this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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Doing work, solving problems, and failing is often the best way for people to learn. I will damn near get fired before I let management schlep menial busy work onto an intern or tell them look but don't touch. If an intern has to do some kind of mind numbing repetitive task, it won't be anything that I myself haven't already had to an equal amount of or at least will be doing side by side with them. As you said, they are there to learn, not fill a hole management was too cheap or lazy to do. .
It is probably worth while to note that in my industry interns are generally paid pretty well. My internship back in the day paid about double what my job in IT paid when I took it.
Exactly. I wish more people had this view of interns. Unpaid ones, at the very least. I worked with a few, and my colleagues would often throw spreadsheets at them and have them do meaningless cleanup work that no one would ever look at. Whenever it was my turn to 'find work' for the interns, I would just have them fully shadow me, and do the work I was doing, as I was doing it. Essentially duplicating the work, but with my products being the ones held to final submissions standards. They had some great ideas, which I incorporated into the final versions, and they could see what the role was actually like by doing the work without worrying about messing anything up or bearing any actual responsibility. Interns are supposed to benefit from having the internship. The employer, by accepting the responsibility of having interns, shouldn't expect to get anything out of it other than the satisfaction of helping someone gain experience. Maybe a future employee, if you treat them well.