Software Engineer Review

I enjoyed my placement. The work I was doing was fulfilling and felt like a valuable contribution to the company. All of the people were nice, and the frequent free drinks / meals were very enjoyable on evenings. The company houses provided are large with nice facilities, and the other interns were friendly and welcoming. I would recommend applying for an internship at Metaswtich.

The teams were a good size for developing friendships and good working relationships. I was comfortable asking for help from my colleagues and confident in offering help to them when I could. They treated me as a normal (new) employee and didn't look down at me. There weren't too many interns in each team, so each member of the team had the time to help you in different ways.

I was given a weekly 1-on-1 meeting with my manager, and was sat next to my supervisor. We also had a weekly team meeting, and regular larger meetings involving the whole business unit or even the whole company. This meant I was never stuck without help, and I got the management I needed to keep working to the best of my ability.

I was given a large project to finish, which I was allowed to work on at my own pace and report on my progress once a week. I was given smaller tasks to finish when my manager felt they would give me more experience of the work that the company does.

I was given a reasonably large project to work on that was important to the functionality of a product. I never felt like the work I was doing was useless or worthless, and I got encouragement and questions about my work from my peers. I gave a talk on my project to explain its function and how to use it, which was well attended.

We were given training on technical talks, which was very helpful both in my internship and for my degree. It boosted my confidence and let me start contributing in daily discussions with my team. We were offered detailed help with both exercises and work tasks, which allowed me to learn quickly and contribute to the company within my internship.

The office was very friendly. There were areas in the office with sofas, which you could use to get away from your desk and talk to people. On a weekly basis we finished work early and had cake with our team. The company frequently provided money for drinks in the pub (every time an intern arrived or left), and so we had plenty of opportunities to socialize with other interns and employees.

Metaswitch takes a lot of interns every year (around 30 I think) so they have a very good system. There were cheap company houses available, and the company services team were very quick to solve any problems that developed with the house. There were HR employees to look after us and answer any questions we had throughout our internship, and our work projects were carefully chosen to be challenging and also small enough for us to complete in our limited time with the company.

We were given educational talks multiple times a week. Some of these were aimed at educating interns in the whole company, some of them were team members explaining specific parts of products to us to help with our projects and some of them were technical talks unrelated to work given by employees for fun.

Metaswitch frequently offers second internships to students who are still at University and returning interns are paid more than first-time interns. Most of the people who were leaving University this year or next year were offered job interviews and received job offers. The internship is definitely a stepping stone into employment with Metaswitch.

There were a lot of interns, and there were a lot of events organised just for us. We had a personal mailing list which was used to organize sports events, meals, and pub trips. All of the interns were friendly and we all lived near each other in company houses.

Although it is expensive to live in London, the company houses provided were heavily subsidized which meant I was able to save most of my salary for University. There were cheap supermarkets nearby and it was easy to survive without spending much money. Because Enfield is technically in London, the pubs are very expensive - but the company paid for some of our drinks every week, which helped a lot with the cost of going out.

There weren't any clubs in Enfield, however with the frequent night buses available, going into London was an option. There are lots of food shops in Enfield open late, so you'll always have something to eat on your way home from a night out. Some trips into London were organised among the interns.

Yes - there was a sports day, and the company hosted a large event called the 'enger games', which was held over several weeks. It was a team-based competition with events like gaming, cricket and football. There were lots of sports clubs to join which were all free & open to interns.