This review was submitted over 4 years ago, so some of the information it contains may no longer be relevant.
Rating
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The Role
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The Company
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The Culture
- 1. To what extent did you enjoy your work placement or internship?
- 2. To what extent did you feel valued by your colleagues?
- 3. To what extent were you given support and guidance by management/your supervisor(s)?
- 4. How busy were you on a daily basis?
- 5. How much responsibility were you given during your placement?
- 6. To what extent did/will the skills you developed, and training you received, assist you in your degree studies and beyond?
- 7. What was the general atmosphere in your office?
- 8. How well organised was the overall work placement or internship set up?
- 9. In terms of personal training and development, to what extent did the company or firm invest in you?
- 10. What were the perks on your work placement?
- 11. How appealing are future employment prospects within the organisation?
- 12. Was there a good social scene amongst any fellow placement students/colleagues?
- 13. What was the cost of living and socialising in the area you worked in?
- 14. What was the Nightlife like in the area you worked?
- 15. Were there many opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work?
The Role
I found the placement at Mentor Graphics extremely interesting. I got a lot of knowledge not only in the area I came from (Chemical Engineering / general Engineering), but also gained a lot of coding skills (I had almost no coding experience before). It's also a good opportunity to understand and see 'from the inside' how the huge software is made.
The office is pretty small and it's very easy to communicate with each other. If I got stuck on something or got a problem, I can ask anyone either from my team or outside the team to help me. Everyone here is extremely helpful, as we all work towards the common goal.
We've got a meeting with the manager every month and every week with a supervisor, where we can discuss problems (if any), suggestions or just talk about anything. I and my supervisor work in the same team, so I can always ask for how to, for example, create an engineering network I was asked to test etc.
There are usually different types of task I can do. In my team, I usually test what developers have made. If there is nothing to test, I can take some tasks from the other places (we have got different guilds) and do them. Half of my placement I worked for 2 teams at the same time, so I had always something to do (and it was very interesting in most cases).
During working on one project I was asked to create a plugin (with almost no coding experience before), I got some knowledge transfer from my team leader and after that I was given 2 weeks to solely work on it (if I had some problems I, of course, asked someone), but it is a good example of that you can get a good amount of responsibility here.
I learnt how the software can help engineers to perform calculations, I got training on how to build the engineering networks using different software the company develops. I will definitely be improving and will use the coding skills I got while working here, probably at the university and definitely in the future life.
The Company
The atmosphere is very nice here, everyone is very helpful and nice. We have got several team in the office, sometimes people from different team go to the lunch or just for a walk together. We, interns, usually have lunch together either outside (the countryside is very scenic here) or in the cafe on site. There are also two kitchens in the office where people usually meet for several minutes to just talk about random things.
I was the first intern in this team, but despite on that, I settled down pretty quickly, as the team was well prepared. The work placement is well organised, different team have different online boards with all tasks they've done, are doing and will need to do in the future and everyone can see who is doing what at any time.
We had a 3-day training at the very beginning of the placement during which we were taught how to use different company's software. We also have a subscriptions to the web site with a lot of good-quality training materials on different topics around software development (Pluralsight). We had several personal development and time management training sessions throughout the placement.
Subsidised/Company Gym
Company Parties/Events
I would say I'd like to come back to the company after I graduate from my uni. Not sure if I'd like to do the same work I am doing now, but I'd definitely like to try myself as a software developer here, that would be nice to try. The company has several offices across the UK which makes it even more appealing.
The Culture
There are 5 interns in the office and we all usually have lunch together. We either to go a local cafe or, if it's sunny outside, eat outside and after lunch we always go for a walk around the park. We also went out a couple of times, but it's not easy to do, as different people live in different locations.
I live in Milton Keynes, not the cheapest place to live in, but not the most expensive one neither. There are several bars in the city and a big shopping mall where you can but all essential things from. There are no any 'socialising' places around the office. We went for a lunch a couple of times to the restaurants, but we got there by car.
Again, there is nothing withing the walking distance from the office, but there are a couple of good places for hanging out with friends in Milton Keynes and probably in Northampton. These are the two biggest cities near the office. Milton Keynes is usually pretty crowded at Friday and weekend nights.
Again, depending on what city you live in. Milton Keynes has enough different places to spend time at, for example, it's got a good gym, bars, a good park. Northampton, probably, has all of this as well, but if you choose to live in Towcester, that could be pretty boring I guess.
Details
Placement (10 Months+)
East Midlands
May 2018