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This sounded fun and manageable, so I felt fine. Then, as we discussed the technical details of the project, I started to get nervous. I was going to be pulling

This sounded fun and manageable, so I felt fine. Then, as we discussed the technical details of the project, I started to get nervous. I was going to be pulling data from a MySQL database using PHP (although after some trial and error, we decided to use Go instead). I would put the data into an Amazon S3 bucket and then create an API to pull the data from S3. Finally, I’d add a page to an existing UI written in AngularJS where I would present the data in beautiful and informative charts (created with D3.js). This reads like everything I consider wrong and offensive about our industry. Congratulations to this person for pulling it off, but it's really sad how many different things they had to contend with to get something going (seriously, 2 weeks setting up a dev environment? wtf?).

dcre 11y ago
This bugged me a bit too, but to be fair, it was "two weeks setting up my dev environment ... and learning MySQL and PHP." Plus I'm sure she spent plenty of time just talking to people.
danso 11y ago
Is it really that bad though, for an internship? I've never done a development/tech internship but my assumption is that interns aren't expected to do "real" work right away, and part of what they get from being an intern is learning how things are set up in a professional environment... And in this case, it's not just learning, but contributing something to a live production, one that could potentially be seen by millions of people (case in point, NYT's most viewed feature of 2013 was a project built by an intern)...2 weeks sounds about appropriate for not just learning the parts of the stack and environment, but that there even is such a thing as environment and dependencies. Also, to be fair to the OP, she says (emphasis added): "I spent the first two weeks setting up my environment — apparently a necessary evil in the real world — and learning MySQL and PHP." [1] http://knightlab.northwestern.edu/2014/01/20/behind-the-dialect-map-interactive-how-an-intern-created-the-new-york-times-most-popular-piece-of-content-in-2013/ http://knightlab.northwestern.edu/2014/01/20/behind-the-dial...

dcre 11y ago

This bugged me a bit too, but to be fair, it was "two weeks setting up my dev environment ... and learning MySQL and PHP." Plus I'm sure she spent plenty of time just talking to people.

danso 11y ago

Is it really that bad though, for an internship? I've never done a development/tech internship but my assumption is that interns aren't expected to do "real" work right away, and part of what they get from being an intern is learning how things are set up in a professional environment... And in this case, it's not just learning, but contributing something to a live production, one that could potentially be seen by millions of people (case in point, NYT's most viewed feature of 2013 was a project built by an intern)...2 weeks sounds about appropriate for not just learning the parts of the stack and environment, but that there even is such a thing as environment and dependencies. Also, to be fair to the OP, she says (emphasis added): "I spent the first two weeks setting up my environment — apparently a necessary evil in the real world — and learning MySQL and PHP." [1] http://knightlab.northwestern.edu/2014/01/20/behind-the-dialect-map-interactive-how-an-intern-created-the-new-york-times-most-popular-piece-of-content-in-2013/ http://knightlab.northwestern.edu/2014/01/20/behind-the-dial...