This review was submitted over 4 years ago, so some of the information it contains may no longer be relevant.
Rating
-
The Role
-
The Company
-
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
+ Overall I enjoyed my Tech internship experience a lot for a number of reasons - the team I was working in and thus the work I contributed touring my time, revolved around making the experience of customers better, as well as making sure the infrastructure behind our services was up to date + I particularly enjoyed exploring the services and facilities that cloud services have to offer and how we use the cloud in our work. The main thing putting me off rating it a 10/10 is that the on boarding process takes a while when you join a big team with many different streams of work / sprint goals happening at one time - the layers of beaurocracy you have to go through when contributing to complex projects is expected at big companies in general.
+ I was definitely made to feel welcome by the members of my team and sub team, all of whom were very friendly and always happy to provide advice, insight, or a quick demo session into anything new that I was working on. Early on in the placement I did have to take the initiative myself, and chase sub team members to see what streams of work I could get involved in or be assigned for the day
+ One thing that I did feel my internship lacked is regular review sessions with my line manager and team leaders. Although interns have a one-to-one review with the line manager near the end of the internship (and general colleagues have one every quarter), I do feel that a mid-internship review where I sat down and discussed the work I was getting involved in (what I could be doing better) would have been fruitful.
+ Every day was generally quite busy and provided plenty for us to do. On a bi-weekly basis the sub team would take a fair number of goals on from the existing (and generally quite big) backlog and work on them for the sprint ahead. When a team member closes off a goal, they generally make a start on another untouched/in-progress goal soon after to avoid losing too much time and to keep them on their toes. + I took part in the team's daily standup that takes place every morning, whereby the sub teams present their progress on their sprint goals, summarising what was done the day before and looking to what'll be done on that day, establishing who is doing what for the coming day so that the team is as efficient as possible.
+ At Tesco I can see positives in how interns aren't given a lot big or daunting tasks/responsibilities to take ownership of - rather the interns are placed into teams/sub-teams where they contribute to fulfilling the team's sprint goals and work side by side with the experienced developers to do so (and pick things up from) + Every morning a different sub-team member (rotation amongst the team members) takes on the responsibility of updating the Kanban board and preparing/delivering the daily standup in front of the rest of the team - I took on this responsibility a number of times and felt this was good practise at summarising information in a concise but technically accurate manner.
+ I certainly feel that the projects and streams of work that I was involved in during the internship, were very good when it came to contextualising a lot of theoretical knowledge that I picked up at university so far, as well as practically experiencing the likes of Agile development through Scrum and Kanban methodologies (which you don't often get exposure to whilst at University) + The work that my team was doing feels very relevant as it involves many different upcoming technologies and current issues within the tech scene - cloud services and infrastructure, data portability and ensuring that our technological interactions with end consumers are fully secure, scalable and robust.
The Company
Very open atmosphere and an open desk layout - not the tense corporate feel that one might expect within a big company (with meetings and reviews happening in boardrooms, and managers/leads being isolated from the rest of the team). Tesco's atmosphere is quite the opposite with a lot of planning sessions happening in open work/communal areas.
The internship was well organised in the sense that I always knew a week in advance where I'd need to be and when - very few clashes between centrally organised intern activities, tech intern activities and commitments to do with the team I'm working in. I did find it very difficult to get started with services such as travel booking and expenses claiming (which should be easily accessible for everyone to use)
Flexi Time
Subsidised Canteen
Sports and Social Club
Company Car
Subsidised/Company Gym
National Travel
International Travel
Financial Bonus
Company Parties/Events
Staff Sales/Staff Shop
Above 25 days holiday
Working from home
Healthcare from home
Healthcare/Dental
Travel loan
Beyond the internship there is the opportunity to be offered a position next year on the graduate scheme - which has many of the same perks that interns are given, a steadily increasing salary and opportunities to work abroad for a while too. The graduate programme is soon being shortened down to 1 year (instead of 2-3) meaning that the progression from graduate to engineer/senior developer is a lot quicker.
The Culture
Very good social scene with different trips, activities and socials being organised for interns once every few weeks (not too often!) - and even within the team (colleagues) we'd have lunch regularly together, occasional socials and sometimes the odd game of football during planning days when we had a spare hour.
Interns are highly encouraged to take part in a team charity challenge over the internship, where we fundraise over ten weeks for the NGO that happens to be Tesco's charity partner for the year. Outside of work the tech interns go on trips to the likes of Data Centres, Customer Fulfilment and Engagement Centres respectively, and more, with the underlying purposes of understanding the business better.
Details
Internship (1 Month+)
South East
August 2018