
Ask HN: What would you teach to an intern at your company? - DictumMortuum
So, a new person has joined our team as an intern and I am tasked to be his mentor. Management has explicitly stated that he is here to learn and not to handle tickets. What would you teach to a young software engineer professional?
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dazhbog
This is an extremely broad question. It really depends what your company is
doing and its size.

A couple of things that I do when I have interns:

Assess/observe the person. As a mentor you need to understand what his/her
weaknesses are and what the their strengths are. For example they might be
really good at analysing problems but have confidence issues, and might be
afraid to ask questions, you need to uncover all this to be productive with
them.

Ask the person what do they want to be and what do they want to learn. Asking
is usually the easiest way and _you_ as a mentor knowing your company will
then be able to accommodate based on the intern's response. Also ask about
their hobbies and side projects, this will allow you to better maximise their
potential.

Expose them to different areas and workings of the company (engineering,
devops, testing, analysts, sales, etc)

Be honest and humble. No one knows it all.

Good luck!

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JSeymourATL
> What would you teach to a young software engineer professional?

How to Manage-Up... that is to say, how does one anticipate a superiors
needs/solve problems/present information, especially with difficult,
demanding, intimidating bosses.

If your intern can master this-- it will be a huge career advantage.

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soneca
Git, code review processes (doing and receiving), agile processes (or the
processes of the methodology you use there), point to good learning resources
(good books, good papers, good courses, good blogs/blogposts).

Have one on one meetings and learn how else can you support him/her

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brogrammer2019
Hi soneca, do you have any good learning resources or good books you would
recommend? Thanks

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soneca
That depends a lot on your current level and field. I myself am a junior
frontend developer. I started from scratch through freeCodeCamp.org and I
passionately recommend it to anyone to starting to learn to code.

If you passed that stage, I recommend the book The Pragmatic Programmer as a
very good book on how to become a good software developer. The book Clean Code
is a good starting point too.

Other than it depends on your circumstances. A good heuristic (particularly in
frontend world) is to study the language, not frameworks.

