What Can I Expect As an IT Intern?

p3np8p3r writes "I'm in college and working towards my Bachelors in Computer Science. Last year I passed both my CompTIA A+ and Network+ certifications and now have been offered (via a staffing company) a full-time Internship at a wireless lab of a major laptop manufacturer. The pay is going to be around $8 an hour full-time but that is not my primary motivator. I'm considering this significant decrease in pay from my previous (non-IT) job to be counterbalanced by what valuable knowledge I may gain both in the technical aspects and industry insight while I finish school. This field is all new to me and I don't personally know anyone who has worked in it before who will give me their honest opinions on it. Although I know circumstances differ greatly, in general, what can I expect as an IT Intern? What have been your experiences?"

Comments

Have you looked elsewhere ?

[ls671]

I developed some software on my own when I was in school which allowed to get known. I then did my internship at full salary (20$ an hour back then) for a small company. A "major laptop manufacturer" might seem a little cheap at 8$ an hour even for an internship.

Have you looked for company to do your internship by yourself? It could be important to do your internship in a place that will fit to your career plan, ask questions and talk to the company representatives. In short, don't view your internship as just another academical formality in order to get your bachelor degree. Don't go work there as a governmental clerk just doing another day ;-))

Re:Have you looked elsewhere ?

[sopssa]

Have you looked for company to do your internship by yourself? It could be important to do your internship in a place that will fit to your career plan, ask questions and talk to the company representatives.

I agree. Submitter doesn't really tell what his career plan is or what the "IT work" means.

In my teen years (and a some after) I enjoyed coding and creating my own gaming projects. It was fun to code them and test out things and I honestly spend maybe way way too many hours with them. That lead me to look for universities and jobs for a game coder and I though I'd be happy doing so always - After all I did enjoy doing it myself as a hobby.

The thing is, I would had not enjoy doing it as work. Even if it still interests me and I'm happy doing game coding as a hobby, I don't know if I wanted to do that as a work. You would ultimately get instructions from the game developers to do what they want - no your own vision, no your ideas, you're just coding what they tell you to. This was different in 80's and first half of 90's, but it's like that today. Today the projects are huge, which means that usual IT and coding and so on works are quite different what you might have though.

Something that sounds fine and interesting right now probably will not be so in the long run (or even small). This is why you should try to get a complete view to things and learn as widely as possible. Doing something less nicer will help to get there, but one shouldn't keep his view just on it.

Now that IT is getting more and more daily part of the world too, don't just view it as IT work as it probably contains things from other areas. Get to know media. Get to know marketing. Get to know designing. Something more upper level, and get to know peoples experience.

Expect what you are paid

[bjourne]

The reason why payment is important for IT people is because your pay is proportional to how interesting your job is. Academia excepted. If you are only paid $8/hour, expect to keep doing $8/hour tasks. Like brewing coffee, boring testing work and stuff like that. On the other hand if you were paid $80/hour, you wouldn't have to do any of that because your time would be way to expensive to be wasted on such menial tasks.

Re:I was hired where I interned

[fridaynightsmoke]

I would broadly agree, but I would personally advise against kissing the bosses ass. Any boss you have to kiss the ass of to succeed isn't a boss worth working for.
A good boss will be happy if you (or any employee) work diligently for the COMPANY, not just the boss personally. This means sometimes professionally disagreeing with the boss, and letting him know that (politely!). This has worked very well for me before, but of course YMMV.
As for paying attention and learning what you can. thats excellent advice. I have turned a year working in warehouses (forklift driving, general box shifting) into valuable career experience just by looking around, asking questions and taking everything in. Good bosses will recognise when you are doing this, and appreciate evidence of you having done this before in any job.
I know theres a lot of "a good boss.." in this post and I am aware that there are thousands of abysmal bosses out there, but the bad ones are the ones to avoid working for whenever possible. IMO Its better for your career (in the long run) and sanity to work in some hypothetical burger joint on $6/hr for a GOOD boss than somewhere on $60,000 for an asshole who won't let you get any useful experience under your belt or otherwise let you progress.

Re:I was hired where I interned

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree with most of this guy's advice.

First off, if you want to be outgoing and "kiss your boss's ass", for goodness' sake don't work through lunch. Lunch with your coworkers is your most valuable tool in getting to know them and, more importantly, making sure they get to know you.

If people keep using you as a "gopher" and keep fighting you while you're trying to learn, report this to your advisor and ask him what to do about it. If it keeps up, leave and get a decent internship elsewhere. The best way to prevent this is to make sure, in advance, it's clear what your responsibilities are. If you don't get any responsibilities of your own, that's a big red flag right there.

Don't worry too much about not asking dumb questions, or making your questions sound more intelligent than they really are (whatever that means). You're an intern, nobody expects you to know everything. Do some research on your own if your question is about general tools like cat and grep, but if you need to ask a question, just go ahead and ask it. Chances are it's not as dumb as you think it is.

Finally, I'd say you should probably determine in advance which is your primary goal: learn stuff, or get a job offer. If all you're interested in is the latter, then sure, kiss your boss's ass. I'd say your primary goal should be the former; if you actually learn something from your internship and perform well, people will notice and the job offer will arrive on its own without too much ass-kissing.

Learn!

[Anonymous Coward]

I had an internship at one of the National Labs (think Los Alamos/Laurance Livermoor). I was exposed to more in my first week on the job than I had been with two years of schooling. If you work in a data center, your main job will be running cables. That is just how it is going to be. When you aren't running cables, talk to people, find out if there is anything you can help with. Make informed comments, google what your peers are talking about, and if you can find papers that they've written....READ THEM. Soak up as much as you can, that is why you personally are there is to learn. On their end, yes you are are the lowest paid member of their staff and will be doing the dirty jobs.

Abuse

[Avatar8]

As an intern you will be asked to do numerous, trivial, non-IT related tasks by customers, managers and your peers/leads. You will undoubtedly be the victim of several jokes at your lack of knowledge. ("Go find the token ring that fell out of the ethernet." "Go download the internet to her computer.")

My suggestions, other than seek another industry, is to read, read, read, shoulder surf your leads and build your own test box(es) to play with.

I've been in IT nearly 26 years. I started as "the computer guy" at an optometry in my home town. It consisted of one PC and three dumb terminals running off that. I then sold electronics at Sears while I was in college (not for IT degree) and played with computers on the side. I then worked at a computer rental shop where we simply loaded OSes and wiped computers as they came and went. Finally I landed a desktop support job, tailed/helped the server guys in my spare time and then had enough experience to become a server administrator. Now I've specialized in Windows and VMware. I like where I work, but I hate the lack of satisfaction of my job. I came into IT for the technical work, the challenge of figuring out problems and to not deal with people. Now my job is 90% administrative - planning changes, talking with 12 different teams/managers to get approvals, documentation so managers understand what is happening - about 2 weeks' of clerical work, all so I can do 1hour of actual work late at night or on the weekend as I miss time with my family.

Point is you are starting down a long road. If you are willing to take on extra work constantly, continually read current and new technology, constantly study and test for certifications, you might be in a comfortable position in 5-7 years.

If you have any family or social life, add 5 years to this as IT is designed for single people with no lives. It helps if you can pack light and depart for travel quickly. It also helps if you can survive on 2 hours of sleep a day.

If I had it to do all over again, I'd go into carpentry, cooking or health care. Anything but IT.