I am about 2 months into my 3 month internship and am pretty much working on weekends and for many hours after work hours. There is an incredible amount expected from my project, which has had a lot of roadblocks due to lack of existing methodology or lack of cooperation from other teams. I have had to spend days/weeks developing foundational methodology in order to do my original project. The development of these methodologies could honestly be 2 projects in itself. It is really making me hate my experience here. I am a really hard worker and the option to slack off is not there, but it is feeling infeasible to meet everything in the final sprint of my internship. I want to keep working hard and would like to receive a full time offer, but feel like 1. I will not get it at this point even though I have received good feedback during midpoint evaluation 2. If I get it, might not take it because I am miserable I am unsure if it’s just me and maybe that the workload is normal and that I am just bad or slow at my job. Which would really suck because I thought LI had the best WLB in the bay, but am not feeling that at all. With the most critical weeks upcoming, how should I handle this? I am worried if I bring this up to my manager that it will reflect my odds of return offer as well as overall project deliverable/success. #Internship #returnoffer #misc #linkedin
Power through it. You only have a third of the way to go. Finish the internship.
Definitely talk to your manager, it's not worth being miserable for another month
Don’t worry about getting a fulltime offer. Focus on your work and document road blocks so that team understands. They might realize bringing a new member might require training which could be waste of their team. We learn a lot of failures/mistakes. Treat this as a good learning experience.
Good advice, appreciate it. Though might be easier said than done. Hard to not think of a full time offer when landing a full time job in top tier tech is so hard.
My former managers used to tell me that they may not know answers for all my questions but they can find people who can help me. It helped me a lot when I stepped in a completely unknown territories in medicine. Share your challenges with your manager and get help to be productive. Good luck
I would just finish up the internship, and not accept a full time offer, but leverage the insane amount of experience you’re getting to get a job at a better company.
But if I don’t accept the offer, wouldn’t it make more sense to bring it up to my manager and risk affecting chances of getting return offer?
Do you want to work there full time? If the internship is this stressful being a full time salaried employee will be worse.
Always manage up, keep updating your mentor on progress and roadblocks, it's their job and in their best interests to help you succeed, you are an intern you are not expected to know everything, just follow instructions, when in doubt ask for clarification, easy peasy, also discuss implementation or design decisions with your peers, that can save you a lot of time and rework, use their experience to your advantage, that could be why you feel so slow. I understand the pressure of getting a return offer, but you have to leave that aside, focus on the bigger picture of your project and try to enjoy it and have as much fun as possible, even if they don't give you a return offer, you already have them on your resume, that will open a lot of doors for you and you will be able to return or go to another big tech company very easily. Good luck!!
Solid advice.
This is very helpful. Thank you.
I'd sit down and talk your mentor through what you have done, what you still have to do and why you are working so much. Intern expectations are really low, in surprised you are having to work so much.
Agreed on your last thought. Tho not getting the vibe that expectations are low as all my team keeps talking about is how interns should all like owners and X, Y, and Z teams will be needing to use my deliverable by a deadline. Thank you though, likely will talk to my manager.
Yeah, that's just corporate speak it's all pretty meaningless. Good luck talking to your manager about it.
Nobody actually expects interns to deliver anything. We consciously know that we have to invest more time mentoring and hand holding than we get out of deliverables. Anybody who thinks interns aren't a time cost negative are idiots. I primarily bring this up for you to understand nobody is really relying on you to deliver. I can guarantee the pressure to deliver is something you are putting on yourself. The way return offers work (and actually most of software engineering is) "did the intern achieve X amount of deliverables". If your host is anything like ours, they probably only spent a few hours max planning your project. It's very very likely that they underestimated how hard it was, or forget hoe much more experience they have then you. Rather than toiling in the dark, go sync with your mentor and manager. I can almost gaurantees nobody is expecting you to execute like that.
Thank you, I do know I tend to put more pressure on myself than what is probably normal. Agreed on them spending a few hours on planning my project and underestimating the difficulty.
Most likely you’ve misinterpreted the scope of your project, have gone off on a tangent and are working on stuff you aren’t meant to work on. Talk to your internship mentor and ensure what you are doing is what’s expected of you.
Honestly feel like the scope of my project was naively too simple. The tangents of developing the new methodology I mentioned are necessary to actually implement my main project deliverable. Also, my mentor is up to date on everything I am doing too. Thank you for the call out though and will incorporate this into my thought process
Damn this isn't standup, drop the corporate speak lmao