this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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Which industry do you work in? In "big tech", it's very common for interns to work on regular projects that full-time employees would otherwise work on. Usually a senior-ish FTE would determine the best project, write a project plan, scope it, define milestones and deliverables, etc, and the intern would just work on the actual implementation.
I'm a senior software engineer on my team, and when it's intern season, we usually find things in our backlog that we haven't had time to implement and that would be interesting for an intern to work on, and spec them out.
Edit: Also, interns are always paid. Generally the large companies don't do unpaid internships.
I work at a small tech company, by no means big tech. I know it’s common for interns to be treated as employees, but it’s usually in violation of labor law. It’s one of those things that is extremely common, but no less illegal.
The US Department of Labor has a 7 part test to help determine if an intern is classified properly. #6 is particularly relevant to this.
I think an important detail is likely missing. My experience as a software engineer intern included getting paid well and full benefits as an employee. So legally I was an hourly employee and I think the label of "intern" was to set expectations work/performance/responsibility.
Yeah totally, that’s an important distinction. Paid interns are definitely different than unpaid interns, and can legally do essentially the same work as a paid employee.
The way the distinction was explained to me is that an unpaid intern is essentially a student of the company, they are there to learn. They often get university credit for the internship. A paid internship is essentially an entry-level job with the expectation that you might get more on-the-job training than a ‘normal’ employee.
This article doesn’t say if the intern was paid, but it does say the company reported the behavior to the intern’s university, so I’d guess it was unpaid.
The university I went to told us not to bother with unpaid internships, because it's just a sign the company doesn't care about you. Paid internships pretty much always still give college credit.
Yup, we only do paid internships, but they don't get full-time benefits, only whatever is required for part-time employees (because they are part-time, we only have them for 20-ish hours/week).
Yeah, same at the company I work at - interns are paid and have benefits, including housing provided by the company.
Dont hurt these "capitalists"
True, but it's rarely solely the fault of the intern. Code reviews, work buddies, mentors, and managers are all safety nets to prevent issues in prod. No intern that doesn't have malicious intent should be able to screw up production.
That's definitely true!
Yup, same. We'll try to vary the work they do so they get a good range of experience, and they'll have a more senior dev assigned to help them whenever they get stuck. We won't put them on high priority projects, but the changes will still be important and will go to production.
The main difference we have between a junior dev and an intern is the expected length of the contract. A junior dev is a FTE, whereas an intern is employed only for 3 months or whatever, though that contract may be extended if we like them.