Intern Software Engineering Review

The main thing I loved about working at Sophos was the fact that I was doing the same work as the graduate software engineers all the way up to the senior software engineers. Also the agile methodologies employed by Sophos engineering teams meant that we were always busy and had interesting things to be working on. I had the pleasure of working on a team that had upcoming, brand new product releases in my time on placement. This meant a lot of my time was spent working on interesting new features, being directly involved in design decisions and having the pleasure of all expenses paid release parties! The Abingdon office also know how to have fun - every Friday the canteen turns into a bar after work with cheap drinks, with the bar being free around once a month! Not to mention the time when the car park was transformed into a go-kart track.

As mentioned previously, I did just as much (if not more) programming as other colleagues on my team. My opinion on architectural decisions was valued, and treated just as importantly as any other member of the team. I felt more like a permanent employee than an intern and got on well with all of my team, that felt more like an extended family than work colleagues.

Unlike some of the other interns, I didn't have any one-to-one meetings with my manager to check on how I was doing (and he left mid way through my placement), which I felt could have been useful especially at the beginning. However, my manager is positive, optimistic, encouraging and generally great guy to be around and definitely makes work fun! Fortunately I never had any issues during my placement, but I know that if I had, my supervisor would be more than happy to help and I would have no hesitation to ask him for support.

There were very few days where I had no work to do, and on the days that I didn't, colleagues would be happy to provide me with work that, although it wasn't imperative to a product release, was definitely challenging. As my team was responsible for multiple product releases, we have a tight schedule that means we rarely have time when there is no work to be done. However we still have a great work balance and not once felt like I had too much work to do or not finish on time!

Myself and a graduate engineer on our team were the main developers in a major new product release. We wrote most of the code and tests and had other members of the team review it before it was submitted. I didn't realise just how much we'd contributed to the product until I checked our source control metrics!

I found my placement to be a huge eye opener on how software engineering works in an office environment. Sophos has definitely set the bar high for any future jobs that I have in IT. I have improved on a wide variety of skills, such as communication, and how to effectively work as a team.

The Abingdon office was very open plan, friendly atmosphere with no cubicles or high walls separating teams. As all of the software engineers were on the same floor, you often had people from other teams coming to ask you questions and vice versa, just because of how close they were.

I was integrated into the team quickly and practically treated like a graduate software engineer. I had no issues with getting setup and everything went as expected.

Although I'm sure there were opportunities to go on training courses, I was never directly offered/suggested to go on any and never investigated it on my own accord.

Sophos is an amazing office to work at, and the city of Oxford is stunning, and my chances of working here after university are high (if I get an offer!)

There were 7 other placement students during my time at Sophos, however not many of them were particularly social (not a fault of the company, but I feel like it comes with being a computer scientist!) However, Oxford is a beautiful city with loads to do, for example I went to play squash, go climbing and weight train at the Oxford Brookes sport centre 20 minutes from my home - there's tons of way to stay more than busy throughout the week!

Myself and some other interns that I lived with managed to find a cheap house in Oxford (~£80pppw) that meant I was living for cheaper here than I was in my university city! However as a tourist city in the south the prices aren't particularly low, but not expensive by a long shot.

Oxford is home to 2 universities and so had a buzzing nightlife on most nights of the week. Not to mention it's home to some great clubs and beautiful rooftop bars, I found it to have a better nightlife from the city I came from!

Many employees partake in sports at the leisure centre seconds away from the office, from football to squash there were loads of different groups of people that were more than happy to have others join them! If you enjoy sport there'll be loads of people to play with at the office.