EA's Summer Interns Weigh In

MTV's games site has a piece looking at what it means to be a summer intern at EA. The article explores the experiences of three interns who did far more than fetching coffee. From the article: "Gwynne Olson-Wheeler ... showed some of her intern work in a cubicle that wasn't hers -- she was spending her final weeks of the summer working on a different floor, on EA's under-wraps 'Simpsons' game. Meeting with her there would give away too many secrets. So instead she zapped some graphics work she did earlier in the season for 'Sims 2 Pets' onto her iPod and plugged into a computer at a less-sensitive area. The room where she set up was darkened by dropped blinds, most of them dotted with spent ammunition from the floor's many Nerf gun battles. On the walls, signs addressed the staff of another under-wraps EA game: 'Welcome Sims 3 team.'"

Comments

Re:I should hope there's no fetching of coffee

[Chris Burke]

Well, there's really two points to a programming/engineering internship:
1) Cheap labor. For basic programming jobs, an intern isn't necessarily any worse than a full-timer, but is a heck of a lot cheaper.
2) Extended interview. You get to know a potential future employee better than you ever could in an interview, and get them up to speed on what you do should you later hire them. For this reason, it's an especially bad idea to have interns fetching coffee or they won't be interested in coming back full time.