Technology Summer Intern Review

The internship was great! I was able to work on meaningful projects that real world applications, and learnt a lot about industry standard practises and ideas for software development. They also put on events for interns such as socials after work, or speaker events during work. I would definitely encourage everyone to apply.

I worked in a team of seven other developers, and each on was extremely helpful. When working together with someone, they would always take the time to explain anything new, and always value your point of view. It took no time at all to feel like an appreciated member of the team.

For guidance, I met up privately with my manager every week to discuss my progress; including what I was doing well, and potentially anything I could be improving on. I personally think that I could have been having more feedback on how to better myself during the internship, but I suppose my manager thought I was doing alright.

I always had something to work on, and I never felt pressured to carry on working after hours. This is nice, as even though I sometime did stay on to finish up some work, it meant most days I could still have my own time afterwards. You also get an hour for lunch, which meant the occasional trip to the pub with the team.

In my specific team, we all practise pair programming, which means that while you have the freedom to come up with your ideas, there’s always someone to make sure you’re not doing anything crazy. Saying that, there were occasions where I was trusted to deliver features by myself, which was a great feeling.

My software development skills greatly improved, and you come into contact with many great technologies that you can take away to help you in further studies or jobs. Working as part of an agile development team also really helped my softer skills, such as communication, speaking up during meeting, analysis, and planning.

Relaxed, friendly and really enjoyable atmosphere. The entire team got on well and we’d often go out for lunch together or the occasional evening out. There was never a dull or awkward moment and we always had a good time while working. I’d absolutely work in the same team again.

Everything was well thought out and planned. I can’t really remember anything going wrong from an administrative perspective. The only thing you had to put effort into was proving original identification at one of their offices, but even then they pay for the travel and overnight stay if required so it wasn’t that bad.

From my experience, there was not that much in terms of technical training - you were more or less expected to either know or pick up what you need along the way. They did have online training courses that were compulsory, but these were more for understanding about what was acceptable in the workplace. I do believe however that you could optionally sign up for technical training if you wanted to.

I would definitely like to work in this company, as the culture is great, the work is interesting, and if you don’t like the role you’re in, they heavily promote internal moves to other teams. In terms of promotion, it seems to be quite good, but after a certain point it’s more of who you know rather than how good you are.

There are many social events organised for interns in the company (there were three, right at the beginning, at the halfway point, and at the end). Outside of work, all interns tend to stay in only a few accommodation locations, so there was plenty of opportunities to socialise in the evening or weekends.

Bournemouth isn’t the cheapest place to rent for the summer, although you do get some money towards it from the company. Going out is about as expensive as other places. Not great, but not bad.

Lots of pubs and clubs around. Plenty of choice depending on what you want to do.

As well as including anything that you can do in Bournemouth as a regular person - which includes pubs, beaches, restaurants, cinema, and other activities - there are also social or sports groups you can get involved in through work outside of work hours. I personally enjoyed being part of a group that played 7-aside football every week.