Engineering Intern Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my placement at Sophos. There was a lot of variety in the work that I was given so there was always something new and interesting to learn about.

I was treated as equally as the other employees in that my skills were acknowledged and there was no busy work or easy tasks delegated to me because I was a placement student.

I was usually given guidance by my manager and at first this was mostly through pairing with other team members and shadowing or writing small pieces of code. As time passed I became more independent and my manager acknowledged this. From this point on I was only assissted when I ran into problems or when I started work on a project I was unfamiliar with,

This varied from time to time. At the beginning of the placement the team I joined was wrapping up a lot of previous work and were looking towards a brand new project. As a result there wasn't a great deal for me to do. As time passed however work started to come in and I became busier. However the work was never busy enough that I felt stressed or under pressure to finish it, as there weren't many hard deadlines.

Being a placement student in the Engineering department of a large software company, there was a limit to how much responsibility I could be given. This was understandable because there was simply too much I would need to learn for a one year placement. However team I was never given tasks simply because they were less critical and my manager never shied away from giving me responsibilities I could reasonably be expected to manage.

The skills I've developed on the placement will definitely help me throughout the rest of my degree. One of the greatest technical skills I've gained is the ability to work on a completely new area of software engineering or programming and adapt to it with ease. I have also developed a wide variety of soft skills: The ability to work as part of a team was one of them. In school and at university group work was rarely well managed. Furthermore working together for a fixed time period on a single piece of coursework is nothing like working as part of a team on meaningful projects with real applications.

It was an open office-not even the CEO had a separate office. There was also a very friendly and laid back atmosphere.

The placement was well organised, This was mainly due to the nature of the scheme: We were given the same responsibilities and tasks that a new graduate would be given. There was no set task for a placement student that required extra organisation.

The company ran a various soft skills courses that any employee was allowed to take. In terms of technical skills, there was a lot of on the job training and they acknowledged the need to spend time learning new skills instead of jumping into new projects,

I am definitely considering returning to the company once my degree is complete, I believe the employment prospects in the company are very appealing. The impression I've gained in my time here is that it is easy to gain responsibilities and move up in the company in a reasonable timeframe if you are willing to put in the work.

There were a large number of placement students, and the company is always increasing their intake of both interns and new graduates so there was a community of students within the company that made it easier to adapt to working life.

The office was located in Abingdon which I believe had a reasonable to low cost of living. However I lived in Oxford and commuted to Abingdon daily. Oxford was more expensive, but was manageable even on a placement student's salary.

Abingdon has a few pubs but as far as I'm aware there isn't much nightlife. Oxford however, being a student city had a lot to offer in terms of nightlife, including student nights with discounts.

There were often opportunuties to play sports and get involved with colleagues in the office, advertised through a "non-work" mailing list. There is a sports centre nearby where many people go to play badminton at lunch time.