1

Hi all,

I started an internship as an IT guy last week and they have given me a few tasks, and so far they haven’t exactly related to my interests (primarily networking), but more or less been grunt work like upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7, cleaning up SpiceWorks (which is fine, at least I’m learning how it works), etc.

I want to do work that gets me learning concepts, not how to install software after installing a Windows 7 disc, but I don’t know what questions to ask to get that kind of work. I want this to be a valuable learning experience, and so far I feel like it hasn’t been. It’s quite difficult to be patient, as I’m almost done with my second week and I’m only here for about 12 weeks.

The one project I’ve started is setting up a new server for SpiceWorks to increase performance, but my supervisor didn’t assign that, I kind of dug up the information to decide that might be a good idea and was given the go-ahead.

Main questions - what kind of projects should I ask for? What are good ways to go about asking for these projects without coming off as “can you give me actual work?” I just feel like my project work is taking too long to get here, and I want to take advantage of this opportunity.

Any help is much appreciated! Reading through posts on here and solutions to problems has already been really helpful, so thanks guys for anything you can throw at me!

8 Spice ups
2

Internships in general are tough. I was an intern when I started into IT and have been able to host interns as an employee of a school. Internships in IT are a bit tougher yet, as security is (and should be) a significant factor. Meaning you don’t give a temporary person the keys to the castle. An internship doesn’t have to be 100% about technology to be useful to both parties. If you show ambition to learn but are patient with the tasks assigned and are able to do those well, then that will go a long way. Perhaps not immediately, but if nothing else you’re building a good reputation that could some day get you hired there or at least a very positive reference. I’ve had interns that I would never hire for any job… and I’ve had some who I would hire in a heartbeat.

Some tips for a quality internship are:

  • be patient
  • ask any question you can think of
  • don’t be annoying (questions aren’t annoying unless you’ve been told no already)
  • accomplish every task assigned as if you’re the expert on it (without arrogance of course)
  • volunteer to do the simple tasks (even taking out the trash shows ambition that could lead to other things)
  • stay off your phone - leave it in your car if this is difficult for you
  • look for things to improve - even if it’s just organizing the box of cables by lengths - rather than sitting doing nothing (wiping old equipment can also be educational because you can at least see a glimpse of it)
  • do things out of your area of educational expertise
  • know what everyone is working on and look for opportunities to be of assistance, even if it’s posting a question on SpiceWorks for someone to research a problem. :slight_smile:

Good luck!

3 Spice ups
3

It’s great that you want to do as much as you can - but realistically you’ve only been there a week.

I’d need to trust you first before I started giving you any projects, and that takes longer than a week.

That they’re letting you spec the server to upgrade SW shows you’re doing something right, but it will take time for them to feel comfortable with the bigger stuff.

If you want to get more into networking, show them you can do the basics of it. Offer to trace and label all the cables in the server room. Save a copy of the switch configs to an agreed area. Draw a logival and topographical map of the network for them. All this will show them you’re ready for the bigger things

Good luck

2 Spice ups
4

Spiceworks is used in the SMB market. It really doesn’t scale to the enterprise. Real networking is enterprise only. Pretty much, no shop that runs Spiceworks will have networking for you to do. Sounds like you are interning in a company smaller than you want and that doesn’t have the job category that you were hoping to intern for.

3 Spice ups
5

Thank you all for the advice and suggestions!

Frag_68 - Thanks for the tips, they are very helpful and will definitely be taken into consideration.

mattroberts - Good tips, and I understand about the trust aspect of it. I’m doubling this internship as an academic internship, and my university adviser asks for a decent amount of “computer science” to couple the general IT work. I not only want to make sure this is as worthwhile as possible, but a guy’s gotta make sure the $1200 or so for 4 credits is well spent, ya know? As for your suggestions, I will definitely do my best to start with these smaller network-based tasks and hope that that yields results.

Scott Alan Miller - I think that you’re correct in a sense. I don’t think that general IT, which is the main need at this company, is my destination. Some of these tasks are undoubtedly “grunt work” that will be more or less a lesson in “oh yeah, I remember that” when somebody asks me about their computer issues, but some of the tasks that the training plan I was given make me hopeful that this will be a good starter for a future in networking. Obviously I know that I am not ready to jump in and work at Google or Microsoft, but I think I’m at least getting started and will gain some real world experience outside of the books. Getting truly started on that process has been my only issue given the limited time of the internship, though.

6

This is what I was thinking, too. I don’t know the circumstances that lead to you choosing this place to intern at, but it sounds as if you made an unfortunate decision. Not to mention that internships, for all the good they do for students, can be viewed from the employer’s perspective as receiving free or reduced-priced labor. I know whenever I have tried to talk my boss into picking up an intern or two that I have always pushed the “I did my internship unpaid. So, we could end up getting a free set of extra hands around here for a while.” idea.

Along that same line, as the purpose of the internship from an employer’s perspective could be to get some free or inexpensive work out of you, your experience as an intern ultimately depends greatly on what the employer wants to let you do. I did an internship at a non-profit org. My big project for that group was to configure a squid server for them, which they ultimately did not implement. Was my #1 preference to work in Linux? Nope. I preferred MS. Part of an internship experience is not only putting your technical skills to use but also getting a taste of how the decision-making of a business will force your work to take less desirable paths.

There is also the consideration that something as mission critical as networking infrastructure could be viewed as too important to let an intern mess around it. Please, do not think that I am passing some sort of judgment on your skill set. I am simply trying to rationalize the company’s thought process.

7

Not in the US they can’t. The Fed is really, really clear on that. If you use an unpaid intern for that kind of work you own them minimum wage and all benefits, period. Interns cannot do money making, production work without compensation. No different than any other employment fraud situation.

If you have an unpaid intern do “real” work you would be liable for employment fraud, failure to pay minimum wage, any state level penalties, insurance issues, workman’s comp violations, and the big one, federal tax violations.

2 Spice ups
8

I want to clarify that this is a paid internship. My rationale for choosing this internship was more location than the pay, though. I had an offer elsewhere for a higher hourly pay, but I would have either had to commute 2 hours (as opposed to 5 minutes lol) or relocate for the summer.

In terms of doing the important tasks that I could cause damage on, I entirely understand why that wouldn’t be part of my tasks, and quite frankly I wouldn’t want that on my plate at this point in my studies. Anything that can’t do damage, though, would be great for me. There’s only so many Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrades that one can do, ya know?

1 Spice up
9

Remember, as an intern, you are the lowest part of the food chain. You will be stuck with the ‘crap’ jobs that no one else wants. However, your best bet is to take advantage of the situation. For instance, ask for advice and ask for things to do, especially if they might be relevant to expanding your experience. Ask if they have a network map and if they don’t, see about making one for them. Ask them if they have some kind of network monitoring device, such as Nagios. If they don’t ask if they have something that you can use to install one for them. Stuff like that.

10

Ah ok. Not “really” an internship then. Just something that they are calling a very junior position. It’s legal to call it an internship as long as it is really a paid, non-internship thing. It’s just a title, you are actually the junior. To be an internship, paid or unpaid, you’d have a mentor.

11

Scott - I do have a mentor, so I believe internship would still apply. I’m doing my best to get as much real work as I can from him, so we will see what comes of that.

Again, thanks for the advice, everyone! I’ll undoubtedly have more questions, but you all seem like a wise bunch that can handle my noob questions! I also appreciate the job suggestions, those are definitely helpful (like mapping the network).