Cloud Solution Architect intern Review

I really enjoyed the company culture and my team I worked with. I had the chance to take part in a lot of exciting opportunities and be involved in a wide range of customer engagements. The role was interesting but not very clearly defined. A lot of projects that I was actively involved in were outside of my actual role.

I felt really valued by my colleagues on a personal level. Everyone was really nice, helpful and respectful. It is difficult to become valued purely for my skill or experience as an intern. This makes it difficult to find customer engagements to help on. However, I am sure that most interns face this issue.

There is a great support system in place for interns and employees. My manager is incredibly supportive and aligned me to a buddy/mentor. She has provided me with a great network and always supported my personal development. There are also a lot of training and learning options available to you. Everyone is always available for questions and guidance.

It really varied. There are some weeks where I was really busy and working on a specific project or towards a specific event. Other weeks I was really free and struggling to find anything to work on. I think in my role as a CSA intern I am less busy compared to other interns. This is because the CSA role is a lot more technical and difficult to engage in as an intern.

You can have as much or as little responsibility as you like. I personally tried to seek out opportunities where I can have a lot of responsibilities. I have lead various customer engagements where it was just me and the customer in a meeting. I have also taken on customer engagements to roll out their change management plan. This would sometimes involve giving a presentation to about 100 attendees.

I think this placement year will not help towards my degree at all. This is because I study Mechanical Engineering at university. My role would be more beneficial to someone studying a CS degree. However, I do think it will greatly help towards my career if I decide to stay in tech or a similar corporate environment.

My department works a lot from home or directly on customer sites. I would not see many of my colleagues often. This makes it hard to network and connect with colleagues. However, I find the office is not always the most productive environment. The interns were usually in the office so that was always fun.

There was a big organisational change in the beginning of the placement year which changed the structure of my internship. This was very chaotic in the beginning and no one knew what to do with us. The intern managers organised onboarding and some additional training sessions for us which was nice.

Microsoft has got to be the best company for personal training and development. You have access to a lot of exams and training courses for free. There are a lot of workshops and hackathons you can take part in. Everyone encourages you to learn and invest in yourself. There are specific learning days each quarter that allows you to focus on your personal development.

There are graduate scheme opportunities. There is no clear continuation path from the internship to the graduate scheme as they do not offer graduate positions for each of the intern positions. This has left some interns at a great disadvantage. The graduate scheme hiring process is very thorough compared to other companies which does not reflect well on Microsoft. It would be nice to know that the effort we put in this year has been acknowledged. Most other big firms hire their interns back as graduates based on their performance during the internship, which I think is much better.

A few interns liked to socialise and do something after work. The social activities were always the same which is why only a few interns showed up after a while. This was mainly because half of the interns still lived at home and did not want to stay in the area to socialise after work.

Reading is a very expensive place to live based on the intern salary we receive. It is only a bit cheaper than London. A lot of interns lived at home during the placement. Socialising around here is as expensive as in London which is why we did not socialise as much.

There are a few nightlife options in the Reading area. I personally did not like them as they all seemed a bit run down. There is a University near here so there area a lot of uni students around so most pubs and clubs were usually very full with people.

I know some interns took part in a work football club. Other than that I do not know of any other activities outside of work. I think there is an option to take part in activities offered from the Reading University Student Union but I don't know anyone who actually did that.