villages that more than suited their needs.

Though the village in which I lived had a very little to do, had I been interested in nightlife, I could have gone into Milton Keynes, which wasn't too far away.

The company offered subsidiaries for gyms and sports clubs, which allowed for a group of employees to go out for sports matches, a few of which I attended.