Summer Analyst Review

Overall it was a satisfactory internship. They were good things about it an bad things about it. I definitely do not regret doing the internship. I have learned a lot about working with people, working in a big company, under a hierarchy, and I definitely consider it an useful experience from which I made new friends.

They knew I will be there for 10 weeks only, and that was a bit transparent at times. Although I understand on one hand, on the other I would have liked for my team to be more interested in me as a person, especially my manager, and to have lunch together at least once as a team.

My technical mentor was really nice and gave me some good advice, but he was not in my team. In my team there was a colleague who was kind of responsible for me, and he was helpful most of the times when I had technical problems, apart from that he I didn't get much guidance. My manager usually helped me, but we didn't speak often.

It was a good balance. even though I always had something to do, like tasks, training courses, meetings, extra activities (shadowing and volunteering), I have never felt overwhelmed or overworked. I was tired at the end of the day, but that's normal when you work. Also, I have never left after seven pm, and I've never worked on the weekends.

One of the things that I liked about my internship, was the fact that I was given responsibility like I was a normal member of the team. The application I was working on is important to the users, so it would be really bad if something broke and app stopped working. So I had to test very well the code that I was writing in order to make sure it will not cause any errors.

I have found the skills I developed very useful. I gained many soft skills, such as efficient communication, problem-solving, time-management, which are all useful since I am studying Computing. Also, I learned more about finance, about how to work in a company and I also practiced my coding skills, gained in my first years of uni.

The general atmosphere was quiet, busy, but also relaxed somehow. People were not shouting or anything, but you could always hear a lot of typing. People were friendly, talking a bit to each other about recent events, their holiday etc. So it wasn't only work, work, work. You could take a smoke break or snack break without being afraid that someone will lash at you.

It was alright, but it would have been better to have more events for interns (we had only 3 socials). Also, some more finance and software trainings would have been nice. I felt that they should have given us more details prior to the start of the internship, and should have invested more in the interns.

In the tech department there were not many finance trainings, at least not on my floor, and I feel that the company should have invested more in this. We had access to some free online courses about many topics, but it still would have been nice to hear on some subjects from the people working here.

In the future I would see me working there, mostly because I met many nice people who have been working for a long time and they seem to be enjoying it. So it is definitely an option, however it would be better to study some more and then work in some other places as well before settling with this company.

Fortunately, yes. We organized plenty of gatherings amongst us and we really got to know each other. We had lunch together almost every day. Usually, every week there was a party at someone's house or a gathering of some form (like going to play ping pong, going for drinks, bicycle rides etc.) So from this point of view it was pretty cool.

Canary Wharf it's quite expensive. The price of restaurants here is quite high, but there are also some cheaper places and supermarkets. Also, the food at the canteen is quite varied and cheaper than on the outside. In terms of living, if you live like 20 minutes away from CW it shouldn't be too bad.

I worked in Canary Wharf so there was not too much of a night life. There were some bars and parks we went to after work, but if we wanted to go dancing or do something else, we had to take the tube and go to a different part of the city, more to the centre.

We had some volunteering events for interns which were quite nice. There probably are more opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work if you are a full time employee. Bu it is good that at least we know it is possible and if we want to get involved more we can do that.