Ask YC: The value of internships?

[dangrover]

I'm a sophomore in college who has a small non-startup product business that's started taking off. I develop Mac software. It's been paying off well for the small amount of time I've been able to sink into it, and there's a lot I could do to serve my customers better and attract more business. Kind of exciting.

But I'm also interning at a company. I've interned at a few before. Since I've just had the first month where I made more off my own business than wages from the internship, it's made me re-evaluate a lot of things. It feels really weird.

While I could quit the internship and lose credit for it, and funnel all my energy (instead of a couple hours a day) into improving my own business...something in that doesn't appeal to me.

In a way, I kind of want to be a corporate slave for a few years. I'm learning a little about business and working with other people. I really need to have some daily interaction with other human beings to stay sane. I also recognize a lot of gaps in my non-technical skills that I'm going to need experience to fill.

But on the other hand, it's also extremely frustrating and demotivating at times. Everything happens really slowly with a lot of BS in the way. And, even though I've taken some initiative in the company and contributed to a lot of projects...you can't entrust any kind of responsibility to an intern, and you definitely can't promote one. Unlike when I'm working for myself, there's no advantage to figuring out more efficient ways of doing things or pressing myself to work harder.

So I find myself being less effective than I would otherwise be just because of the environment. Most of the interesting, technically-challenging work is given to other people, and, if not, attributed to other people upon completion.

And, because of my own business competing for my time, often the slightest little indignity will make me think about quitting and be really grumpy for a couple days.

So what would you do? I don't want to burn any bridges, but I want to be happy.

[symptic]

I think having an internship at a powerful company is a great way to open doors in the future; you just may not realize it now. I say if you can manage your company AND intern at the same time, it's more than worth it. Being a young entrepreneur is never easy-but you'll find you can endure a hell of a lot more than you initially perceive.

If best comes to best and your software takes off even more, create a particular limit to decide when you will drop the internship and focus 100% on the software. When you're making 5x from the software as your internship; when you are working 2x as much; etc. It's up to your needs and desires.

The bottom line: Internships are meant to either teach you the ropes or to open doors. If you feel yours isn't doing either, then ditch it; you're not getting your effort's worth out of it. If it's at a huge company like mine was (NASA), then it's a sticky situation and you might want to stay the course just for the sake of resume-building.

[cstejerean]

Experience in a company is not nearly as valuable as you might think. It mainly teaches you to deal with BS and politics. You can probably do without that skillset.

You'll learn far more from working for yourself and trying to grow your business than from putting up with crap at your internship Unless you happen to have some awesome mentors at work, it's not worth it.

QUIT! Focus your energy on your business and on meeting like minded people. Want to interact with people? Find user groups meeting in your area, do some hacking at Starbucks, find some conferences and attend some sprints, hang out here when you get bored.

[jyu → cstejerean]

During college: crappy internship < working for yourself < good internship

Sounds like you have a crappy internship. Working for yourself is a good option, but may not be the best. Besides, you have the rest of the year to work on your business.

I was in a similar position as you. I had a part-time business that was making as much as most people their first year out of college. I decided to grow it and work on it full-time during the summers.

Thinking back, it was kind of a mistake. I started hating my work and eventually suffered major burnout, due to a variety of unforeseen variables even though I was still making really good money.

Afterwards, I went looking for jobs, but had limited options due to my hodge podge of expertise. I would have had more attractive options and flexibility if I had covered my bets and taken a good internship.

A good internship is one where you build useful contacts, develop marketable skills, pursue an industry/area that you might be interested in for a career/business. If you are looking for something technically challenging, why not join Google's Summer of Code? Look for a good prof to take you under his wing? Shadow a guy that you want to be in 5 years? Work at Apple? Get street cred with an open source project?

You should be focused on exploring, finding your passions, getting useful experience, opening up more attractive opportunities. Not so much money.

[Prrometheus]

It depends on your personality. I’ve been working for 9 years, and I hate corporate drudgery like I hate hell. If I were in your shoes and earning enough off my own business, I wouldn’t think twice about jumping ship. As your company grows, bring on people with diverse skills and learn from them. Even if it worked, I would never trade a few years on the plantation for knowledge to run my own farm.

Edit: You have to ask yourself: are you an entrepreneur or not? You might not even know for sure at this point, and it’s okay to change your mind later. However, you have the holy grail of entrepreneurship sitting on your lap right now: a self-made business that pays you enough to live. After you reach that point, your upside is MUCH greater than working for someone else.

Read “Founders at Work” and ask yourself if you want your story added to a future version someday. Then read “Dilbert”, and ask yourself which way you’d rather spend your life.

[iamdave]

On the issue of wage vs wage:

If you are seeing more benefit from working on your own and producing software you truly believe will succeed use that as motivating platform to become an unsung hero in your niche while at the same time proving to be an asset with the company. This may result in becoming a full-time employee and later on down the road a promotion and bigger paycheck.

On becoming a corporate slave:

Try not to look at it like this. As I mentioned, become an asset early on, but establish a pace in which you can work. Corporate work is very important to have in your tool belt as it shows you have the capacity to work in a very structured environment, and have the ability to interface with multiple levels of personnel. Yes it can be demotivating, but see above on being an unsung hero.

On being effective:

Tell them this. Show them that you want to take on some challenge and responsibility, but remind them you do know your role in the company as an intern and want to maximize the best of that situation. I mention this particularly because I was offered an internship with a radio station with the webmaster. Halfway through the interview it became apparent that the individual was very inexperienced, and only received the job she had because she knew more than the rest of the company about HTML and CSS. It became even more apparent that she was only looking for an intern to perform grunt work and left absolutely no room for growth (not to mention I knew much more about web development than she did). I declined the offer, but was also hired by the IT department at the same radio station as an analyst and I don't regret it one bit.

On being happy:

Do whatever brings about that feeling of joy. If it means leaving the company and following your own path, but receiving a smaller paycheck, by all means go for it. If you're happy doing what you do best, and if it works, no one can tell you otherwise.

These are lessons that I had to learn the very hard way throughout the past 3 years, but I don't regret enduring it one bit.

[jgrahamc]

What's your Mac software?

How long is your internship?

I think getting experience in a company is valuable, but if your software is good you might as well run with that and get experience from having to face problems as your company grows. If it's growing you'll be able to get others to impart their wisdom without being a wage slave for many years.