Accelerate Graduate - Software Review

Good Experience, however the handling of accessibility concerns and culture needs some work in some departments. There is an old school mindset within some departments that can be harmful. The wider business is excellent at supporting these issues and resolving them, and through the graduate programme there is a lot of support to ensure people are comfortable and working at their best. There is still a chance you may end up located in an area where you are under-utilised however and it is difficult to transfer across. They don't seem to read the CV and match you up with a relevant role.

Database Infrastructure, Software Development and IT support in a niche engineering area, utilising specialised software. I enjoyed the areas where I could lead projects from start to finish, and be trusted to develop robust solutions to problems and improving process.

I definitely feel valued by most of my team, and I know how much my contributions mean when it comes to developing process.

I am currently working at several grades above my pay. When looking at job roles and responsibilities I can see I am undertaking a higher standard of work. The pay is very good, but for the role I am doing when looking at the paperwork, I'm definitely not on the grade I should be. The department is unwilling to fight to organise this until a year passes despite agreeing and signing off on this as fact. They still will not attempt to put a case to HR for this one.

While the role is good and I do enjoy it, it is not within the area I plan to pursue. It is not helping me develop the technical skills I require to follow my future career path. It has definitely supported the development of my soft skills, however I need the technical development at this point.

Good support from HR, Mentors and Buddies.
Line manager support is there in spirit but he won't act on anything and things seem to be swept under the rug.

Poor work life balance. I am performing consistent overtime and needing to use all my free time to recover for work moving forward.

Org as a whole is incredibly good with a positive atmosphere and a culture of helping each other grow and develop. My specific department has a very poor culture and nothing has been done about this yet despite people raising the issue.

The initiatives are there and people definitely want to help but the site is completely inaccessible. When there are issues from my experience as a wheelchair user, people say nice words but don't actually take action in the Barrow Site. There probably needs to be more mandatory training on this for people. I have to use vehicle gates to get anywhere as there are very few accessible gates on site. I have hear other sites such as the Warton site are far better for this.

Yes

The pay is good and the work is interesting. There is a lot of opportunity for lateral movement if you build a good network and most people want to help you. If you land in a good team it's an amazing place to be. Landing in a good team is a bit of a roulette but with the opportunities for lateral movement, it makes the chance worth taking.

I am doing a degree of what was promised, but not nearly to the extent I had read. I applied to do Software Engineering but I am essentially doing Application Configuration Management which is an entirely different skillset. I am using my Software Engineering principals in the structure of developing new features but the technical work is not as low level as promised.