I’ve got a very smart intern with an A+ junior engineer mentality. He’s just like “give me the smallest bugs and let me contribute something to do the codebase”. But I know how this will go… He’ll solve 10 of these things over the summer, and it’s just not worth the onboarding cost when I’m solving 10 of these things a week. I think this is a failure of my imagination more than anything else. Curious if anyone else is struggling with this.
👤 JohnFen Accepted Answer ✓
Perhaps you're missing the purpose of having an intern. It isn't to get free/cheap labor, it's to help beginning engineers learn how to work and gain a bit of experience.
If you need to view it in terms of "what's in it for my company", you could look at it as a method of trying out the green wood. When you find a great one, you offer them a job. Win/win.