Guide to Guidewire - an intern's internal view

Matthew Duffy

A guide to Guidewire - an Intern’s internal view

My name is Matthew and I was part of the 2020 Guidewire Software development Internship program. I am a 3rd-year student of a 4-year degree and I have just finished my 6 months placement with Guidewire and I loved it - even with 21 of the 26 weeks spent working from home.

When I first heard of Guidewire it was when a representative from the company first came to present the Internship program at my college. That day Ian introduced us to Guidewire and went through some tips and tricks on acing whiteboard interviews. I’ll be honest, this terrified me at the time, to the point where I almost didn’t apply for it. The company sounded great, but would I just embarrass myself during what seemed to be a pretty intense interview process? I did apply though because it seemed too good an opportunity to just pass on and if, as anticipated, it went really badly, well I figured I could chalk it up to experience and never see those people again. I could not have been more wrong.

Everyone in the interview process really made it comfortable for me, and while you obviously need a good grasp of the fundamentals for the whiteboard interview, it really wasn’t that bad. The interview in the office was long but I left there feeling that no matter what happened I was glad I applied for it, even for the experience alone if nothing else came of it. Thankfully, however, something did.

The Internship itself began in February 2020. We were each provided with the equipment we would need for the day to day job and we started our training. During our first week, we met our team and participated in a company-wide Hackathon.

The first few months of the Internship were to be spent in the GSC where we would be working on a new project. I worked on the backend with another intern, while the two other interns worked on the frontend. The team was a lot of fun, so was the office, and we were all really enjoying the working life in a big software company when the arrival of Covid-19 brought the world to a halt.

Guidewire acted fast and efficiently which really impressed us all. We were advised well ahead of time that we would all be working from home and Guidewire even helped us get set up in our home offices to allow us to continue to succeed in our roles. With constant communication from management at all levels, we were left feeling like our job was in very capable hands.

Life and the internship continued from home. I finished up the first half of the Internship with my team in the GSC and each intern moved to a team in Product Development. This is where I spent the rest of my internship. Working on two projects with my PD pod, the learning curve was always steep, but I really enjoyed the challenge.

Throughout the internship, we were always given opportunities to better ourselves. Multiple courses and talks were offered to us, not just focused on growing our technical abilities but everything ranging from public speaking to future career talks and even offering me the chance to continue working on my second language skills. We were even given time to organize a charity event of our own which the company and the people working there were more than happy to help us with.

I could not recommend Guidewire enough. From my time in the GSC to my time in PD and every event and talk in between it has all been more than I ever expected from an internship. I hope I might get the chance to build a career here in the future. I will always be grateful to have had this experience.