Software Development Engineer Apprentice Review

Daily standup, Weekly meetings and then finding time to work on project work. Check slack frequently. Unpaid lunch hour is a good time to interact with your coworkers and get to know them. Often go down for after work drinks on a Thursday and other events around the office maybe once a month.

I learnt quite a few new skills within work including a whole new language and all the things connected with that. I also learnt a lot of best practices from my team and how the world of work works. We have L&BC (Learn and Be Curious - one of the leadership principles) days where we take time off work to learn new skills helpful to Amazon.

If it was all employer based it would be really good. However we have to endure the training provider and that brings the score down massively. QA is shocking and the communication from QA to the apprentice team to managers or apprentices is sorely lacking. Usually I only find out information from other apprentices so make sure you make friends with fellow apprentices or you'll always be out of the loop

Most of the stuff learnt within the programme isn't actually useful and some of it is so basic that I've done it before at high school and then did it again at college and now I'm doing it again at uni, I'm meant to learn things not do the basics. At least we are given 20% of the time to work on it if not more.

Amazon as an apprentice employer is so amazing and I receive quite a lot of support. It wavers once you get to the apprentice team but that's partly because they hate some of us. Manager milage may vary though as I've heard some managers aren't as supportive as mine have been. Most managers especially the ones that go through your whole apprentice journey with you are usually vetted and do a great job at supporting but if you're constantly changing managers this may not be the case.

You can ask for support and you'll get monthly reminders from your skills coach. Plus you get a termly (usually) meeting to go through a document that's the most boring meeting on earth but if you need support that would be a good time to bring it up. They also have the ACE team should you need more 1:1 support or something. The tutors are hit and miss (Although big up Matt Phelan the best one there, always goes above and beyond) and the draft feedback can be really amazing or shockingly bad and that continues to their marking.

It has no bearing on my role entirely. Except maybe the software specific modules but even then they are the basics, you'll be doing much more advanced stuff than that in your work life. The programme doesn't cover data structures or anything useful really.

Beechwood is just downstairs and you get a discount so lots of people will hang out there. There are events sporadically around the team or office and the townhall is every quarter and that's a social event as well as informative for your team. Also there's no judgement on if you're there or not and whether you drink or not everyone just gets along.

Yes

It's a great place to work, while it's not the best FAANG company by a long stretch it's still great from the work side. Although be careful that you might end up in a team where the work you do seems meaningless or not passionate to you but you'll get the option to move nearer the end of the programme

Try your best and make sure you're interacting with the interviews and group activities to show yourself off