Software Engineer Review

I enjoyed my everyday work and I loved my team. It was a great learning experience that I really feel will allow me to success in the future. However I did not enjoy company as a whole and the city I was based in. There is too much politics going on especially on the higher levels of the management and the city was really boring.

I was treated equally by everyone in my team I was never made feel I am just an intern. I could freely talk to anyone in my team without feeling intimidated and ask for help if I had any problem. They made me to feel welcomed form my first day at work.

My manager was always willing to help me and he made time if I needed to talk to him. From the first day at work he helped me to drive me career in the direction right for me. He felt more like a mentor rather than a same person telling me what to do.

Usually I had enough work load to keep me busy for entire day, so I rarely felt like I have nothing to do. It happened few times that I was overwhelmed with work or did not have enough of it, but it did not happen often. For the most of the time my work load was perfectly balanced.

At the beginning I was given some easy tasks, but once my manager realized I have a potential I started to be treated as any other full-time employee in my team. I had the same responsibility as everyone else in my team. At certain times I was developing the most critical parts of the project.

The entire placement was a one big learning experience for me that helped me to develop a broad range of skills. I became a better developer and learnt how to write much better code. I gained valuable domain knowledge in the field I worked in and I developed many inter-personal skills. The skills are gained will help me with my dissertation and then I am confident that it will be much easier to find a job.

The part of the office where my team was based was great, because of my team, however in general the office felt really empty and dull. There was nothing special about it and since most of the people in the office had roles in marking and sales me as an engineer did not feel I belong to there.

I can say anything bad about the organisation. There was nothing outstanding, but the company provided all information I needed before and at the beginning on the placement. I always got answer to question I asked. The only annoying thing was I had to send certain documents to HR multiple times to different people.

I was given all support within the team I needed and company provided many learning resources and to technical journals, however I did not feel there were enough technical face-to-face learning session that could help me develop some additional skills as well as all online live sessions were at inconvenient times (different time zones).

There are certain prospects, however to really success I would have to look for the job in US as most of the positions are based there. Also as far as I could see it is really hard to progress within the company especially on higher levels. Also I do not like the company politics so I would not like to come back.

I had some good colleagues I went out with for some social events and stuff. There were few social events organised for all inters, but they were not appalling to me and I did not attend them. Also I felt there are not man technical people I could talk with.

The cost of living was great and the city was really cheap, however it was only good thing about it. There were not many things to do outside the work and I was glad ever time I traveled to a different city. I would never want to live there again.

There is no nightlife there. There is no university and not that many young people in the area, so not much going on. After 9 pm city gets really empty and nothing is really going on. There are only two night clubs in the entire city and they are pretty bad.

The work offered many volunteering opportunities anyone could get involved into. There were also some inters societies that could be joined.