Apprentice signal Engineer Review

I am a member of a team of designers in an office that produce the system that stop train from crashing and keep the infrastructure functioning and affective. I also attend College one day a week for A HNC in electrical and electronic engineering.

Baring in mind Signal engineering is an very niche job all of the skills are new to me and the other apprentices. I have taken part in many courses whilst on the job, some railway specific other not specific such as emergency first aid.

when in office I enjoy my work quite an amount as I am 'usually' always busy and if not I can keep my self occupied for some period learning new skills or information for my job. The atmosphere around the office is very friendly it only took about a couple of weeks when first joining to feel like I had fit in. However College I do not enjoy much as I struggle a fair amount with it and require additional help sometimes which is hard to come by in my situation, this is not helped by the fact that none of the skills or information I learned have not yet been used in job and are most likely not going to be.

the way Siemens is set up means that it isn't just the big bosses who can award or recognize your talents or effort. As I have already gained myself 2 awards so far and the recognition along with that for works I had completed, one awarded by my manager and another from the regional director.

In office the structuring is relatively stable and aimed. sometimes there are delays in certain aspects but this is to be expected as it could be in any work place. we have meetings with the Siemens training manager every 3 months which helps keep us aimed overall for completion of our apprenticeship. College however is just too busy, it is day release but only just, all the subjects are crammed into one day from 9am till 6pm and there is no real point to ask tutors for help as one assignment is handed out they need to 'try' teach you information for the next assignment, so if you lag behind one assignment (as I did) it all knocks on until you have them all due in with no reasonable way of completing them other that "read this book". In terms of college very little. In office nearly anyone and everyone is happy to help with questions but typically you can just keep them within your team and eventually members of the team just become your mentor (if you haven't been officially assigned one already).In terms of college very little. In office nearly anyone and everyone is happy to help with questions but typically you can just keep them within your team and eventually members of the team just become your mentor (if you haven't been officially assigned one already).

If by training provide you mean courses we are sent on then usually the trainers are top notch. extremely good at teaching the subject and if questions are asked they are always happy to help answer them at the time or even after the lesson.

Help for college within the work place is hard to come by, some people make an effort but it is usually often to no avail as they have forgotten or (like me) don't know how to just magically teach themselves a subject.

since I live at home this is not too much of a worry for me but we were told in our first year that in January of our second year of work we would get a £1,000 pay rise and the same the next year as every other apprentice had received, but one week before we were due to receive it, it was cut off as it was discovered it wasn't in out contract. Obviously this didn't go down with the apprentices as this means we were doing exactly the same as the previous years apprentices but being given a fair amount less.

There is plenty of volunteering opportunities which work allow to be done and plenty of other things such as coffee roulette which I am a part of.

Yes

As it I just an all round good place to start your life on the job ladder and an interesting job to do.

To just be yourself and not try to be someone or something you are not