Junior Software Engineer Review

I worked as part of the Technical Solutions Team here at cognito where we were responsible for delivering the front-end side of our mobile products. I had the pleasure of working with some awesome team mates and the added bonus of contributing to so many different projects, each impacting the success of our clients in a different way, and it's honestly a shame that the year has to come to an end so soon .

I was part of a small team (4-8 people at any one time) with whom i consistenly worked with across the year. From the very first day every single person was extremly welcoming, helpful and personable. Throughout the year they were just as awesome - I was treated more like a developer and member of the team than a student, my opinions were always taken on board and working with any of them was always a joy, and I just can't imagine spending my year with a different team of people.

I was given a lot of support by my line manager and team straight from the first day. There is a ip-crossover on your first month of joining, whereby the previous placement student before leaving is responsible for training you. The training sessions were one-to-one, well paced and full of exercises that did nothing but to motivate in my placement year. Throughout the year my line manager and my team were always there for any kind of support I needed, be it professional or personal.

In Cognito all of our work in R&D is done in sprints which is essentially a 2 week timebox where you deliver work that has been agreed upon by the team. This was extremely useful to our small team as it meant we were never overwhelmed or surprised with the work that needed to be completed. Personally during my time here, I was always busy with one thing or another, and sometimes I would even find myself in other roles contributing in a slightly different way.

Throughout the placement year as you progress in confidence and knowledge you are given more and more responsibility. For me, shortly after my training finished I was assigned all the simple tickets (one-liners, bug fixes, etc.) and it was my responsibility to complete these tickets to the same standard as any other developer in the team. In addition to general coding, I've also been responsible for training new colleagues, designing complicated features, creating/writing documentation, integration testing new products and creating new releases.

Where do you I even begin, I've learnt so much during my time at Cognito and both my technical and soft skills have greatly improved. From a technical standpoint, I've gained knowledge in a wide variety of modern tools/languages (e.g: git (version control), javascript (ES5+), react, python, etc.). In addition to this I've also learned about how to create, design documentations for very complex features of which I am going to heavily utilise during my final year at university. From a soft-skill standpoint during the year I also learned how to organise and prioritise my work, problem solve and work effectively in a team.

Cognito has a open office-plan which is very welcoming and the general atmosphere was calm, enjoyable and most of all busy.

Cognito have a lot of experience when it comes to running the placement programme and i can say that it is very well organised and thought out The training was excellent, i was given a lot of time and projects to work on which realy fast tracked my knowledge and familiarity with cognito's code base. During the year, my team supported me and I had regular catch ups with my line manager which made settling in a whole lot easier.

Cognito definately invests quite a lot into its people and it does this in two ways; innovation time and udemy access. Cognito offers a free udemy license to all developers which they can freely use during their innovation time or outside of work to explore topics that interest them. Innovation time occured every two weeks on a tuesday, and you have the option of: - Taking part in a team/cross-team/departmental hackathon - Investigating a new tech - Working torwards certifications or completing training courses. - Creating something innovative

very appealing and i'm looking forward to coming back after my final year

Although cognito splits up the placement students across teams, the social scene more than makes up for it. During work, there is countless consoles and games to play with your colleagues and socialise, as well as the quarterly team budget, where you can really spend some quality time with your team outside of work. I've had a lot of fun during the year and made some great memories with a lot of people in the company whom I usually didn't interact with on a day-to-day basis.

Cheaper than london and other major cities.

There isn't a lot and it doesn't compare to big cities there are plenty of pubs and about 3-4 nightclubs which was plenty for me. Reading is only 20 minutes away for those crazy nights :D

Outside of work the company hosts regular board-games nights as well as fitness sessions!