You’re an intern. You’re expected to be useless. You’re also expected to ask lots of questions. You don’t know a thing about anything.
If you’re repeatedly asking the same question, that becomes bothersome, but as long as you’re making an effort on your end to learn, no one should mind.
It’s extremely common to be super lost when you start a new job — even some engineers with 25+ years of experience need a bit of hand holding when starting a new program. The rule of thumb is that someone won’t be much use until 6-12 months in their role.
It’s your job as the new person to learn as much as you can, and the way you do that is by asking lots of questions. It only becomes a problem if you keep asking the same questions over and over again to the same people, to the point that it’s legitimately impeding their work. Part of the _team’s_ job is to mentor you, in addition to their own work (hence the idea of a team lol)
I always tell new grads "you'll think your useless for at least a year, but you'll start making contributions in 6 months."
For co-ops/interns, you're not expected to do actual work. The company hopes you'll like the type of work we do and come back when you get a degree.
Don't feel like this at all. You'll get to a point that you start to realize that no one knows what the hell they are doing. This gets more and more true the higher u get...
Be present, be eager to learn, be humble about not being knowledgeable in the area but willing to put in the work to become a little bit more knowledgeable. Don’t be afraid to ask for help but be mindful of not taking up too much time. Show interest in your tasks.
No one is expecting you to be an all star, do those things above and you’ll do great kid!
You are an intern, by nature that means you have no experience. Everyone on the team knows that and expects that.
Honestly, you are only marginally there to be useful. Most of it is about learning. If you listen, learn, and show a willingness to improve...that's like 90% of what is wanted.
The goal isn't that an intern is a super useful addition to the team now, it is that you may come back as a new hire after graduation already having an understanding of the company.
i started with 0 yoe on my team and very little relevant background, was asking for help on SUPER basic stuff, but it felt futile because i didn’t even know what to ask 😭but, i’m now the 2nd best performer on my team 1 year later. you’ll be fine, just learn as much as you can, no one expects you to be perfect!
One recommendation, with dang near everyone being remote these days. Ask your team members to spin up a zoom or if you're in the office do some shoulder surfing while they're performing tasks.
Do your best to focus on what they're doing and ask questions or write down/type out questions to ask when they're done.
After a few sessions see if they will let you drive and watch over your shoulder or screen share while you perform said task.
Enjoy the ride and learn as much as you can!
Don’t feel bad. It takes several years to develop an engineer. In fact you will be on a learning curve your entire career. When you are starting out the learning curve is especially steep so it can feel daunting. Just take it day-by-day and eventually things will start to make more sense and fall into place.
It's normal. I've been in my line of work for almost 20 years and I occasionally have times where I feel like I'm still doing the whole, "fake it 'til you make it" thing.
You're an intern. You're not expected to really know anything. You're expected to learn and grow, so focus on that.
We have all been there some point in our lives. Don’t feel like you bring little value. From the perspective of the company, they are using internships to try and encourage you to apply/be recruited at graduation of your degree. Even when you are hired on in a role, there is always learning curve that exists for longer than an internship lasts.
I’ve had a couple roles at the company and have connections throughout. Reach out in message if you’d like to gain a contact and start networking. You got this!
Agree with what everyone else has said so far...you're an intern, not knowing much is expected and I think your team would be concerned if you didn't have questions.
If these (and the other comments) don't help to alleviate your feelings, take a look into imposter syndrome and some of the recommended strategies/tools that can help combat it.
This is on leadership actually. They requested an intern, but now they don't know how to utilize one. A competent Senior engineer should be able to outsource half of the project to Bangladesh 5-rupees gig site by dividing it into small manageable parts, but I am yet to see a competent engineer at an appropriate level here. Im just here for the money and job security
Hey, I'm too in a similar boat. Joined this January as an intern and shuffling between teams, feel like I know nothing about the projects I'm expected to work in. Also as of the moment, I'm too dependent on team leads for basic and trivial stuff. Though people here guide me on things, but it is too fast and always goes over my head. Sometimes I feel like I'm not built for this stuff as I've never faced these things before. Also I feel that I'm bothering my leads too much asking questions for basic stuff and get stuck if they don't hand hold me through it.
Every single intern feels the same way. This is how internships go. To take it even further I felt like I had no idea what I was doing for thr first couple months at my first job here too. No one expects you to know everything going in.
My advice would be to keep asking questions and show that you are willing and trying to learn. Working hard and doing your best is really all you can do. Internships at Raytheon are more or less a try before you buy to make sure they aren't hiring people who are lazy or have a poor work ethic.
Two things here:
1: sheesh dude you're fine you're an intern. Don't worry about anything
2: I will say, all the people saying interns are useless are wild to me... as a leader with an intern... I have tasks for them to learn. The tasks aren't difficult, but they pull work from my core team and still challenge the intern based om THEIR abilities.
I see it all the time at the company though with interns. Like 70% have managers who have no idea how to work with them. It makes interns feel like op all the time
Even my intern is telling me about all the other interns who either have p work and sit on their ass all day, or have no idea what's going on
As leaders, it's our responsibility to help the interns learn and roll that into our teams work load.
Idk, I just feel like this is a leadership problem, not an intern problem
The two best things you can do as an intern are (1) Ask for help when you’re stuck instead of just staring at the computer screen “pondering” (provided you’ve made an honest effort first), and (2) Ask if there’s anything else they have that you can do if you feel like you don’t have anything to do.
Interns *aren’t* qualified for the jobs of their colleagues/mentors, that’s why you’re interns. You’re there to learn new things and develop a skill set that will help *you* in the future. Your actual impact on the team and company as a whole is pretty minimal (most of the time) compared to the impact the team has on you.
I started as an intern. I felt completely overwhelmed and useless at first. but you learn, you start to figure the unique lingo we speak in with all the acronyms, and it gets better. everyone starts out where you are now, it will get better. Just keep working hard and asking questions. honestly, we don't hire interns and expect them to make major impacts, we hire them to let them get some experience and take some of the grunt work off the full time team members.
That’s normal, any intern who thinks they have it down is only fooling themselves. Everyone has been in your shoes and expects that even if you’re a MIT honors student you still won’t know what’s going on.
Ask questions and bond with the team, that’s the whole point. If they like you and you show you’re easy to get along with they’ll recommend you for any open jobs come graduation time.
I've led 5 different intern teams, and generally we expect them to know very little, and get very little done. If they do get something actually useful done that is a bonus!
As long as you are listening and learning when you get responses to your questions, you are doing well. I much prefer people who ask questions than someone sitting in the dark hoping for the best.
Just ask your lead what is the best way to ask your questions, some might prefer a tagup meeting every day, others via IM, others via email, just let them tell you the best way to engage so you don't burden them too much.
Good luck, normally I've been really happy with my intern teams, it's exciting to see someone learning so many things that I take for granted after so many years.
Good Interns ask questions, and follow up questions on those questions, then even more questions after you’ve dug through the work.
If you don’t understand jargon or acronyms, just ask what they stand for or what it means.
We live in a world of alphabet soup acronyms. No one expects you to do anything but pick up on things and learn this summer. Build good relationships with the team too. It helps in the long run
It's called imposter syndrome. I don't think you're unqualified as an intern. Enjoy your time and come back to us. If you're feeling like you're under qualified when you're a p3 or p4 then that's an issue....but you still got some years till you hit that.
I was useless for most of my internship and Co-Op. It takes time and you are there to learn, not to be a manager/leader. You know what you don’t know, take longer days and review stuff. Set yourself up for the future. My first 6-months of my job out of college was just question after question. I worked at one place for ~1.5 years and just started a new job as a gas engineer (I’m a mechanical engineer). Guess what I did the first 3 months (and still doing)? Asking questions, it’s how you learn and just take time to better yourself and prepare for future. In the end it’s a resume booster and gains you experience for full-time employment afterwards, best of luck!
You’re an intern. You’re expected to be useless. You’re also expected to ask lots of questions. You don’t know a thing about anything. If you’re repeatedly asking the same question, that becomes bothersome, but as long as you’re making an effort on your end to learn, no one should mind.
Exactly. I felt like this once
I still don’t know what I’m doing
It's okay, Chris. It's a tough position you have there.
Aww, I feel for the guy. I think an extra couple million might help his self confidence.
Bro needs a bonus
Hopefully he can afford his new glasses
Nonono…. It’s NOT Chris ;)
It’s extremely common to be super lost when you start a new job — even some engineers with 25+ years of experience need a bit of hand holding when starting a new program. The rule of thumb is that someone won’t be much use until 6-12 months in their role. It’s your job as the new person to learn as much as you can, and the way you do that is by asking lots of questions. It only becomes a problem if you keep asking the same questions over and over again to the same people, to the point that it’s legitimately impeding their work. Part of the _team’s_ job is to mentor you, in addition to their own work (hence the idea of a team lol)
Your internship is an extension of your education. You are not useless, you are learning about your career possibilities.
I always tell new grads "you'll think your useless for at least a year, but you'll start making contributions in 6 months." For co-ops/interns, you're not expected to do actual work. The company hopes you'll like the type of work we do and come back when you get a degree.
Be enthusiastic, willing to genuinely try things, and be pleasant to be around and they won’t care if you don’t know anything.
Don't feel like this at all. You'll get to a point that you start to realize that no one knows what the hell they are doing. This gets more and more true the higher u get...
Be present, be eager to learn, be humble about not being knowledgeable in the area but willing to put in the work to become a little bit more knowledgeable. Don’t be afraid to ask for help but be mindful of not taking up too much time. Show interest in your tasks. No one is expecting you to be an all star, do those things above and you’ll do great kid!
You are an intern, by nature that means you have no experience. Everyone on the team knows that and expects that. Honestly, you are only marginally there to be useful. Most of it is about learning. If you listen, learn, and show a willingness to improve...that's like 90% of what is wanted. The goal isn't that an intern is a super useful addition to the team now, it is that you may come back as a new hire after graduation already having an understanding of the company.
Is a big company with a lot of domain knowledge. !! You are fine thrive for the best ask question learn the process and expectations
i started with 0 yoe on my team and very little relevant background, was asking for help on SUPER basic stuff, but it felt futile because i didn’t even know what to ask 😭but, i’m now the 2nd best performer on my team 1 year later. you’ll be fine, just learn as much as you can, no one expects you to be perfect!
One recommendation, with dang near everyone being remote these days. Ask your team members to spin up a zoom or if you're in the office do some shoulder surfing while they're performing tasks. Do your best to focus on what they're doing and ask questions or write down/type out questions to ask when they're done. After a few sessions see if they will let you drive and watch over your shoulder or screen share while you perform said task. Enjoy the ride and learn as much as you can!
How is everyone getting remote here, god I wish that were me
Don’t feel bad. It takes several years to develop an engineer. In fact you will be on a learning curve your entire career. When you are starting out the learning curve is especially steep so it can feel daunting. Just take it day-by-day and eventually things will start to make more sense and fall into place.
Bro I got guys that don’t know how to use CTRL F function to search a pdf…you’re on the right track
Give them a sticky note with keyboard shortcuts to put on their monitor lmao
It's normal. I've been in my line of work for almost 20 years and I occasionally have times where I feel like I'm still doing the whole, "fake it 'til you make it" thing. You're an intern. You're not expected to really know anything. You're expected to learn and grow, so focus on that.
We have all been there some point in our lives. Don’t feel like you bring little value. From the perspective of the company, they are using internships to try and encourage you to apply/be recruited at graduation of your degree. Even when you are hired on in a role, there is always learning curve that exists for longer than an internship lasts. I’ve had a couple roles at the company and have connections throughout. Reach out in message if you’d like to gain a contact and start networking. You got this!
Agree with what everyone else has said so far...you're an intern, not knowing much is expected and I think your team would be concerned if you didn't have questions. If these (and the other comments) don't help to alleviate your feelings, take a look into imposter syndrome and some of the recommended strategies/tools that can help combat it.
This is on leadership actually. They requested an intern, but now they don't know how to utilize one. A competent Senior engineer should be able to outsource half of the project to Bangladesh 5-rupees gig site by dividing it into small manageable parts, but I am yet to see a competent engineer at an appropriate level here. Im just here for the money and job security
Welcome to real life. None of us know what we’re doing and we’re all trying to figure it out together. Especially DXC.
Stick to the script and blare television commercials in the background of the phoneline, must be their new motto.
Hey, I'm too in a similar boat. Joined this January as an intern and shuffling between teams, feel like I know nothing about the projects I'm expected to work in. Also as of the moment, I'm too dependent on team leads for basic and trivial stuff. Though people here guide me on things, but it is too fast and always goes over my head. Sometimes I feel like I'm not built for this stuff as I've never faced these things before. Also I feel that I'm bothering my leads too much asking questions for basic stuff and get stuck if they don't hand hold me through it.
Every single intern feels the same way. This is how internships go. To take it even further I felt like I had no idea what I was doing for thr first couple months at my first job here too. No one expects you to know everything going in. My advice would be to keep asking questions and show that you are willing and trying to learn. Working hard and doing your best is really all you can do. Internships at Raytheon are more or less a try before you buy to make sure they aren't hiring people who are lazy or have a poor work ethic.
Two things here: 1: sheesh dude you're fine you're an intern. Don't worry about anything 2: I will say, all the people saying interns are useless are wild to me... as a leader with an intern... I have tasks for them to learn. The tasks aren't difficult, but they pull work from my core team and still challenge the intern based om THEIR abilities. I see it all the time at the company though with interns. Like 70% have managers who have no idea how to work with them. It makes interns feel like op all the time Even my intern is telling me about all the other interns who either have p work and sit on their ass all day, or have no idea what's going on As leaders, it's our responsibility to help the interns learn and roll that into our teams work load. Idk, I just feel like this is a leadership problem, not an intern problem
My manager is actually a super nice person, I just think that he’s very busy and doesn’t have the time to help me develop as much as I would like
The two best things you can do as an intern are (1) Ask for help when you’re stuck instead of just staring at the computer screen “pondering” (provided you’ve made an honest effort first), and (2) Ask if there’s anything else they have that you can do if you feel like you don’t have anything to do. Interns *aren’t* qualified for the jobs of their colleagues/mentors, that’s why you’re interns. You’re there to learn new things and develop a skill set that will help *you* in the future. Your actual impact on the team and company as a whole is pretty minimal (most of the time) compared to the impact the team has on you.
You're job there is to learn.
I'm almost 30 years in, I'm a SME, and I learn new things every day.
I started as an intern. I felt completely overwhelmed and useless at first. but you learn, you start to figure the unique lingo we speak in with all the acronyms, and it gets better. everyone starts out where you are now, it will get better. Just keep working hard and asking questions. honestly, we don't hire interns and expect them to make major impacts, we hire them to let them get some experience and take some of the grunt work off the full time team members.
That’s normal, any intern who thinks they have it down is only fooling themselves. Everyone has been in your shoes and expects that even if you’re a MIT honors student you still won’t know what’s going on. Ask questions and bond with the team, that’s the whole point. If they like you and you show you’re easy to get along with they’ll recommend you for any open jobs come graduation time.
I've led 5 different intern teams, and generally we expect them to know very little, and get very little done. If they do get something actually useful done that is a bonus! As long as you are listening and learning when you get responses to your questions, you are doing well. I much prefer people who ask questions than someone sitting in the dark hoping for the best. Just ask your lead what is the best way to ask your questions, some might prefer a tagup meeting every day, others via IM, others via email, just let them tell you the best way to engage so you don't burden them too much. Good luck, normally I've been really happy with my intern teams, it's exciting to see someone learning so many things that I take for granted after so many years.
This is common. Ask questions and give it your best shot
Be polite and engaged in what’s going on. Ask all questions you have. That’s all that’s expected of interns.
Good Interns ask questions, and follow up questions on those questions, then even more questions after you’ve dug through the work. If you don’t understand jargon or acronyms, just ask what they stand for or what it means. We live in a world of alphabet soup acronyms. No one expects you to do anything but pick up on things and learn this summer. Build good relationships with the team too. It helps in the long run
Sometimes nobody knows what the acronyms mean
"If someone offers you an amazing opportunity and you're not sure you can do it, say yes - then learn how to do it later." - Richard Branson
Everyone has to ask for help, especially with all this specialized rocket science stuff.
It's called imposter syndrome. I don't think you're unqualified as an intern. Enjoy your time and come back to us. If you're feeling like you're under qualified when you're a p3 or p4 then that's an issue....but you still got some years till you hit that.
I was useless for most of my internship and Co-Op. It takes time and you are there to learn, not to be a manager/leader. You know what you don’t know, take longer days and review stuff. Set yourself up for the future. My first 6-months of my job out of college was just question after question. I worked at one place for ~1.5 years and just started a new job as a gas engineer (I’m a mechanical engineer). Guess what I did the first 3 months (and still doing)? Asking questions, it’s how you learn and just take time to better yourself and prepare for future. In the end it’s a resume booster and gains you experience for full-time employment afterwards, best of luck!
Anyone tell me how it is working at the El Segundo location?
I have never seen an absolutely useless interns. You must at least know Microsoft office.