Apprentice Software Engineer Review

Within my team I am working on a compiler based project, in an average day to day my work would involve primarily working on code improvements as a first year apprentice as my knowledge is relatively basic and is expected to grow throughout the duration of my apprenticeship, the code I work on is mainly C++ with some python coding for specific circumstances. Within my week I have a weekly meeting with my manager to go over any tickets that I am working on, any help that I may need, explain/teaching me different concepts, answering any questions I have, and providing support for me in regards to basic line manager tasks and any help I may need on my apprenticeship work. I then have meetings twice a week with the sub team I am assigned to, which allows people to go over the tickets they are working on, update any work they are doing, ask for reviews or help with what they are working on etc. I then have an additional 2 meetings with the larger team within my project, which then allows individuals from different subgroups to go over what they are currently working on, what direction the project is going towards etc. The company allows me to work from home twice a week (though this may depend on the team you are in) and people within the office are usually in from Tue-Thurs, from Tuesday to Thursday I usually grab lunch with my team. Once a week (within term times) I have virtual lectures to attend, which usually last a few hours and will span over roughly 8 weeks, within this time I am given a minimum of around 7.5 hours to work on my apprenticeship, this can involve lectures, working towards my assignment or any learning I am currently completing. After work I usually go to the onsight gym at the campus (which is free) and then catch the free transport back into the city center that Arm provides. In this aspect I couldn't fault it, I thoroughly enjoy this side of my role.

Since starting my apprenticeship, skills I have learnt are primarily learnt on the job or within my own time, currently other than the work I am completing towards my degree, nor myself or my manager have seen much value in what QA has provided in terms of what I can then apply back into my work. Things I have learnt so far are Soft skills such as working within a professional technical enviroment, the process of sprint planning and tracking, using systems such as gerrit, Jira and Confluence within my role. Technical skills I have learnt are the following: Beginner C++, Scripting with Python, some project specific concepts and terminology, using systems such as Jenkins, Completeing code reviews with Gerrit. It should be noted that Arm provides alot of material for learning development that is free such as O'Reily which offers both resources and live courses taught by a tutor, Bootcamps/Courses (depending on if needed for your project). On QA's side like mentioned so far I have not seen much value in what has been taught within the workshops (although this may be because I am a first year) but this seems to be the general consensus between alot of apprentices, QA then offers free memberships towards their own traning provider Cloud Academy, I am yet to complete any of the courses on here but they are completely free and you are allowed to complete as many as you like, but like I said I cannot vouch for how well any of the material is prepared. Rating an 7 as the QA side brings the score down as the amount of time it takes out of my week isn't currently outweighed by the benefits it brings towards the skills I develop (which isnt what I'd personally expect from lectures being taught by a university)

As mentioned before the employer side of the apprenticeship is fantastic, I think the fact that I am working and gaining experience with one of the industry leaders within chip design is a huge benefit as I will have an additional 3 years experience under my belt in comparison to my peers who have attended university, alongside the great salary and benefits that Arm offers for someone of my experience and age although I do feel Arm could provide more financial support in certain aspects for apprentices. In my day to day job I find it highly rewarding although at times it can be nerveracking or cause a little imposter syndrome as youre surrounded by people with 10+ years of technical experience casually talking about things you may not currently understand and it can be daunting at times to ask questions especially within large team meetings as you'll feel as if you're distrupting the flow and singling yourself out, which does slightly hinder my learning experience and therefore enjoyment, but this is depending on how confident you are personally and I expect that this will change over time so I wont mark down the rating based on this. However the greatest aspect that is currently not very enjoyable is the learning provided by QA, I find the materials provided by QA are of a quite low quality and there is not much support for learners and you can find at times you slip through the cracks and feel slightly forgotten or thought of as just a number, my biggest disagreement with QA is the materials provided within the workshop as it feels like I am missing out greatly on the typical in person lectures that I would have received going to a traditional university as I and others have found the workshops not very engaging, this is down to individuals within the call not participating which can make the entire workshop feel as if it is a waste of time, and the learning provided by the tutor can feel slighly unprofessional and comparable to when you'd be assigned a substitute teacher in school and they'd read through pre-prepared material on slides with no engagement from the class or adding their own experiences, thoughts or knowledge into what you are learning, personally I'd like to see more challenging materials provided within workshops, more accountability from tutors ensuring students engage with the class, had I been paying myself for the material QA provides as opposed to Arm, I would have left the course by now to find a University elsewhere. Another thing is the DLC or Digital Learning Consultants you are provided with to support you, at the moment I dont feel very supported considering the DLC's dont seem to be very in touch with their role or the students they are provided with, you have meetings with them perhaps once every 1 1/2 months which they go over preprepared material on their system (aptem) outside of that they are rarely ever in contact with their students apart from the ocassional message they send on their system which seems to generically copy and pasted which you wont be notified of unless you regularely check aptem. As mentioned their system aptem is what you log your OTJ hours on, contact your DLC on and track your overall progress throughout the course, the second is canvas which is used primarily for the learning material that you learn within the courses and for submitting work on your assignments, both systems are unfortunately very clunky and have major issues which can be very inconvinient to use which does make it easy in terms of remembering to submit OTJ hours or portfolio check-ins, for example I was never initially explicity explained how to submit my OTJ hours which meant that they were left unchecked in terms of me submitting them, I am now behind on submitting them and QA has made a big deal about the issue despite they never previously being in contact with me when I initially started to not submit them which means QA are just as guilty in terms of allowing the issue to percist. Overall I feel slightly worried in terms of the future of my degree, which I intend to acheive a high grade but I majorly wish that Arm used a different course provider, perhaps one that is in person and has more years of experience than QA, as I feel like the stigma towards acheiving a degree from a provider such as QA which possibly affect my ability to apply for future roles as that my ability to get a job elsewhere will be highly dependant on myself ensuring that I learn knowledge relevant to my role, which overall makes my time spend on my university work futile other than the piece of paper I am provided with at the end, like previous said, if I was the one paying to be provided the course by QA I would be extremely let down and would have probably switched to a different university provider within my first month working with them, for that reason I would rate my overall enjoyment of the program as a 4 as the apprenticeship provider is a huge aspect of the program and hence heavily brings down the overall rating I would provide.

Like I previously iterated the structure of my program within Arm is great and unfaulted, within the 3 years I will work within 3 seperate departments/roles, so will receive a variety of experience within different aspects, although I do feel as if that a year is too little time to learn and gain enough experience within certain projects (depending on their size), another thing to mention is that being based in Cambridge which is the European HQ for Arm means theres a vast amount of different projects you can work on but as for the other UK based offices that are of a smaller size you can be limited in terms of the rotations that you will complete. Arm also provides you with an industrial mentor who is meant to reguarly stay in contact with you and is meant to be there as a more experienced individual in which you can contact and ask questions related to various different topics and primarily to build you network within the company (or atleast from my understanding) however in my case and many other apprentices I know that since the start of their course they do not regularly stay in contact with their mentor and it can seem slightly pointless towards having the mentor as other than between the mentor and the student no one seems to be there to ensure that you are getting the most out of the experience. This is in the same case as the buddy you are assigned with, which as far from what I am aware of is always someone within your team, yet again this feels slightly pointless as there is no structure towards having this buddy and I am not sure of the actual point/purpose of doing this as the individual is somebody who is already within my team and who I regularly see and communicate with on a daily basis (or try to) which means to me there is nothing specific which stands out between them just being another team member or being your designated "buddy" other than a lunch together you get paid for once within your first month working at the company. In terms of structure within my team I am working on, there is no fault in this aspect as it is well structured, you are constantly checked on, given work, and made to feel apart of the team, as in the case of my line manager he has been excellent in taking time out of his week to ensure we have a regular meeting and can build a good relationship between us both, as in his case I feel like he is both a "buddy" and "mentor" alongside being my line manager which only makes the two previous roles even more futile and pointless. As for the organisation of the apprenticeship within Arm, it can feel very relaxed as the only time you are in contact with the apprentices (outside of your own doing) in an arranged setting is around twice a year for an apprentice event, but other than that I would appreciate more structure in terms of senior leadership ensuring their is more communication and more of a community between the apprentices, I think one idea that would be greatly appreciated and worthwhile is for each individual module (for each cohort of apprentices) someone within the company is assigned to those apprentices based of their experience in the topics being covered in the module, then having regular meetings with this individual leading a group of the apprentices in terms of dicussion, going over the assignment, covering any questions, teaching things relevant to their role and the topic and making the entire experience feel more like you are an actual student learning in a university may help to the fact that QA isn't currently very great and provide a signifcant increase in the learning factor and value that the apprenticeship provides. As touched on before the structure and oganization within QA is apauling, and I have high hopes that eventually Arm which switch providers, within the previous questons I think I've given enough ideas as to the structure of QA so I wont rant anymore than I have already on this. Overall I feel there is definite drastic improvements to be made on the side of QA so that brings down the overall score, in terms of in my day to day, the work I complete on my project takes up a majority of my time and interest and there is no fault within this, however on Arms side I feel as if there is some work that could be done towards the buddy and mentor system which an emphasis on making the overall role of these two individuals more structured which would give it greater value, meaning and would clear up some confusion currently as to what purpose they actually serve. However something that I feel Arm can greatly improve upon in the learning experience, as mentioned within my suggestion but I'm sure that the apprentices have other ideas on how this could be worked upon, and perhaps upping the frequency of the meeting between apprentices to every quarter would provide more benefit and make the apprentices feel more like they can lean on one and other for not only knowledge and experience but as friends and peers, as I feel like a great aspect of what individuals miss out upon when completing an apprenticeship is the memories, experiences and friends you gain within being a university student, as an apprenticeship student, the experience can feel slightly lonely and as if you are commiting 3 years of your life towards a slight gain in experience, less debt etc, at the downside of the experiences you can only get as a student in a university, for the fact there is improvement to be done I would rate this a 5

The support I receive from Arm is one of the reasons I like think this role is great, I receive great financial support, mental/physical support, support from my line manager and team members, like mentioned previously I think there could be more support provided in terms of ensuring apprentices have a greater sense of union and community, I'm aware that there are intern and apprentice events, but I feel like it would be nice to have events just specifically for apprentices where we have a better chance to connect and offer each other support. Another aspect I disagree on was the recent change within the company to scrap the annual bonus, as a first year this is particularly disheartening as it was pro rata, meaning only working from our start date in sepetember meant that 2/3/4th years had a vastly larger bonus than first years, which in contrast to the fact that not only the previous years will have had an additional lump of money from there 1st/2nd/3rd year bonus, meaning it feels slightly unfair now joining as a first year to be only given the amount we worked for considering we will now never have the opportunity earn a bonus again, I am then aware it has been incorporated into the apprentice salary, but this feels slightly unfair considering that apprentices were already overdue a siginifcant pay rise considering we receive no financial help from the government on an apprentice scheme and the fact that some individuals have sinced moved to Cambridge for this opportunity which adds to the fact when considering Cambridge is known for its high cost of living for rent, food, and ammenities, which means that the bonus just feels like it is giving is a pay rise to current inflation prices and not actually rewarding us with a salary based bonus. To end on a positive, the support I have received while learning on the job so far has been great, as the individuals I am working with and learning from are very supportive and concious of the fact that I am new, and they are always checking up on me to ensure I am in a state where I know I can ask them for help and support. As a result I will rate my overall experience in receiving support from my employer as a 7.

As previously stated the support received from the training provider is extremely poor, from the quality of materials they are teaching you, the tutors you are provided with seeming out of their depth and unaware of what they are teaching, DLC's not keeping an eye on how well you are doing on being in regular contact, among many other reasons. For that reason I would give the provider QA a 2 out of 10, with the only benefit of using being the degree you eventually get which is free and the fact you get access to their resources on cloud academy being the only two notable benefits I have found so far.

I have reiterated this numerous times but I have such a poor opinion of QA and one of the main reasons is due to the materials they are teaching, the materials seem relatively pointless and something that can be found in better depth just from a basic google search, which my main focus in this degree being the software engineering module, I found that the majority of what I had learnt was either independently self taught or was from my previous knowledge, next to nothing of what I have learnt to far with QA has provided any soft of significant value in terms of improving how I perform in my role for that reason I would give QA a 1/10 as I highly doubt this will change from what I've heard from other apprentices.

There are plently of extra-curricular activities to take part in at Arm, my favourite being the free gym that is provided on campus, some people may also be interested in the free PT sessions they provide or free classes, alongside this there are activities for almost every hobby you can think of, they are more generally available to more employees so it's a great way to network within the company however I would perhaps like to see more events that are solely apprentice based but overall this is something Arm does extremely well.

Yes

So far I cannot fault Arm as an employer, the fact they are one of the UK's top employers speaks volumes to the fact that they are definitely a company which is worthwhile working for, the only hesitation I have infact is in regards to the training provider (QA) which I hope Arm eventually changes unless there is some sort of divine intervention and QA suddenly drastically improves as I think there are probably better providers than Arm could use, one thing I would say to anyone wanting to take advantage of an Apprenticeship at Arm is to just understand that a majority of the skills you learn and that employers will value are from your time within your team, and to have a long hard think wether you are 100% about commiting yourself towards an apprenticeship especially if you are less career focused and want to enjoy the more social side that an alternative like university would offer.

For advice solely based on this role, I would ensure that you have a decent amount of experience in coding simple projects, and building yourself a portfolio on a platform like Github, the main thing that the assessors are looking for is an individual who is keen to learn and who will show improvement over time so I would perhaps focus on thinking of scenarios where you improved the outcome of something or reflecting on what knowledge you gained at the end of a project you perhaps worked on in your spare time, during work or academia.