On an internship.. no work :(

[shinest]

Maybe it is a wrong place to ask this question since you guys are all students.. But in case you had internships and were once in my situation, maybe you can share your experience and give me some advice..Or any input from somebody with a better understanding of corporate environment will also be appreciated.

So basically, my boss is not giving me work and I have nothing to do other than.. surfing the internet. I'm just solving some programming questions on codechef, but really i feel like I shouldn't be doing this.

I already sent an email to him asking for more work, but I haven't heard from him.. Is it because I haven't been doing a good job? Well.. it is true that my code has been bit sketchy and got a number of critical comments but they weren't anything major though. It was mostly on formatting..

He seems quite busy and he's constantly working on something. Should I go up to him in person and ask for work? Wouldn't that annoy him as I already sent him an email? Should I just wait?

I don't even feel the necessity of coming to work as I have absolutely nothing to work on.

Maybe it IS because I've been doing a poor job.. My colleague told me my boss will give me easy and dull work only if I don't show him that I'm competent enough to do complicated work.

Sigh..Not sure what to do.

[Insectoid]

Go to his office and ask him straight out why you aren't being given work. The objective of an internship is to gain real world work experience. The employer *should* be training you to be the employee HE wants you to be. Unless you're a high school student (don't expect a real programming internship in high school) talk to your school's co-op head and say you aren't doing anything.

You need to take the work and make it evident that you WANT real work. If your code isn't up to par, ask the team what they want. They are there to help you fix your mistakes, not stop them from happening by means of you not doing anything.

You went to a lot of trouble to get this placement (I assume) and you deserve a true co-op experience. Don't waste your time.

If you can't convince him to let you do stuff, work on a project on your own time. Do something productive instead of browsing the internet all day. If your employer sees you taking matters into your own hands he may respect you more and let you really join the team.

[Tony]

Take the initiative. "Got paid to do nothing" is a pretty shitty line for a resume. You want real experience for yourself.

If your boss is too busy to manage you -- offer your own project ideas or find someone else in the company to take on a mentorship role. Just about any full-time developer would do.

[shinest]

Hey thank you guys all for your advices! I asked him in person, and he gladly found some work for me right away. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to ask this by email. Thanks,

[mirhagk]

I have had the same situation happen to me, except with online contract work. Sometimes I take the time to work on school work if I can't find anything to do, but I look to try and find something to do, whether it's testing out something I already did, doing something extra for a previous project whatever. I also keep asking for work.

[SmokeMonster]

Sounds like a crappy situation. I know a guy who ran into a similar situation during his coop term, except in his case there literally wasn't any work available (it was for a non-technical govt agency and the project they hired him for was trivial and he was done it two weeks). I would take the opportunity to hack around with a personal project if they are not giving you any work. Might as well get paid for working on your personal project and have something to show to future employers.

[yoursecretninja]

SmokeMonster @ Tue Nov 01, 2011 10:11 pm wrote:

...Might as well get paid for working on your personal project and have something to show to future employers.

Please do not take this advise. Most importantly, it is unethical. Someone is paying you to work for them. Secondly, anything you produce on work time generally belongs to the employer - that's a standard employment term. It sure would suck if you made something really cool only to wind up in court arguing over intellectual property with your former co-op employer. If you've got nothing to do, ask for something to do.

[mirhagk]

Of course you could also invent Apple, and your superiors laugh at how stupid that idea is, so you end up with rights to it and sell your machine for billions.