Bloomberg LP

I worked for the BDE (Basic Development Environment) team, and thus understand that my experience is not completely the norm. My team was composed of mostly subject matter experts from the C++ Standards community: John Lakos (who has more degrees than Sheldon Cooper), Alisdar Merrideth (the lead of the C++ Standards Committee library team), etc.

They were all very personable and very knowledgeable.

I was given a real project which I owned completely and was made to feel like I was a real member of the team, not just the intern.

I also was given carte blanche to work as many hours as I desired (as an intern I was paid hourly), so that was really great as well.

The HR/Campus recruiting did a great job setting up events and making a really great internship experience. In fact, they still take me out to dinner each time they come into town.

Working for John's team means a lot of time is spent on tasks that are not necessarily programming. I.E., writing documentation, and all of the sections of a BDE component that are really comments (at least from a programmer's standpoint).

You get used to it, and once you learn what is expected from these sections, it is supposed to be less than 30% of your time. However, for a ten-week internship, by the time I got the hang of it, my time was over.

Another point is that you test your own code (again, this is true for my team, not for many others). This is not necessarily a negative, but it again is work that some Software Engineers would prefer not be a part of their duties.