friendly remote internship advice so you make the most out of it this summer ☀️
With many remote summer internships starting in about a month, I wanted to share a few pieces of advice that helped me have an enjoyable experience and get return offers from last 4 internships and land my 5th at GitHub this summer.
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Reach out to your manager if you haven't already, say hi, introduce yourself and share the excitement about the internship. Don't overcomplicate it; they're just individuals like you and me. Getting to know people before starting to work with them is a great start.
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Ask for a project-specific tech stack and look for stuff that you might not be familiar with. One month is enough to cover the basics of anything you didn't learn at University and will save you lots of time (and stress) once the internship starts. (eg. for my last internship that was RxJS as whole application state management was done using Reactive observables)
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Don't be embarrassed about asking for help. To get where they are now, your teammates had to go through the onboarding process and stuff you're facing now. They're willing to help.
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Define with your team when you should ask for help. You'll run into obstacles every day. Some might take 30 minutes to solve, and others might take forever. Find a balance - You don't want to interrupt the whole team every 30 minutes, but don't let one problem turn your internship into an unpleasant experience.
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Practice rubber duck debugging. You don't want to schedule a 30-minute meeting with your team and 2 minutes into explaining the problem you get to the aha! moment where you figure out the solution to the problem.
- In a nutshell, before asking for help, try to explain the problem you're having to a random object. Most of the time, during this process, you'll get new ideas and solve a problem by yourself without needing somebody's help.
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Most likely, you won't be micromanaged, but it's a good idea to keep everybody updated on your progress. Doing this, your team might offer some useful advice based on your progress or prepare you for upcoming obstacles in the task.
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If something isn't right, don't be silent. Your teammates aren't wizards, and they can't read your mind. If something is bothering you, you're stuck or not comfortable doing something. Just talk. Everybody is willing to help, but you need to let them know first.
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If time allows it, plan virtual pair-programming sessions with your teammates. Once a week, pick a short task and try to solve it together. Doing this, you will pick up domain-specific knowledge faster, learn how to navigate new codebase efficiently, and improve your problem-solving skills.
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Socialize with other team members on Slack channels like #random and #watercooler. Just because you're new to the team doesn't mean you shouldn't participate in casual conversations with other employees. They are social beings too and are probably looking forward to getting to know better new colleagues.
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Meet and share the experience with other interns. Just because you don't share the same office space doesn't mean you shouldn't meet each other. Organize weekly chats, talk about work, life, favorite movies, shows, games, books. Make a shared Spotify playlist. Socialize.
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Moving to a different side of the globe and doing an internship in San Francisco was supposed to be a big move for me this year. A big part of it would be getting to know awesome people from top US / Canadian Universities, exchanging our career experiences, having fun, and planning for the future. Just because the internship has to be a remote one due to COVID-19, don't let it stop you from new connections.
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Step up your asynchronous communication game. With your teammates not being in the same office, or even the same time zone, it's essential to give your best at communicating things.
- Go over long domain-specific messages you're about to send. Make sure there is enough information for the other side to understand you. If possible, use markdown-like syntax inside Slack for better formatting.
- Don't be late for meetings. If in a loud environment and not speaking, mute your microphone to avoid unnecessary background noises
- If possible, show instead of write. Use toolks like Loom or illuminati to record a short clip of your screen with a voiceover where you cover the problem or progress. This approach will help your mentor understand your process of thinking much more than a huge chunk of plain text.
- Write clear and meaningful commit messages and nicely structured PRs. Self-review pull requests before sending them over for review and make sure they don't include mistakes such as typos.
Repository maintained by @fejes713. Contributors welcome.