Trainee Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my internship at Amadeus. It is difficult to give an overall opinion since COVID 19 caused disruption and issues towards the end of the year. Luckily, I worked on a completely knew project and saw it go from idea to pre-production while I was there. The projects are largely very interesting and enable interns to experience many different areas of development and of the company. It is also worth noting that Amadeus offer several events and occasions such as Graduate & Intern socials all throughout the year which were great fun.

This is a difficult question for me to answer since my manager and his senior manager made me feel very valued and as if I was working on something very important. However, throughout the year, neither the rest of my team nor other people working around me did not give me the impression that I was that valued. I think this is because my project was not closely related to the team. They were very friendly, but I would not say I was valued by them.

Both managers and people working around me were very helpful. I always found help when I was looking for it and if a person could not help, they would always redirect me to someone who could. As an intern, graduates (who acted as supervisors for some interns) were also very helpful and shared a lot of helpful tips and contacts. This experience seemed to be true for almost all interns when I was at Amadeus.

Generally, the workload each day was consistent and even. I never felt pressured to work outside of office hours and also always had plenty of work to get on with. As an intern, I found that a lot of meetings were optional which worked so that I could experience a lot of exposure to how the company works for permanent employees when I had the time. But if I was busier, it was okay to miss the meetings and spend the time on the work.

There was a huge variety of responsibility given to interns during my time there. Some people were responsible for production systems and others never touched products which left their local machine. Personally, I had full responsibility for the project I was working on. This meant that I was responsible for everything from code and documentation within the project to deploying the project and interacting with other systems. If you are willing to go out of your way to get it, then there are several opportunities for more responsibility at Amadeus from representing Grads & Interns to helping a buddy.

The skills I developed at Amadeus are skills I am sure I will reuse at uni and beyond. For university, I can see the time management skills and workflow skills I developed coming in useful to study and work effectively. I believe the skills I developed and used during my internship are very close to those I will use once I leave university to work in a similar environment. My communication skills (technical and not-technical) have improved massively and I now feel much more confident working in a professional software development environment. I had reasonable version control and programming skills before the internship but they still improved greatly at Amadeus (especially with the training opportunities offered during working hours).

The atmosphere was very relaxed. Everybody I encountered was very friendly and approachable. There were regular events for interns as well as office-wide hackathons and quizzes. My team also had regular team lunches. Because the London office was fairly isolated, the whole building generally eats lunch in the same area but it is very relaxed. At all times you will find people playing table tennis, table football or board games. Generally, meetings and more serious occasions still echoed the relaxed atmosphere even if they were more formal.

My placement was set up very smoothly with very few bumps (especially before the COVID-19 pandemic). However, some fellow interns had very poorly structured placements with projects being dropped and random work being found to fill the gap. Often a couple of interns who did not have a well-planned internship would be left with little to no work to be done. Luckily mine had a clear path and problems were quickly resolved either on my own or with assistance from my manager.

Amadeus and my manager was more than happy for me to take advantage of many training opportunities which are offered internally. They even offered "Lunch and Learns" for graduates and interns where Amadeus would pay for lunch to be provided by the office caterers and during the lunch staff from different areas of the company would speak. Some topics covered included: - Presenting effectively - Receiving and giving feedback - Talks from the Extended Account Team

I would love to accept another opportunity at Amadeus. During my time there I asked for an extension, was interested in a contractor role and was excited by the prospect of a graduate job at the company. Unfortunately due to COVID-19, the first and second were no longer possible because of cost-cutting. The graduate offers are usually given before you leave the placement. There was very little communication between HR and the interns regarding the delay of these offers until interns questioned in the last few weeks of working there at which point we were told not to expect the offers until July the following year at the earliest.

There is a social scene between fellow placement students which is helped by Amadeus' fairly frequent internal events for grads and interns. The network is a friendly and fun network in which you can be as involved as you want. It gives you the opportunity to network with a lot of fellow students/graduates but if you are never forced to participate to anything regarding the network. The majority of the placement students at the London office during my placement came from the University of York which means that there can be a small disconnect for others at the beginning but this quickly disappeared.

The London office is fairly isolated so there is not a lot to do around the office. This usually means that plans include going further into central London. Obviously, London is famous for its high cost of living compared with the rest of the UK. The Amadeus intern salary however was not a competitive London salary (£23,500) which meant that the high costs of London seemed even more extreme. On the other hand, being London-based obviously has the other benefit that if you are looking for something to do you will never run out of activities and if there is something in particular you want to do, you are bound to find it in London.

Around the office the nightlife is little to none. If you are looking for nightlife, you will have to travel into London. By the time you are in London you have a huge choice of nightlife but most options come with a hefty price tag. Also if you plan to travel to London after a day of work it is important to remember that it time takes a long into central from the office (~1hr30mins by tube iirc). But Crossrail will help with this if/when it is finished!

Amadeus have a large network of clubs for sports and other interests which are open to interns and organise frequent events. These are very easy to join and can also allow you to meet many people within the company. These clubs receive funding from Amadeus so a lot of the activities will be subsidised so you shouldn't let cost put you off joining (besides, joining itself is free)! I did not join a club personally but you still receive invites to certain events even if you are not part of the club and all of the events I attended were very fun and affordable.