What Can I Expect As an IT Intern? 325
p3np8p3r writes "I'm in college and working towards my Bachelors in Computer Science. Last year I passed both my CompTIA A+ and Network+ certifications and now have been offered (via a staffing company) a full-time Internship at a wireless lab of a major laptop manufacturer. The pay is going to be around $8 an hour full-time but that is not my primary motivator. I'm considering this significant decrease in pay from my previous (non-IT) job to be counterbalanced by what valuable knowledge I may gain both in the technical aspects and industry insight while I finish school. This field is all new to me and I don't personally know anyone who has worked in it before who will give me their honest opinions on it. Although I know circumstances differ greatly, in general, what can I expect as an IT Intern? What have been your experiences?"
Have you looked elsewhere ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I developed some software on my own when I was in school which allowed to get known. I then did my internship at full salary (20$ an hour back then) for a small company. A "major laptop manufacturer" might seem a little cheap at 8$ an hour even for an internship.
Have you looked for company to do your internship by yourself? It could be important to do your internship in a place that will fit to your career plan, ask questions and talk to the company representatives. In short, don't view your internship as just another academical formality in order to get your bachelor degree. Don't go work there as a governmental clerk just doing another day ;-))
Why go IT (Score:1, Insightful)
Why would anyone go IT? In the nearby future there will be little improvement in the situation of the many IT-workers. You are still young, why not do something else? I would only do IT if it was my passion. And even then I might consider another carreer if they would want to have me. Marketing, communication, anything just to get out of that god-forsaken-hellhole called IT.
Expect what you are paid (Score:5, Insightful)
Cut t3h 733tsp34k alr34dy (Score:2, Insightful)
Expect to be told to stop all that substituting letters for numbers crap.
P.S. What is pateper?
Please expect to do lot's of manual work... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what happened to me. I eventually quit and went into health care; still do IT work on a volunteer basis. I now make good money but seeing misery all the time is beginning to have an effect on me.
Folks, you never know there is tons of suffering till you are working in a hospital. At that point you praise God for what you have.
Re:Why go IT (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm working as a consultant developer. Been offered to be "Technical lead", but I didn't want to commit to "one company" or end up "jobhopping".
At HQ they offered me to become a "sales & marketting"-guy but it felt it would be too boring, even let a big ass car sit on the driveway of the company which would come with the job.
Then I got an offer to be an account manager and fly across Europe and on and off to Canada for networking and representing their product and creating technical requirement documents, but my current commitments and professional strategy would collide and I'd give up something I've build up.
So what's my point here? I'm still in the "god-forsaken-hellhole called IT" and love it. People see potential in me which reflects in the "offers" they throw at me, yet I don't bite just because it's "something else" or "pays more". I believe you love IT or you don't. If you don't, drop the keyboard and stop writing messy code or creating self-"jobsecurity". If things aren't the way you like them, try to fix them, be verbal and communicative or find another place to work (as long you take crap, you'll be given crap. Management will use the same tricks you're teaching them in your behaviour that work; if you get productive after you've been humiliated and shouted at for an hour, compared to an investment of 1,5 hours of "backpadding", you'll be humiliated and shouted at, it's more efficient and it works. In psychology that's simple operand conditioning.).
Its personal attitude and ability which makes the difference between a "sucking job" or a "challenging job". It's not about grabbing money and sitting out 8 hours a day, it's almost half of your waking time in the week. Why not make something of it and put yourself into it?
This kid wants to learn, his attitude will ultimately be noticed and if he's good and delivers doors will open. And they'll stay open as long he's respectful to the people that pay him and he's working with. What he can expect? I could write hours on what he could expect, but the most important thing is to experience it himself and find a way which makes sense and has meaning to himself to manoeuvre himself in that enviromnent. His ability to do so will create his personally defined success or not. There's no static or predetermined way to achieve that and no "add water and stir"-recipe. That's the beauty of the challenge (of life in general), to me; it's a playground. Go play and do whatever has meaning to yourself and you feel or think you have to do in order for it to meaningful for yourself.
I don't want to overly romanticize it, I have my days of misery as well, but it teaches me alot about myself and how to operate in a certain situation or environment. Those "negative emotions" are just red flags and indicators to me to make a change, and a clear choice wherever I'll allow myself to feel as miserable or define a way or plan to get it resolved, by being self-critical, asessing the situation or trying to identify the rootcauses. Even if it's my own idiocy or attitude which becomes resolvable once I'm having enough overview to notice and admit it.
Re:I was hired where I interned (Score:5, Insightful)
A good boss will be happy if you (or any employee) work diligently for the COMPANY, not just the boss personally. This means sometimes professionally disagreeing with the boss, and letting him know that (politely!). This has worked very well for me before, but of course YMMV.
As for paying attention and learning what you can. thats excellent advice. I have turned a year working in warehouses (forklift driving, general box shifting) into valuable career experience just by looking around, asking questions and taking everything in. Good bosses will recognise when you are doing this, and appreciate evidence of you having done this before in any job.
I know theres a lot of "a good boss.." in this post and I am aware that there are thousands of abysmal bosses out there, but the bad ones are the ones to avoid working for whenever possible. IMO Its better for your career (in the long run) and sanity to work in some hypothetical burger joint on $6/hr for a GOOD boss than somewhere on $60,000 for an asshole who won't let you get any useful experience under your belt or otherwise let you progress.
Re:I was hired where I interned (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree with most of this guy's advice.
First off, if you want to be outgoing and "kiss your boss's ass", for goodness' sake don't work through lunch. Lunch with your coworkers is your most valuable tool in getting to know them and, more importantly, making sure they get to know you.
If people keep using you as a "gopher" and keep fighting you while you're trying to learn, report this to your advisor and ask him what to do about it. If it keeps up, leave and get a decent internship elsewhere. The best way to prevent this is to make sure, in advance, it's clear what your responsibilities are. If you don't get any responsibilities of your own, that's a big red flag right there.
Don't worry too much about not asking dumb questions, or making your questions sound more intelligent than they really are (whatever that means). You're an intern, nobody expects you to know everything. Do some research on your own if your question is about general tools like cat and grep, but if you need to ask a question, just go ahead and ask it. Chances are it's not as dumb as you think it is.
Finally, I'd say you should probably determine in advance which is your primary goal: learn stuff, or get a job offer. If all you're interested in is the latter, then sure, kiss your boss's ass. I'd say your primary goal should be the former; if you actually learn something from your internship and perform well, people will notice and the job offer will arrive on its own without too much ass-kissing.
Learn! (Score:4, Insightful)
I had an internship at one of the National Labs (think Los Alamos/Laurance Livermoor). I was exposed to more in my first week on the job than I had been with two years of schooling. If you work in a data center, your main job will be running cables. That is just how it is going to be. When you aren't running cables, talk to people, find out if there is anything you can help with. Make informed comments, google what your peers are talking about, and if you can find papers that they've written....READ THEM. Soak up as much as you can, that is why you personally are there is to learn. On their end, yes you are are the lowest paid member of their staff and will be doing the dirty jobs.
Re:Stuff your head with wisdom.. (Score:4, Insightful)
WTF?
Stalker behaviour! Figure people out on your own like a big boy. Asking about and then looking up retired engineers is creepy and weird. Besides which, different people find different things difficult to deal with. Those retired engineers might be social misfits and you might not. Or vice versa.
Re:Please expect to do lot's of manual work... (Score:4, Insightful)
And this is different from IT how? Only joking...
$8/hr !?!!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
$8/hr !?!!?!
Have things really gotten THAT BAD in the US??? Wow...
Re:Have you looked elsewhere ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you looked for company to do your internship by yourself? It could be important to do your internship in a place that will fit to your career plan, ask questions and talk to the company representatives.
I agree. Submitter doesn't really tell what his career plan is or what the "IT work" means.
In my teen years (and a some after) I enjoyed coding and creating my own gaming projects. It was fun to code them and test out things and I honestly spend maybe way way too many hours with them. That lead me to look for universities and jobs for a game coder and I though I'd be happy doing so always - After all I did enjoy doing it myself as a hobby.
The thing is, I would had not enjoy doing it as work. Even if it still interests me and I'm happy doing game coding as a hobby, I don't know if I wanted to do that as a work. You would ultimately get instructions from the game developers to do what they want - no your own vision, no your ideas, you're just coding what they tell you to. This was different in 80's and first half of 90's, but it's like that today. Today the projects are huge, which means that usual IT and coding and so on works are quite different what you might have though.
Something that sounds fine and interesting right now probably will not be so in the long run (or even small). This is why you should try to get a complete view to things and learn as widely as possible. Doing something less nicer will help to get there, but one shouldn't keep his view just on it.
Now that IT is getting more and more daily part of the world too, don't just view it as IT work as it probably contains things from other areas. Get to know media. Get to know marketing. Get to know designing. Something more upper level, and get to know peoples experience.
It's time to get out of IT (Score:2, Insightful)
The way I see it, if your time is worth no more than $8 an hour, then knock yourself out. Just another reason I'm getting out of this field, there's just too many people in it who do not value their own time.
Re:I was hired where I interned (Score:4, Insightful)
But try to get on his good side, and if this means picking a crap job over a cake job, then do it. Make yourself visible. The majority of managers don't see the guy that sits in the corner and makes beautiful code, but the guy sweating and working they think is working his butt off.
But never ever leave doing that once you've got the place in. It's not just about visibility and working your ass off. It's about making your management know you're the man and actually intelligent, can contribute in better ways and are more suitable for more intelligent jobs. Many times taking the crap jobs and kissing ass will do just the opposite, it will show you're not really that. And if you were intelligent and worth the good jobs, why would you be taking the crap non-intelligent jobs all the time?
Re:Read Dilbert (Score:4, Insightful)
Keep looking! (Score:3, Insightful)
Work to improve their business... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to impress me, come up with an idea that will improve something in a noticeable way. i.e. A script that avoids one of the more time consuming problems we have. Write a proof of concept on your own time. Then show it to me. On my team this would easily earn you a written recommendation and I would certainly give preference to you on subsequent work-terms. If I had an entry-level position - you'd also be a first round candidate. Even if your boss *does* none of those things - at least you have something with tangible results that you've done for a IT firm which you can put on your resume.
Abuse (Score:5, Insightful)
My suggestions, other than seek another industry, is to read, read, read, shoulder surf your leads and build your own test box(es) to play with.
I've been in IT nearly 26 years. I started as "the computer guy" at an optometry in my home town. It consisted of one PC and three dumb terminals running off that. I then sold electronics at Sears while I was in college (not for IT degree) and played with computers on the side. I then worked at a computer rental shop where we simply loaded OSes and wiped computers as they came and went. Finally I landed a desktop support job, tailed/helped the server guys in my spare time and then had enough experience to become a server administrator. Now I've specialized in Windows and VMware. I like where I work, but I hate the lack of satisfaction of my job. I came into IT for the technical work, the challenge of figuring out problems and to not deal with people. Now my job is 90% administrative - planning changes, talking with 12 different teams/managers to get approvals, documentation so managers understand what is happening - about 2 weeks' of clerical work, all so I can do 1hour of actual work late at night or on the weekend as I miss time with my family.
Point is you are starting down a long road. If you are willing to take on extra work constantly, continually read current and new technology, constantly study and test for certifications, you might be in a comfortable position in 5-7 years.
If you have any family or social life, add 5 years to this as IT is designed for single people with no lives. It helps if you can pack light and depart for travel quickly. It also helps if you can survive on 2 hours of sleep a day.
If I had it to do all over again, I'd go into carpentry, cooking or health care. Anything but IT.
Don't do an internship... (Score:4, Insightful)
Back when I was in university, the engineering department used to offer their students(and some of the CS students as well) the ability to take a semester at 1 credit and still maintain full time status(so you didn't lose health insurance or start having to pay back student loans). I think they were called co-ops or something like that. Essentially you'd work a summer and one semester for a company. That meant you weren't buggering off by the time you actually learned how to do the job and so you got paid fairly reasonably and actually learned something. They were actually a graduation requirement for the engineering students. I didn't do any personally, but I know a lot of people who did and found a lot of value in it.
There are some fairly decent internships, but you've got to be fairly careful. Companies generally won't get any real value out of an intern(which is why interns in most disciplines work for free), and so only a company which is really serious about investing in students will give you anything worthwhile to do(since it'll cost them money and productivity).
Add to that the fact that A+, Network+ and CompTIA are basically meaningless certs that a monkey could pass(no offfense), and you've probably just landed yourself an underpaid stint on the help desk. Maybe you've been lucky, but an internship will only help your future if you do something interesting and real with it, or if you can make some contacts for post graduation. If it's not going to do either of those things, enjoy your summer or work at a job which will actually pay you.
"What Can I Expect As an IT Intern?" (Score:3, Insightful)
Abuse?
Long hours doing the impossible for the unappreciative?
A view of corporate life from the bottom?