Analyst programmer Review

I am an apprentice analyst programmer for CGI in Hughes park, Bridgend and absolutely love it. On a typical day, I solve any issues that the customers that I work for are facing; this could be just a simple fix or an in depth investigation in to a persisting problem. And on top of that, I do my apprentice work, both in the office and in the house. It's a lot of work but I'm getting paid to do a foundation degree..Can't really complain about that - perfect really.

Well as a part of my apprenticeship, I am studying a wide range of things such as Java programming, java script (web Development) and project management to name a few. And, coming into this apprenticeship I had little or no experience with much of what I'm learning; I dabbled with Java in school a little and that's about it. So everything I have done, so far - has been new to me.

I enjoy all aspects of my programme, from the course work to the day-to-day work that I do. The team that I work with is made up of all kinds of people, of all backgrounds which makes the job that much better and more enjoyable because not one day is the same. The people on my team are also very intelligent and are always willing to help and makes the work that much easier.

Sometimes I don't feel as valued as I'd like to be - pressure from elsewhere can sometimes get you down. But, my team always ensure that they're giving me as much confidence as possible and make me feel like I'm a valued member of the team. CGI has also given me a lot of recognition for my sporting achievements which was nice. They published a article about me on their intranet site.

The induction was in Reading which was a pain as I had to travel 4 hours on the train and stay over night. But it was a great chance for me to make friends, and speak to different apprentices in different roles to me. At the start of our programme, it wasn't too well organised as our assessor from QA wasn't very good and confused the whole situation. But it's all good now, we have another assessor and everything is going as planned.

Other than the assessor previously mentioned, the support from QA has been marvellous, all if the tutors have been great and I don't think I've been waiting longer than half a day for them to reply back to me - considering they have hundreds of students I think that's great.

Below I mention not being able to work from home, other than this - all my managers and mentors have been brilliant in supporting me and never feel as though I don't have enough support. But would love the opportunity to wfh a couple of days a week as I would be saving a lot on fuel.

As I'm travelling quite a way to work everyday, fuel costs the most out of my monthly salary taking 1/4 of it. I would like to work from home like a normal employee but we're not allowed as we must have continued support from our teams and the best way to get that is face to face in the office. Personally, I think the salary should be higher as we are practically doing the same job as the other members.

Every few weeks there's a grad/apprentice night out which is fun and the people you work with, I can guarantee will ask if you want to do things after work as it's quite a close knit community within teams. Also, I plkay football on a wednesday.

Yes

Just a great place to learn new skills and work on very interesting projects. And, if you're interested in IT and want to get into the IT world, CGI is a great place to start - being a UK Top employer and having such a huge range of roles and places to work around the WORLD

That when you join the programme you don't get put into a programming role, you get put as an apps support person which is fine but I joined the company to be a developer and learn how to develop apps not support them. But, saying that I don't have the skill set to do that, and would love to be trained to do so.