I work for a very large company that has very American style practices. Most of the time they don't affect us here in not-america, but the tradition of internship is one that my company has implemented in all of it's world-wide offices.
I rather wish they hadn't.
We've been assigned an intern to babysit in our very small, extremely busy team. We work with Linux. He's never touched Linux before. Ever. He doesn't like what he's seen of it so far. Apparently working at the command line is something that for him went out with the dinosaurs.
He doesn't seem to be particularly good with Windows either though, at least, I ended up configuring his wireless networking with him. We assumed then that he must have been a reasonable java developer as that's what he's studied. Seems not, after hearing him in conversation with a peer of mine who is an exceptionally talented developer. The Intern came off sounding, well, a little thick.
He is however bright eyed and bushy tailed and very, very keen. He seems to have really taken a shine to my colleague, who with his 13 years of industry experience probably seems like a bit of a father figure, or at least a brotherly type. Shame my colleague is about ready to strangle him - the constant barrage of 'But if you used Windows wouldn't that just work?' infuriates my colleague beyond rational behaviour.
I see myself patiently explaining that most of these technologies do not scale very well on Windows platforms many times over.
He also seems to think that he should have more 'responsibility'. I think he sees himself as a manager, which is great. My team already has plenty of management and I fully support his wish to be a manager.
Far, far away from me.
