[LRUG] Running tech internships in startups, and doing it fairly

[Peter Inglesby]

I work at a largish well established company making software for the
telecoms industry.  (We're not really a Ruby shop.)  We take a couple of
dozen interns each summer, for between eight and twelve weeks.  Interns are
assigned a mentor and are given a project to work on that is realistic for
them to complete in the period of time they are here.  The expectation is
that at the end of their internship, we will have just about "broken even"
in terms of the amount of resource used to mentor and manage them, against
what they have produced.

The benefits for us come when it comes to recruitment -- a significant
number of interns go on to become full time employees, who already
understand the company and know what they're letting themselves in for!

In terms of remuneration, according to our website, we pay £1300 a month,
and provide subsidised accommodation.

Having done a superficially similar internship at another firm in the
summer after my second year as an undergraduate, I think the biggest
strength of our internship system is that the projects given to interns are
actually meaningful, and the intern usually has something to show at the
end of their summer.  This means that the projects are quite often focussed
around building tools rather than product work, since this kind of work is
usually self contained.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Pete

On 1 June 2012 09:58, Chris Adams <mail at chrisadams.me.uk> wrote:

> Hi Murray,
>
> I think the most uncertainty, she I mentioned "fairly" was is basically
> paying for their time, and making sure they're not just treated like a
> cheap employee.
>
> If a someone's going to give a few weeks of their time offering to help
> out somewhere with the understanding that they're trading what they could
> paid elsewhere against being able to learn new skills, then it seems fair
> to at least make sure they can afford to eat, and travel, and ideally be
> able to afford not to have two work one or two other jobs to afford to do
> so.
>
> So my assumption at the mo is that the minimum an intern would expect
> would be well… the national minimum wage if they're spending a fair chunk
> of their time at a company, and that they're not being placed in positions
> where they're solely responsible for work there (that's why I was
> mentioning pairing or other activities where there's scope for a degree of
> supervision).
>
> However, beyond those basic guidelines, and having not run one before, I'm
> not sure how others have structured to be useful for an intern, without
> being too disruptive to the company, and it would be great to hear it.
>
> Finding specific guidance hasn't proven to be too easy though so far.
> Here's about all the guidance I can find from .gov:
>
> Here's the nice url for govuk:
>
> https://www.gov.uk/your-right-to-minimum-wage/work-experience-and-internships-paid-or-unpaid
>
> Here's the less pretty url from business link
>
> http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?itemId=1096704110&r.l1=1073858787&r.l2=1081657912&r.l3=1096697303&r.s=sc&type=RESOURCES
>
> --
> Chris Adams
> mobile: 07974 368 229
> twitter: @mrchrisadams
> www: chrisadams.me.uk
>
> On Friday, 1 June 2012 at 09:33, Murray Steele wrote:
>
> On 1 June 2012 09:24, Chris Adams <mail at chrisadams.me.uk> wrote:
>
> Hi guys,
>
> Apologies if this is off-topic. I'm totally happy to take this convo
> elsewhere if it's beyond the remit of LRUG here.
>
> I was at Silicon Milkroundabout last week, and I met a number of really
> bright young people who are either halfway through their degrees, or
> looking for internships to gain a degree of experience and exposure to
> working in a tech startup, rather than immediate employment (either they
> don't feel   inexperienced enough to apply for full-time positions, or they
> want to test the waters first).
>
> We've been looking at running an internship programme over here at AMEE,
> and while there's no shortage of practices to structure an internship
> around for interested young engineers (for example pairing exercises,
> seeing how releases are planned and features, and tracking deployment
> afterwards), but the main thing stopping us has been struggling to find
> specific guidance on how to do it *fairly*.
>
>
> We've run an intern program at Unboxed for the past 2 years and are doing
> it again this year, so I might be able to shed some light on what we've
> done (good and bad).  Before I do though, what exactly do you mean by
> "fairly"?
>
>
> Anyone here in small companies have run something similar successfully,
> with a specific tech/engineering focus here?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Chris
>
>
>
>
> --
> Chris Adams
> mobile: 07974 368 229
> twitter: @mrchrisadams
> www: chrisadams.me.uk
>
>
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