Ever wondered if indeed sitcoms depict truly the corporate world? Are you planning on working for one of the big companies or you’re just curious about how are the lives of the tens of thousands of people working for the big corps? Then you will hopefully find some interesting insights in this blog.
My name is Sebastian Dodita and I’ve started working for Versuni in September 2023, so there’ve been 10 months of experience here. Most probably you’ve never heard of this company, and that makes sense, as it is not a consumer facing one. However, Versuni is more of a “mother” company that owns multiple brands, like Senseo, Saeco, L’Or (coffee/coffee machines brands), and the most known one of them all, Philips (Domestic Appliances). The original Royal Philips licensed different segments of their business (Domestic Appliances, Lights etc.) to other companies, so basically Versuni “owns” a part of the Philips’ business. Even though it is just a part of Philips, it still makes out of Versuni a big corporation.
People
This is an interesting topic. People are the most important; they teach you, they pay you, they are your network etc. When I joined the company, my first impression was that people are smart. At least compared to whom I was used to, people here overall showed a very high attention power and thorough critical thinking. I’d see them as if they were connected to power sockets constantly; they’d speak fast, on point and very efficient. And when it comes to being on point…
Environment
The environment can be seen as a corporate jungle. It can be wild or set properly with rules; it all depends on the depth in which you go inside the core of it. As an intern, don’t expect to go much in the middle of issues, usually you work in the areas that are pretty straight-forward, where you have plenty of help and plenty of people to help you.
One of the unwritten rules is punctuality. People will book meetings when they want to speak with you, so you have a dedicated time in your busy schedule for them. When you see that a meeting has 30 minutes allocated, well be sure that exactly 30 minutes will be taken. Very rarely a meeting finishes faster, and if you are late you can expect your invitees to say “Sorry, I have another meeting to attend to…”, at past 30 sharp. At the same time, outside these meetings, no one cares about your other timings. You can come later one day, or leave earlier, you can work from home, no one will bother micro-managing your actions. Unless it’s their responsibility (like your manager) and you don’t deliver your tasks (which I’ve never seen happening), then you are pretty much free to manage yourself.
Workload
The workload is for sure much more than what we are used in uni, but still manageable. You can get intimidated fast by others doing so much in those 8 hours, but you’ll eventually get there too. A company that smartly prepares interns will know when to give them more/new responsibilities to extend their limits, accompanied by proper trainings. But the important thing is that people usually take you easily, they know you are an intern arrived here to learn.