What's your experience with internships?

Hey guys. We got a request from a student about a internship, super fun that our small Studio got that attention

We really need all the help we can get so it's a welcome request, but I have no experience in the field of internships. For example we are only two guys both with day jobs so we would have limit time for mentorship.

We want this to be good both for us and the intern. Any tips?

 

Would be nice if you make the project yourself before giving him the assignment, so you have something to compare his version to and know it can be done in a reasonable time.

Also offer coffee, you can't not have coffee x)

Btw what do you plan on assigning him? Is it going to be 2 or 3 weeks long internship?

 

He will be working in our real project with actual features. One problem is we don't have an office we work from home with discord and slack to communicate with, I will ask him if this is ok.

It's 10 weeks, I have some ideas, we need some new UI features like map/game mode voting, kick voting etc. A new level if he is more into level design, look at implementing texture arrays if he want to go more low level.

 

In that case are you going to be paying him or offer to hire him afterwards?

 

Depends on how good he is We will probably at least give him the Oculus Rift hardware I googled and here in sweden internships are usually unpaid actually. Internal interships are paid though, but this is a student from that needs this experience for to get his degree

 

UI***
UV's
Skin weighting
TESTING!!!
Marketing efforts - this is part of the job - so it should be open for 'assignment'
Support responses (would follow up on these - check to make sure they are cordial and friendly)
Documentation updates
Alt texture creation (AI characters could have several alt skins)
Any - "I'll get to that later" tasks that can be accomplished with little input required.

 

Yeah. Write back and say. "We're just two guys who can't afford to pay our own salaries let alone an intern. Thanks for the interest. Goodbye."

 

I strongly recommend speaking to a lawyer or government officials, not just "googling," to determine payment or anything like that. An intern isn't a full employee, but once you get non-"owner" workers the stakes raise, of both your responsibility and liability.

 

https://translate.googleusercontent...700201&usg=ALkJrhjmo0rExfmxGL2lzuygEGO8wYaSWg

edit: Thats the Swedish official guidelines

 

That link was still untranslated for me (didn't even let me see the page), so I recommend just making it the web page, and we can get it translated ourselves.

Anyway, it mentions a "trader" there that you have to write up the contract with. You should probably talk to the university this student belongs to about what the expectations are for an internship.

 

Its not even understable in Swedish The 'trader' could be the trainee or his school. Very strange there. Will check with my legal advisor

 

Once it's completed loading the link the first time, and is showing an address in the search box, click the search button.

 

I just wound up extracting the page URL itself, going to that, and letting Google itself ask if I wanted a translation.

 

Interns are great if you are looking for people to eventually hire as a regular employee, have enough simple work that needs to get done but doesn't justify having a real dev spend their time on it, or if you have some simple projects that could be completed if only you had one more body no matter their skill set. If the intern though needs constant guidance, then they end up a net drain to the team.

From the other perspective, being an intern is great if you are looking to gain experience but don't have the resume yet to justify a "real" job, are still in school and would do this part time, or if you are willing to take a chance that the internship could convert to a full time position if you prove yourself.

 

Interns are a legal minefield. I wouldn't touch one without getting consultation from an HR professional or an employment lawyer. There are companies that will do outsourced HR stuff for you on a contract basis.

That said, interns are a great resource. I always love having them around in my day job (engineering). Interns tend to be eager, obedient, smart and cheap. This means they are great for throwing at boring tedious jobs, speculative jobs, or anything else that needs someone with some technical knowledge, but doesn't justify a full time employee. Also because interns are generally fixed term, its easy to put them on a dedicated project without them getting sucked away for the daily grind.

 

In Sweden we have two kinds of internships, Trainees and Internships. Trainees are basically employed personnel with the same benefits etc as a normal employee. These are offcourse protected by a lot of laws etc (Sweden has very strict laws about employment, basically you cant fire a person even if he does not do his job correctly). The other type is what we talk about, its students that part of their education require practical work on a company in their field.

We will have a meeting today, will be interesting

 

Spent yesterday evening fixing agreements and today he signed. Will be fun to have him onboard I think!