| Interns are part of the recruiting pipeline and ramp-up pipeline. It gives the employer an evaluation period much better than an interview. It gives you a chance to see what work there is really like. They hope you enjoy it, and come back partially ramped up. Speaking of ramp up, it's tough. It takes months for a new hire straight from college to be a net positive (not just when they start accomplishing things, but when they have accomplished enough on their own that it has 'paid back' the time spent teaching/mentoring/leading them). Where does that put interns? Well, it's similar, but then the intern leaves when they're getting the hang of things (so generally they leave a deep net negative) Not to mention that interns generally are less experienced than the new hire, there's not expected to be a good return on investment during the summer. Finally, because the intern has a lot of learning to do, and because they will leave soon, they basically can't be given any mission critical projects. So they will be given the low priority 'nice to have' tasks. This can result in a sad state where an intern will leave a 3/4 finished project, and come back a year later to see that no one has finished it (or worse, the project may be deleted). (On the other hand, I think interns are a great way to get "low priority by PM standards" work done that the engineers really want to get done) Economics? Well interns are cheap. Way cheaper than a FTE. They have low payment rates, and they're only paid for a few months. The bigger costs are the extra time from the engineers to help you ramp up (and the delays in their projects). You'll need to just keep asking for tasks. Ideally you'll have a project that takes half or more of your internship. If you do, make sure to set milestones, break down the project into achievable tasks and demonstrate forward progress. At the end of summer you'll leave, and you want to have at least documented all the things you accomplished. If they don't have stuff for you, see if you can take some tasks from their backlog. They probably wont let you have things that need to ship soon, but you can probably find something they'll agree to. Good luck |