Abbott: Success with Interns

[Posted September 9, 2016 by n8willis]

Laura Abbott marks the end of the latest round of open-source internships at Outreachy with a blog post reflecting on "what makes an internship successful", especially as seen in the kernel team's internships. Among Abbott's lessons: "Choose your tasks carefully. Tasks with a specific goal but multiple ways to solve are best. Too open ended tasks can be frustrating for all involved but there should be some chance for decision making. Just giving a list of tasks and exactly how they should be completed isn't good for learning. Give your intern a chance to propose a solution and then review it together." Also: "Speaking of review, code review is a skill. Model how to respond to code review comments. Encourage interns to practice reviewing others code and ask questions as well." That is just a sampling; in total, Abbott lists well over a dozen take-aways from the experience, all worth reading.

Abbott: Success with Interns

Posted Sep 12, 2016 16:10 UTC (Mon) by mgalgs (guest, #85461) [Link] (1 responses)

Great read. And as one of Laura's former "new hire" mentees (why don't we have a better word for this??) I can tell you firsthand that she seriously has this figured out. Having a good mentor can make or break your experience at a company.

Abbott: Success with Interns

Posted Sep 12, 2016 16:15 UTC (Mon) by mgalgs (guest, #85461) [Link]

There's no edit, but:

> Having a good mentor can make or break your experience at a company.

Should be:

> Your mentor can make or break your experience at a company.

After all, a good mentor can't break your experience at a company :)