Intern or Employee?

Question

I currently am an 'intern' with a managed services company (much more IT/hosting than development, to my woe) that pays the bills and puts experience on my résumé. The issue I am having is really with what defines the "core" of an internship - learning.

I personally have always thought that an internship is an opportunity to receive a kind of real-world teaching and experience that you cannot gain in the class room. Perhaps almost an apprenticeship of sorts where a student has displayed adequate skills to be able to learn from and work under someone of far superior capabilities (aka - "the boss").

This is all fine and dandy, but to what experience should an internship be learning, and to what extent is it just meeting the "bottom line" and hope that I learn something along the way?

For example: Right now I am in the position of not learning anything at all, I am given repetitive tasks that need to get done (which I understand, and therefore am fine with) but do not challenge me to apply any skills or learn anything.

I am fine with meeting the bottom line, but I feel that with the rest of my idle time (we work 40-50hr work weeks, I have a healthy amount of free time) I should be challenged or at least given some type of "test project" to see if I can sink or swim.

Or am I just dreaming?

Answer 1

You might be dreaming. If you're a college intern, in the traditional sense, your "experience" is likely in the form of familiarity with the people and the office culture. That's not a bad thing at all! And it can create marvelous connections for landing a salaried job at the same company, or a similar one, later on. Don't discount that.

If you're doing your internship outside of a college program, which seems likely as you're saying "it pays the bills," um... are you sure you weren't just hired as an office flunky? Again, nothing wrong with that, but it might not be meshing with your career goals.

Answer 2

My first thought it to take the repetitive task and come up with a better, more efficient way to do it. That can really make you stand out, within the company and on your resume. You didn't specify what repetitive tasks you are performing, but here's an example from the IT world.

Suppose you manage a large server farm and are constantly required to re-install operating systems. The repetitive task is re-installing the OS. One way to demonstrate your skills and learn something new would be to use network-based install technologies to automate the process. Show it to your boss and put it on your resume. Or better yet, take existing network-based installation systems (Kickstart, Jumpstart, etc.) and make an easy to use web interface for the whole process. Add LDAP/AD/whatever authentication so your entire company can use it. Allow ordinary users to decide what OS they want to install. The possibilities are really endless...

That sort of thing will increase everyone's efficiency, make you look good, and give you an excellent item to put on your resume. Good luck!

Answer 3

I agree with William, you should attempt to develop something that handles the repetitive task automatically. That is what we do after all. Nothing in our world should be repetitive and mundane.

Answer 4

You expect that someone will once come over and suggest that you do or learn something new. But you could as well think of what to learn yourself - for example find what is not done in the best way and try to learn how to do it better. Chances are that you'll at least widen and deepen your set of skills. Chances are that you will also come with improvement ideas and if the company you work at supports innovation and initiative this might be an effective transition from internship to employment.

Just don't underestimate the power of free time.

Answer 5

If you can get away with it (you aren't being graded in a meaningful way on your performance) you should just take time each day reading some programming books, writing code to teach yourself.

Look for any bits of your job that code would help you do and work on that.

Unfortunately no body is going to hold your hand down the career path and only you are in charge of where you go. All too many people are lethargic in their approach to progressing and, unless they are in the type of company with a promotional route, many end up stuck doing the same meaningless crap for a long time.

I've many friends who took medicine in college (whereas I took computery stuff) and, although they have a ferocious schedule and amount of work, I always thought that they have it a lot easier as there is a set route for them (it seems to me, at least) to take from school right up to middle-age. We're on our own.

Answer 6

I've had the same experience where I stopped learning about 1 month in the internship. However, I didn't learn much technically, but I learned a lot about other things like team management, release processes and some other things not directly linked to programming, but that is part of what a job is.

If you can automate the repetitive tasks, do it, if not learn what you can from the office environment.

Also, just because you're an intern doesn't mean everyone else is better than you, don't hesitate to propose new ways to do things or new projects that you could accomplish.

If you feel like you're really stuck there and can't do anything about it, quit (if you can) or endure the pain until the internship is over.

Good luck!

Answer 7

Someone told me once you shouldn't work for money, you should work for experience and personal satisfaction. Something that can not be bought with money as it is intrinsic. If you can find better work I'd say take it, there is always tons of work in the IT field, and tons of companies willing to hire someone who is willing to accept intern wages. Just find a place with really smart people, and learn as much as you can from them, be like them, do as they do :D. Good luck.

Answer 8

To expand upon William's answer:

The repetitive task has a couple attributes. First and foremost, if you automate it, you don't have to do it anymore and they have to give you another project. Doing repetitive tasks obviously violates the DRY principle (why stop at DRY in code?); plus, like you say, it isn't really all that challenging. After awhile, it just gets old. Empowering users to do tasks they should be able to do themselves allows you to solve the bigger problems.

Secondly, it could be a test from your employer. I've pulled this once or twice with interns to see if they'd come up with a solution to prevent the problem instead of just fixing it.

I can't emphasize the importance of DRY enough here. It's long been a goal of mine to only do something for someone once. I've worked in a small, non-software company where a lot of tasks were run through IT because the people "never did things right." So as those tasks started getting to my queue, I would do them until I had developed the method for the people to do it themselves.