Your Team Mates: Andrew Craigie
After unexpectedly ending up here as a summer student on my way to studying Chinese for 2 years, I
was amazed that when it came round to the time to apply for a full time job that not only did Metaswitch remember
who I was, but it was them who contacted me to ask if I was still interested in starting my career with them. "
– ANDREW CRAIGIE
Edinburgh University
Graduated 2008
Overall, the people who work at Metaswitch are the major difference that makes the work here more fulfilling than
with other engineering companies I’ve done work experience with in the past.
A lot has changed since I worked here as a summer student 2 years ago; the Edinburgh satellite office has moved to
bigger premises, mainly to allow for the growing number of new starters that have been employed here each
year. Helpfully, I was assigned to a team which were working on the same product I worked on during my summer
placement (AT&T Unified Messaging software), which allowed me to get up to speed and start being useful quickly. I
started off with some test work to help familiarise myself with the product, but it wasn’t long before I was making
fixes, and after only 4 months I was given a core piece of functionality to implement from scratch! The learning
curve is challenging, but manageable due to the support you get from your manager and team-mates; in fact even non
team-mates are willing to help out!
Working in this way provides a lot of opportunities, as you may quickly discover that since you were the one
that wrote a piece of function you’re the one who understands it best, meaning people will come to you first when
they have any questions. To help with this, communication skills are emphasised though formal training and
practical assessment, making sure that you are not only able to write code, but can be there to help when other
people need to support your work. It’s this emphasis on support that makes Metaswitch such a different place to
work, and it’s the main reason why I continue to enjoy working as part of my team.