Ever feel useless as an intern?

Normally I'd post this on Jow Forums but this is technically technology related (jobs).

I started an internship 3 weeks ago for a well known company (its not a google, facebook, amazon, but still pretty reputable and known worldwide) as an intern in software dev services.

My manager, the person who hired me, doesn't really have much for me to do. I'm a CS major going into my final year, so I'm not TOTALLY useless. The first week, I basically sat there for 8 hours each day (40/hrs a week) and watched Pluralsight videos and researched the products our company uses/makes. Week 2 rolls around and he has me fix up one of our websites that we use for meetings and redesign it, nothing crazy, so I spent only a few hours total on it. Once again, he didn't have anything else for me to do. Spent lots of the time watching pluralsight videos...but you can only watch these educational training videos so much before you lose your mind(I try to change the topics up and learn C#, Azure stuff, etc...).


Week 4 is coming up and I feel like I haven't done shit. It is hard to get me involved in any projects because I essentially have to catch up on years of work, have to get all the correct accesses and applications on my pc.

TL;DR: Is it normal to feel useless/noncontributing as an intern? this is my first tech job and I really want to make a good impression, and in the interview with my manager, he said he'd like to extend my internship past summer if I do a good job. I make $22 an hour here and I will be so bummed if I have to go back to minimum wage.

Attached: download.jpg (299x168, 9K)

Totally normal. You are supposed to network and talk to other people around the office too.

Okay great. And I left off what I did this past week (comment was too long). There is a group here in dev services that is in charge of build processes and stuff, and I started talking to one of the guys in charge, and let him know I have experience in using Docker (and CD/CI services) so they had me look into using Docker to self host our registry within our network with customized images or something. And every day, 11am, we have a stand up meeting where we discuss what we did, what we will do, etc. So I am getting onboard with something meaningful, but these guys aren't my direct managers, so I'm hoping they tell him "We need him".

But other than the Docker stuff, I watch some Pluralsight, then get bored and start watching Youtube, as sad as this is. Otherwise the 8 hours of sitting there just drags on. Feel bad watching youtube, but they really have nothing for me to do so it's not fair.

his fault for wanting an intern but not having anything to do for them, kek what the fuck?

To be fair, in the interview (it was while school was in session, towards the end of the quarter) he did say that the hiring process would sort of drag on it and I wouldn't get started until like Week 2 of July (so about now). When he told HR about me, they decided to fast track my hiring process and did the background/drug test that very week. So I don't think he had time to prepare for me. Oh well.

Be honest about your situation, and assess with the people in charge of grading you how you can be more effective.

don't wait to be given work, be proactive and go find something to help out with

I think my manager is the only person that matters. He is basically like, third in command, (theres a president, a VP, and then 4 managers, hes one of the managers). I feel like I'm starting to annoying him when I occasionally see him and mention "If there's anything you want me to do, let me know".

This week I'll just straight up ask him if he thinks I'm doing OK and if there is anything he wants me to improve on. Week 1 and Week 2 he would tell me things like "user, good job on the website, I like what you did with x y and z". In week 2 he had make a task list of what I've done/am doing with details and he replied with "user, this is really great". But this week didn't really hear from him and he seemed annoyed so hopefully it wasn't with me.

I don't hire interns precisely because I don't have time to hold their hands all the time and retards like OP will just sit there doing nothing wasting space

>But other than the Docker stuff, I watch some Pluralsight, then get bored and start watching Youtube, as sad as this is. Otherwise the 8 hours of sitting there just drags on. Feel bad watching youtube, but they really have nothing for me to do so it's not fair.
Hopefully you learn how to not be a child before you graduate. Which is the point of an internship.

I have been (see ), but it can't be worked on 8 hours straight each day (sometimes I need access to things or certain accounts/privileges). I'll try and get involved with other people in the department. Hopefully I can help and do work for multiple people and they will tell my manager great things.

With the amount of downtime I have (pretty much 90% of the time), I try my best to learn MORE with the pluralsight videos. I try to do 2-3 hours a day of those videos, but can you say, yourself, that you can learn 6 hours straight each day? It becomes mind-numbing. I can't just walk around all day and hangout in people's offices. Everyone has tons of meetings, various things they need to do, or they work from home sometimes.

Also be honest about your 'feelings' about not wanting to annoy him, maybe ask if there is a place or method of getting new assignments / work without having to contact him. Usually people like that are just busy, and it isn't personal. If that doesn't work start asking around colleges / departments if you can help them out.

Is right

Is a shitposter,

there's a lot of places where managers are essentially told that they have to take in interns, because HR or the C-suite wants it. Even though they'd rather not, for precisely that reason. Doesn't sound like OP's in one of them though.

Even as an intern I was comparably competent as everyone else and able to start work immediately, kys.

Jks i was never an intern, since they decided to just hire me instead of treating me like a work child. You could say I'm exceptional.

Okay, I'll take that advice and network even more. Sadly they put my desk/pc downstairs with people who work on a different product under a different department(it's primarily chemical engineers doing simulations), when I'm supposed to be upstairs with my 'people', there just wasn't any room.

Interns are students, who haven't written a single piece of proprietary code in their lives, and probably have 0 experience with the dozens of collaboration tools and development procedures needed to make real world software. What do you expect? To give an intern the power to modify the main release and introduce their shitty hello-world tier spaghetti code into the code base? No. You give them a copy of the most current release and have them fix the compiler warnings/memory leaks.
Interning IS holding hands.

actually that's a great idea
>get a job as an intern
>add some GPL code to the company's product
>anonymously tip off the Software Freedom Conservancy or the like
>get company sued, force their software to be released GPL

Even if that were to somehow happen, any serious company has software to check for open source licensing compliance. (Google BlackDuck, for one example).

>What do you expect
A competent release system that incorporates code reviews and test writing along with an appropriate amount of peer programming to improve the intern's skills to hopefully mold them into a competent junior developer so you can snag them right after graduation?

So basically a more detailed version of what I said. Nice.

>fix compiler warnings/memory leaks with hand holding
>writing tests, features and doing the work of a junior programmer with hand holding

You must be a shitty programmer if you can't see that these things are not equal.

I suspect OP is at Microsoft

Had this same experience at a fortune 100 industrial company in their IT department
They ended up hiring me for 60k starting

Probably would be paid way more than 22/hr then.

>60k starting
How does it feel to be tier2?

Feels good man.

I was a business major and have fuckall responsibilities at work and have a comfy life.

I had essentially the same experience in my first internship. It's almost like they don't expect you to know anything, so they task you with "grunt work."
The only advice I can give is this:
Talk to your manager. Ask what you should be working on.
Next, talk to a senior developer and ask the same question.

In my experience, senior developers are far more open to tasking interns than managers.

If you're an intern your job is to learn what's going on. If you have no assigned work check if your team needs help / is willing to talk you through what they're doing. If everybody is busy and can't talk then make sure you're doing something proactive so when somebody sees you it's like "wow that guy is interested in the work we do because he's trying to learn about it". Rather than "whenever we don't assign him anything it seems like he doesn't care"