Technology Summer Intern Review

The placement was fun and I feel as though I got a lot out of it. I met a lot of interesting people and learnt a lot, and I when I was offered a full time job I was happy to accept.

I felt as though I was treated as a proper member of the team, and everybody was willing to give up their time to help or talk with me whenever I needed. I was working on a real project which had real uses, and the work I delivered seemed genuinely appreciated and valued by my colleagues.

I had biweekly meetings with my manager, as well as being able to talk to him informally throughout the day, which meant that I was able to get help whenever I needed it for my project, and ensured that my project made steady progress throughout the internship. As well as this I was also given a 'buddy' and a 'mentor', who were able to give me support and guidance with regards to my general performance throughout the internship.

I was generally quite busy throughout the internship. As well as an individual project I had been given as part of my team, I was also given a group project along with other interns and there were several intern events throughout the internship which I had to attend. To some extent you are able to control how busy you will are, since it is largely up to you to attend events and schedule meetings with you feel will be useful. While I was quite busy throughout the internship, I don't believe I was overly so, usually working roughly 9-6:30.

I was given a real project which had actual real-world applications and was not simply a 'fake' project existing only to keep me busy. I was also largely given free-reign over how I implemented my project as long as the final project met the requirements.

The internship trained me well for working in a large software company, maintaining large projects, which is very different to the small projects that I had done previously at university. It has also improved my time management skills, which has made my final year at university much easier than previous years.

The general atmosphere was very good and everyone was very friendly. There was never any sense of a bad atmosphere or any tension between employees that I was aware of. The firm uses an open office layout which means it can sometimes be quite noisy, but this was not much of a problem for me.

The internship was well organised and there were a lot of events scheduled for interns throughout the process. Towards the end of the internship as the workload increased, it was increasingly difficult to effectively coordinate these events alongside your individual project, but they did also give you an opportunity to take a break and step away from your project every now and then which was quite useful.

The internship included some formal training sessions on various technologies, however these were mostly aimed at interns completely new to working in technology and were quite basic. However, my team was very helpful and willing to invest their time in me whenever I needed it and so I learnt a lot through them whilst getting help for my individual project.

The graduate scheme offered by the firm is made to seem very appealing, and if you do well throughout the internship then you can receive a graduate offer at the end of the 10 weeks. The graduate scheme includes a 6 week trip to the firms New York offices for training, and is the best way to enter the company. I was happy to be offered and have accepted a graduate offer with the firm based on my 10 week experience.

Since most interns lived in close proximity to one another, there was quite a good social scene and there was generally some kind of intern meet-up every weekend, and I was generally able to eat lunch with other interns on vast majority of days. The firm does a good job of facilitating the forming of friendships groups across the interns by arranging several networking events or other intern activities throughout the internship.

Being in London, the cost of living and socialising is relatively high. I was able to commute from just outside of London which made the cost of living substantially lower, but also added a large amount of travel time to my day.

Being in London, there is plenty of nightlife nearby.

There are various communities within the firm for each business unit, minority groups, and sports teams which organise activities outside of work, which are often subsidised by the firm. The firm also runs a project called Community TeamWorks in which employees are given the option of taking one paid day out of work per year to take part in their choice of a selection of events set up to assist a local charity or part of the community.