[geeks] Internship

[Lionel Peterson]

--- sun4c at btopenworld.com wrote:
> General Question, I am fresh from school and am about to start an
> internship working in an IT department. My OS of choice is debian,
> but will prob end doing basic support for win9x work stations -not
> great but you gotta start somewhere!
> 
> Any tips for surviving in dilbert land?

Yeah, try to excel at whatever task they give you, work quickly, and
demonstrate a broad technical background, as well as an interest in the
industry they are in.

The goal of an internship is to learn as much as you can about the
real-world work environment, and if you go in thinking "all I am doing
is X" you will be wasting yours (and your employers time).

I have interns work for me, and we *love* to bring them on full time as
soon as they graduate. They are not guaranteed jobs after the
intenrship, but most work out quite well.

The big thing is attitude & aptitude - I've worked in most major
industries in NJ (Software, Finance, Telecom, Oil, (and currently)
Pharma), and I've learned many useful things in each industry, things
that make me a more valuable employee for each of my employers.

I work in an MS-centric shop, but prefer non-MS OSs for various
(non-religious) reasons...

The main thing you can get from an internship/first job, is the notion
of what job you want to have in a given industry - when I was a
computer operator, I knew within days that I wanted to be a systems
programmer in a mainframe shop - that never happened, but I learned so
much persuing that goal that I have been quite successful in recent
years...

HTH,


=====
Lionel

"Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten
programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software"
Bill Gates, in "An OpenLetter to Hobbyists" dated February 3, 1976

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