What a Great Software Engineer Intern Host Looks Like

This is a summary of my experiences from 3 internships and from hosting 5 interns.

Transcript

2. What a Great Software Engineer Intern Host Looks Like Kir Chou PyCon US 2023 Education Summit 2
3. 1st time in PyCon US! 7th year to speak in the community Volunteer in PyCon Taiwan agenda team (talk reviewer, podcast content creator) Community CS Bachelor/Master Software engineer living in Japan 3 intern exp in 3 companies during 2015, 2016, 2017 3 intern hosts exp in 2 companies during 2019, 2020, 2022 Profession Intern & Intern host note35.github.io/about/ 3 Self-intro
4. 4 1) Present one kind of education happening outside of the classroom. 2) Self-reflect on what I did well and badly as an intern and an intern host. 3) Share my insights with the industry. Motivation
5. 5 Premise An intern is hired and matched to a host and project(s). Hiring and interviewing are out-of-scope.
6. 6 Q: What makes an intern host great?
7. 7 Q: What makes an intern host great? A: A great host makes an intern deliver a successful intern project, so that benefits… the intern's future career themselve's leadership skill value to the company
8. Factors of a successful intern project. 8 Business impact Expectation Mentorship Unexpected Outcome!!
9. 9 Why business impact?
10. 10 An intern project doesn't need the business impact!
11. 11 Intern's project hopes to have a moderate business impact. Demotivated interns. Wasted intern host time. Not enough information to make hiring decisions. If there's no business impact…
12. 12 If a project has business impact, why full-time engineers don't work on them? If some FTEs are available for it, please do NOT hire interns.
13. 13 How to design internship projects with business impact?
14. 14 The lifecycle of a project ideation Analysis Prototyping Productization Experimentation Launch Business value
15. 15 Intern projects Analysis & Prototyping Productization Experimentation & Launch Business value Concept validation Demo ideas Address tech debt (code migration, test coverage, and debug-ability) Low priority tasks Run experiments Tune parameters Verify launch results ideation More ideas
16. 16 Intern project recommendations Productization Business value The works require knowledge and context. For interns, usually minor impact. High effort for both interns and intern hosts. High risk with potentially high business impact. Low effort for intern hosts. Mostly expected business impact. ideation Analysis & Prototyping Experimentation & Launch rare…
17. 17 When to design internship projects with business impact?
18. 18 Find tasks for interns after they are hired!
19. 19 Projects should be designed before the hiring process begins. Interns are disrespected. Projects may not match intern's skills, interests, learning goals. Otherwise… It takes time to review a new design doc.
20. 20 Expectation Goal: a well-defined and measurable project.
21. Implementation Implementation Ramp up Formal presentation Facing challenges… FTE 21 Launch Report Intern You can finish the same project in less than 30% of the time. Timeline Project size
22. 22 Should we prepare one or more projects for an intern? Prepare many projects if possible. Pick one matched project ideally.
23. 23 … > One vs Many One project Many small projects
24. 24 … 1 2 3 4 > One project with checkpoints One big project without any checkpoints Many small projects One vs Many
25. 25 Hiring decisions need to be made based on 1) the business impact 2) culture fit.
26. 26 Hiring decisions should be made based on a well-defined project's expectations per task. (Culture fit can be part of them.) Otherwise, evaluation is a black box… Interns may lose their way. What's wrong? Should I get feedback from my host, what to get? How to improve myself?
27. 27 Motivation Goal: a great mentorship to motivate interns to grow.
28. 28 Regular 1-on-1 Project status check-in Adequate technical support Mental status Feedbacks Dive too deep v.s. Ask without thinking Very important but often no mentioned
29. 29 Project status check-in Adequate technical support Regular 1-on-1 Questions asking Communication (code commit, document) Design doc Presentation Find the gaps Learn programming languages Write unit tests Coding guidelines Mental status Feedbacks
30. 30 Hardskills Softskills Weekly discussion Questions asking Communication (code commit, document) Design doc Presentation Find the gaps Learn programming languages Write unit tests Coding guidelines
31. 31 Project status check-in Adequate technical support Hardskills Softskills Perceptions Industry knowledges Regular 1-on-1 Weekly discussion Questions asking Communication (code commit, document) Design doc Presentation Find the gaps and topics Learn programming languages Write unit tests Coding guidelines Interview preparation Equivalent open source technologies Mental status Feedbacks I am not CS major… I don't have master… What are other teams doing? What's the equivalent solution in public? …
32. 32 A great mentorship motivates the interns to… • grow the intern's long-term productivity. • grow the intern's vision about their future career.
33. 33 Takeaways A great host can delive a successful project based on the following factors. Moderate business impact Well- defined expectation Motivation based on a great mentorship
34. 34 Thank you!