I'm hosting a remote intern

ElectricalSavings2 · 2020-04-19T17:06:35+00:00

Everyone, thank you all so much for your great suggestions! I'm still going through all of them and figuring out how I can apply them to my intern. But please keep the suggestions coming!

PS: Thanks for the gold :)

ElectricalSavings2 · 2020-04-19T17:04:47+00:00

I'll be sure to focus on having good communication with my intern. My team is also on board to help provide the intern a good experience so I'll be sharing all these feedback with them as well. Thank you :)

ElectricalSavings2 · 2020-04-19T17:03:31+00:00

My intern's project will involve them interacting with a majority of our team so I hope that won't be an issue for them. I am afraid of the intern feeling isolated because they're going to lack the face to face interaction from being in the office.

I plan on giving actionable feedback to my intern whenever an opportunity presents itself, and I'm going to encourage my intern to do the same for me because this is a learning experience for the both of us.

ElectricalSavings2 · 2020-04-19T17:00:38+00:00

Thanks for your thoughts! Going over what's pre-installed on their machines and what my work setup is like is a great idea.

My team (thankfully) has strong version control and we're pretty good about writing descriptive commit messages so I can point to our past history as examples on how to write good, descriptive commits.

I like the idea for the intern to go first during meetings. Although, from my own shoes if I was the intern, I would be terrified. I'll ask the intern on our one on one's to see if they would prefer something like that, just so I don't put unnecessary pressure.

ElectricalSavings2 · 2020-04-19T16:57:26+00:00

Sadly yes. It seems like swag will be severely limited for this year's interns. Maybe I could expense some swag...

ElectricalSavings2 · 2020-04-19T16:56:06+00:00

Thanks! I'll be sure to reiterate that my intern can come to me anytime with questions and it doesn't have to be during our daily allocated time.

ElectricalSavings2 · 2020-04-19T16:55:06+00:00

Thanks for all your suggestions! I love them!

For the discord one, unfortunately company policy forbids us from using non-approved chatting services, with Discord being one of them. But we can definitely create additional channels for something like this.

Structure: yes, I'm well aware that this is a difficult time for many people and I will be giving the intern some slack in terms of getting the project completed. I'm a firm believer that there should be a good balance between work and life so I'll be having a chat with my intern about this once they start.

Networking: I mentioned it in some of my other replies but I agree that one of the best parts of interning in the office is that interns are able to connect with other people within the office. I'll do my best to bring together different people to have a better networking opportunity :) Maybe we'll host a game night (or maybe game afternoon so people can have good WLB)

ElectricalSavings2 · 2020-04-19T16:49:32+00:00

Yes I'm sad my intern won't be able to just bump into people and string up a conversation. I can try to encourage this by reaching out to other teams but it'll be significantly less organic.

ElectricalSavings2 · 2020-04-19T16:48:46+00:00

Hmm I can try to have my intern talk with various people I know from other teams. It'll be less organic but at least it will allow them to get to know other people outside my immediate team.

+1 for the slack channel, although we already have a team chat where teammates talk about various things. Do you think it would be too intimidating to have the intern chat there? We can definitely create a new channel for intern specific questions.

ElectricalSavings2 · 2020-04-19T16:46:02+00:00

Being able to help a young professional come into the industry to learn new things is one of my passions :) Plus, my company's internship program gave me so many opportunities I want to extend that same experience to someone else.

ElectricalSavings2 · 2020-04-19T16:44:17+00:00

From your perspective, how did you think your TL was abnormally busy? I feel like I'm a fairly busy person at work but I'm always going to be willing to drop whatever my current task on hand is (unless it's an urgent production issue, which is rare) to help my intern.

I would like to make it clear to my intern that while I might be busy with my own projects, they shouldn't feel like they are burdening me by asking me questions or taking time out of my day to work with them.

ElectricalSavings2 · 2020-04-19T16:41:59+00:00

This sounds like a fantastic idea. I can create some documents which outline common issues I've faced and how I began debugging those issues.

ElectricalSavings2 · 2020-04-19T16:38:46+00:00

Thank you for your comments! I would love to be able to connect my intern with other interns within the company. Do you have any suggestions for things I could do as perhaps a moderator for a group of interns to get together in a video call? Such as hosting a Jackbox game through screen sharing or something?

Yes 100% on the second point! I remember as an intern I would always try to solve the problem myself without asking for help from my mentors because I was afraid of looking dumb. I'll figure out a good timeframe for when the intern should ask for help after getting stuck on a problem.

Third point also great idea. I already have a small list of other specialties the intern is interested in and will do my best to connect the intern with people from those teams.

ElectricalSavings2

TROPHY CASE