IBM

I was working in the labs at Hursley, so I can't speak for other locations. At Hursley, though, everyone was extremely friendly and, as an intern, always had time to chat with you.

The support I got from my two managers was great; they were always providing words of wisdom on how to best progress through your career, even if it was outside IBM.

There were many opportunities for personal development, from presentation workshops to working in the local school. There really was a lot to get stuck into. If you had the right mindset, you could create a lot of opportunities too, so I was able to do some shadowing at client sites and get involved in projects outside my main job role.

Hursley House itself is beautiful, settled in pristine Hampshire countryside. The rest of the site, though, was in parts a bit tired looking, but it was in the process of getting a bit of a makeover when I left. I know from people still there that they've even added what looks like a very nice gym!

It really was cool to work in a place where so much innovation was going on, from Blockchain to looking inside the server rooms and seeing the multiple Z13 mainframes. It's a cool place to be for a techy. There's also a rather awesome museum that shows off the history of Hursley, with lots of examples of early laptops and some of the first hard drives.

Big corporate processes got in the way of doing work. Simple things like connecting to the WiFi or getting email were such a pain at times, sometimes taking away whole days of work to get set back up.

Not many benefits, meaning we had to pay for things like tea (via a kitty), and not much in the way of team days (like going go-karting, etc., to celebrate milestones).

Reduce the process for basic things like WiFi and email, keep improving the Hursley site, and allocate more budget to employee benefits.