Technology Summer Intern Review

The work was very enjoyable, as it was both varied and tailored to the intern's preferences. I said I would rather work on the front-end of an application and would rather use technologies like NodeJS and Express. My placement within the company gave me exactly what I was looking for. The work was also varied, and we had side activities, solo projects and hackathons as well.

I felt very valued by the team I was placed in, there was a sense that interns were genuinely respected by the teams they worked in. My team was very welcoming and made my time fun and interesting. The way the scheme worked, interns were placed within real teams around the company, meaning the work we were doing was real and our teams were depending on us.

We were given regular guidance from both the Programme Leaders and my Placement Leader. If I was stuck on a particular problem I could reach out to my placement leader at any time and work alongside him to solve it. If we ever had queries about the internship or something expected of us we always felt comfortable reaching out to the programme organisers for help.

Every day was pretty busy, but it was never too much. I just had to be careful managing my time between my team project and my side projects. There were also intern projects, intern events, away days and many guest talks from distinguished employees within the company. We were certainly was never bored!

As mentioned each intern was placed in a real team in the office (either two interns in a team or one intern in a team like me). We were assigned real tasks to complete and had deadlines and goals to meet. There was undoubtedly real responsibility, which I'm very glad about and think was a good move for the company. Many internships just put the interns in there own team and give them a 'fake' project to complete over the 10 weeks.

Over the 10 weeks I picked up a tonne of technical skills (front-end development for the web) that are highly relevant and useful for my degree. This was my first experience of a real job in the tech industry, so picked up many life and professional skills such as working in a team, effective communication, networking, presentation skills and more.

The atmosphere in the Burgess Hill office is best described as a blend between traditional corporate offices and a fresh start-up office. It was not like what you would expect at a bank (it wasn't dull, quiet or up-tight). Everyone at the company was very nice and always up for a chat over a cup of coffee. We were given coffee vouchers which encouraged us to network and talk to different people in the office (I think this was a good move).

The internship programme was very well organised. We had numerous guest talks and lunch-and-learns during the week, as well as several networking events in London and Brighton (a trip on the London Eye and a Boat Trip on the Thames are just a couple of examples). Everything ran like clockwork thanks to the awesome programme leaders and everyone organising the internship.

We didn't have any training courses, must of the learning was done on-the-job (which I think is a much better way of learning than in classroom). We did have a couple of workshops on some technologies, as well as many guest talks from distinguished employees in many different areas of the business (including teleconferences with employees at the American offices).

The next step up from the summer internship at American Express is the graduate programme, which is a 2 year rotational scheme that lets grads try out different roles in different teams within the company before deciding on a permanent position. This is in my opinion a very good stepping stone into the company and is very appealing. In fact the summer internship is a form of assessment for potential job offers for the grad scheme.

Absolutely! All of us interns got along brilliantly and socialised every weekend, we went out in Brighton and did a load of sightseeing. We also had intern events with the non-tech interns (such as finance, marketing, operations, etc) which were great fun. We also got along brilliantly with the programme leaders and from what I've heard we all got on great with our placement leaders (I certainly did)!

I was lucky enough not to have rent costs during the summer so this isn't relevant to me. The town we worked in (Burgess Hill) is about 15 minutes by train from Brighton. So most interns lived in Brighton instead. I would say the prices in Brighton are probably slightly above average for the England (but not extortionate like London).

The office was in a town outside Brighton, a town that didn't offer much for a nightlife. However it's very near Brighton so we would go to Brighton on weekends which has an excellent night life and social scene.

Yes. We were spoiled with a number of intern networking events in London and Brighton. But we also had a volunteering day at an allotment in Brighton which was a great laugh and great team-work session for the interns. There was also a trip to the Sussex Innovation centre to learn about and see quantum computers (I managed to break one, sort of).