Summer Intern Review

I really enjoyed my placement. Everyone in my team has been really helpful and I also really liked my project. GS has also been very good in regards to organising social events for the interns and that has helped me networks with other interns and GS employees outside of my team.

To be honest, during the middle of my internship I didn't feel very valued, but that was not the case for the beginning and the end. I was struggling with getting closer to other teammate's that are not involved in my project, but that has changed since. My buddy has been very helpful in helping me find contacts in the firm.

I was mainly given guidance by my buddy at GS. Especially in the initial stages of my project, he has been very helpful in helping me come up with a strategy and a system design. My manager has also been very helpful, but he was a lot busier than my buddy so I didn't get to see him as often.

I was not as busy in the first few weeks, but this quickly changed after a month since I started to feel the pressure of actually finishing my project. The ninth week has been more relaxed again though since I have mainly been working on improving my code and creating slides and demos for my final presentation.

I was given quite a lot of responsibility when it comes to my project. My project is a real project that GS wants to use if completed and I am the first person that has tried to create a solution for the problem at hand. Therefore, I felt like I had a lot of responsibility and complete ownership over my project.

I got to practice my coding skills a lot since that is mainly what I have been doing on a day-to-day basis and that will definitely be helpful in the future. But what I appreciate the most are the skills I have acquired at GS that are not technical. So how to work in a team, how to get to know other people and teams in a company, how to present a project etc.

The atmosphere was pretty relaxed. Not many offices, just a lot of desks which meant you could just talk to anyone. Our team also had its own island of desks so that also made it very easy to know who to go to if you encountered any issues or were stuck.

The overall internship was very well organised. There were many talks throughout the internship and in the first week, there were many introduction talks and social events to get to know employees but also fellow interns. Now in the final week, GS has organised some social events to say farewell.

There could have been a lot more technical training. In the first week, there was some training but it wasn't very useful so it would be better to either not do those and let people figure out the technical requirements themselves or let the team figure out appropriate technical training as requirements greatly differ from team to team.

Very appealing. There is a lot of internal mobility and people are encouraged to explore and find out which team they would be most interested in. On top of that, the environment at GS is a bit stressful, but they put a lot of emphasis on teamwork and cooperation which I really appreciate.

Definitely. Because we had the chance to get to know each other in the first weeks, we organised many events amongst ourselves and were part of many GS networks which meant we saw each other very often. On top of that, there were excursion and bar nights planned by the firm for the interns.

The cost of living and socialising in London, in general, is very very high and since GS is in central London, it was no surprise that you can spend a lot of money there. However, we managed and there are always places to go that are reasonably priced and close.

Near GS there were many bars where a lot of employees of GS or other firms like Bank of America or Deloitte gathered and there were also many many restaurants where you could go for dinner if you wanted to, so overall a lot to choose from. There weren't many clubs around though.

Most of the activities that I took part in outside of work were organised by myself or my team, so not as much was organised by the firm itself. However, there were some, for example, excursions to Bletchley Park or the GS Data Centre and some Night outs were also organised by GS networks.