Hey, everyone, I'm on come to Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cutrell, and in today's episode, we're talking about step four in the developer career roadmap. If you've been listening for the past week or week and a half, you know that we started the developer career roadmap. We took a quick break to have an interview, and then now we're back for step number four. And today's episode is incredibly important to everyone, even though it is pointed more towards the beginner developer. The developer career roadmap is built for developers at all stages of their careers. Of course, it is intentionally created to help developers in the earliest stages of their careers to build a plan and hopefully do it right from the beginning. The value of an internship for those people who are at the beginning of their careers, especially, can't be overstated in this podcast. The value of an internship is incredible, especially for those of you who are early stage developers. Let's define what an internship or really we're talking about entry level positions. Let's define what those are and then we'll go on to tell you how you should go about getting an internship. An internship is a working position at a company where you're given real tasks to accomplish the ad value to the company you are interning with. I'll take that a step further and say that those tasks are somewhat related to development in one way or another. Not all of the tasks you would be given as an intern will be directly related to coding. You may be given the task of looking over some data or possibly doing some things that everyone else doesn't really want to do. While that's frustrating, maybe as an intern, you have to recognize the value that the internship is providing you. With that said, if all you are given as an intern is a bunch of work that no one else wants to do, especially if it has nothing to do with programming, then you aren't really an intern. You aren't really making much progress as a developer. An internship is a working position at a company where you are given real tasks to accomplish. This means that you actually have responsibility in this company. The distinction of intern is primarily to designate, though, that the person holding this position doesn't have very much experience producing in a professional environment. In other words, if you're self-taught, if you haven't had a chance to actually do client work or build a product that a large number of people use, if most of what you've done is side projects, well, the distinction of intern is to designate that you have about that level of experience. You're using this opportunity to both learn from your peers, as an intern you want to learn from your peers, while simultaneously adding value to the company, even though you aren't going to add as much value as someone who has significantly more experience than you, it's not really a good internship if you never add value to the company. In other words, you aren't just observing. You aren't auditing your internship. You are actively involved and you have responsibility that is related to your skill set that's related to some kind of programming skill. Now, again, I want you to notice that I'm using the word intern kind of loosely here. This could also apply to an entry-level job, although some of the things that we talk about today will be more intern specific. For example, an internship usually has a set amount of time, a terminal period, like a three month, like an over the summer internship. Those things will apply primarily only to internships. There are certain job opportunities that act as trial opportunities at Whiteboard. We do that. Essentially, that's a part of our hiring process. We like to give someone the opportunity to work with us and really understand our company and us, understand them as a person and as a worker before we make a longer term commitment. There's really a range of things that today's episode can apply to. We're going to use the term intern to describe those things for the sake of today's episode. There are many reasons internships are such an important opportunity, so important, especially for those of you who are in early stages of your career. We'll talk about two here, but there are plenty more that we've discussed in previous episodes. When we talk about hiring and that kind of thing, I want to keep this part short so I can give you a little bit more practical advice for the internship itself rather than convincing you to pursue an internship. Hopefully, the rest of Developer Teapreviously has convinced you that an internship is worth your time and worth your effort. Definitely go back and listen to those episodes if you have any more thoughts or would like some more clarification as to the value of internships. The first reason it's so important is because it is a low stakes environment. We talk about low stakes environments on the show all the time, specifically with relation to learning. Learning is so important when you are going through that learning cycle that we talked about in step three that really goes throughout your entire developer career. We talked about learning needing a low stakes environment because you need the opportunity to fail. Now most internships are a fixed term and generally they require you to simply show up. They require you to be in the office for in whatever amount of time, whether it's a full-time internship, which by the way, I prefer that you do a full-time internship. If it's a shorter internship, most intern requirements are to simply show up. Now that means it's a great opportunity for you to exceed those requirements and the average internship has a lot of latitude for failure because your employer generally knows that they can't expect a high level of output from someone at an intern experience level. Use the internship as an opportunity to exceed the expectation by showing up, by doing good work, by failing and learning and documenting that learning, going through that process of actually doing the work, doing that learning cycle that we talked about, internships are really good for that because you don't have a lot of responsibility to deliver something and the consequences for failure are generally relatively small. The second reason internships are so important, and these are really the two big reasons. One is a huge opportunity to learn. And number two, for your career, this is the epitome of a foot in the door. It is the epitome of a foot in the door. An internship should, by no means, be taken for granted as a perfect on-ramp for a job at the company you intern for. Let me say that again. If you get an internship at, let's say, Google or another large company that you kind of dream of working for, you should absolutely not take that as a real job opportunity. You shouldn't take that as a given that now you've been hired by Google. However, you should view the internship as an extended, multi-day interview. Think about that for a second. How would your tone and attitude and your approach change if every day you showed up for your internship? You instead showed up with the mindset that this was an interview. You have the opportunity to model the real-world working environment in front of the people that you want to work for. You have the opportunity to model the real-world working environment in front of the industry you want to work in, which means that the stress of the two-hour interview of trying to impress somebody in those two hours, that's replaced by the longer-term opportunity to prove yourself as a good worker. These are two drastically different mindsets, drastically different opportunities. In my opinion, an internship gives you the full opportunity to prove your value, prove your worth, and ultimately get your foot in the door. That is such an important reason that you should have an internship. Make sure you're focusing on those two things when you are going through this perhaps painstaking process of finding an internship. I'm going to shift gears and talk about some advice I have for you while you're looking for an internship. Ideally, you want to do your internship with a company you would like to end up working with in the future. Perhaps going from an internship, transitioning into a longer-term opportunity with that company. As we said before, don't take it for granted that you're going to do that, but instead view it as an opportunity. View it as an extended interview. If you can work it out to get paid enough to cover your bills at this, in other words, if you can work it out such that the company you are interviewing for will provide you compensation enough that you can pay your bills. Then go full time. This is a very easy decision. In the short period of your internship, if you can get your expenses covered in order to go full time, however that needs to happen other than going into debt, I highly recommend going full time. There's many reasons for this. One of these is that your flexibility goes through the roof when you only have one thing to focus on. When you don't have competing priorities, when your schedule can be flexible both in the morning and the afternoon, this is hugely valuable. I would say it doubles the value of your internship. I don't have a good metric for that. I'm just pulling that out of thin air, but I would say it is incredibly important if you can at all possible not working anywhere else during your internship, that's what I would recommend that you do. Of course, this is probably going to mean that you're going to need to cut your budget back. Remember this is an investment. This is the early part of your career. It's not for forever, it's just for the time that you're in an internship. You don't need to be afraid to share this financial situation that you have and your goals with your boss. And simultaneously, you don't need to walk in expecting the internship to pay an industry standard salary either. Remember this, every internship is a mutual investment. When you work as an intern, the quality level and output of work you do is going to be significantly less than someone with much more experience than you. This isn't a bad thing. This is just a function of time. Eventually, if you stick to it, your quality level and your output will go up. It will match and perhaps exceed those that you once worked as an intern next to. What does this mean? Well, it means that the company you are interning for, they can't really count on the work you do to generate a large profit. And therefore, it wouldn't really make sense for an internship to be compensated as if it does create a large profit. Those are a great opportunity, though, for a company to invest in the learning process from an early stage. This means that you don't have to unlearn bad habits. You've probably heard that phrase before. And ultimately, it can work as a great hiring and a recruitment tool. So understand this is a mutual investment. It is not one-sided. You are not giving up everything and they are giving up nothing and vice versa. They're not giving up everything for you and you shouldn't expect them to. And once you have secured a position, and let me be very clear, this may take some time and it may take quite a few interviews, it may take some leveraging relationships of the people you have around you. If you're in school, definitely ask your advisors, ask your fellow students, ask them how they got their internships or to put in a good word for you. All of this is going to help you achieve that internship. But once you have that internship, you need to have these three specific focuses in mind. Three specific focuses. Number one is practical experience. Very straightforward. A lot of what you will study in any self-study program will teach you a mix of practical skills and theory. But in reality, those practical skills are not going to be practiced until you're on the job, until you're in a real scenario. In a realistic scenario on the job, you will face new and unique challenges that will teach you lessons that you carry for the rest of your career. It will form the way you think and it will inform the way you think for the rest of your career. As in every step of your career, this is just another phase of the learning cycles. Remember, practical experience. That's number one in the three focuses that you should have. Number two is personal relationships. Don't skip this and don't fast forward this particular point. In fact, listen to this one twice. Business has always been and will always be dependent on human relationship. In fact, I would say that business only exists to support human relationship because human relationship is the source of all trade, is the source of the market. We must have relationship with other humans in order to have value that makes sense for another human. I create value in one area and another human creates value in another area, but we can't exchange that value without having relationships. This is basic economics. We have to have human relationship for market to exist and the market exists. Therefore, your job exists. If you can't learn how people work and how to cultivate relationships with those people, your career will always be stunted. Think about that for a second. Your capacity to work well with people is always going to determine your capacity in your career. Learning a relationship means finding common ground and learning about each other's interests and ultimately serving each other. This means that relationship is about serving each other rather than being self-serving. That means you need to be thinking about what other people need more often that you're thinking about what you need. This goes for everyone, whether you're in an internship or not, but cultivating relationships is something that will go throughout the rest of your career. It's incredibly important at the beginning of your career to begin that cycle of cultivating relationships. Those relationships will be valuable to you, not simply because you want to gain a level up in your career. Of course, that's important. But because relationship is the foundation of a good career in general. Three focuses. Number one was practical experience. Number two is personal relationships. Number three is higher ability. As an intern, your goal is to create enough value for the people around you that they don't want to let you leave. I'm going to say that one more time. If you're taking notes, underlying that one's circle, it's star it, do whatever you have to do. As an intern, your goal is to create so much value for the people around you, for the company you are working with or for the client that you're working with that they don't want to let you leave. When your internship is up, they want to keep you. They don't want you to leave. This often simply means asking those around you how you can serve them best. This goes back to that relationship thing, right? Your higher ability just so happens to be increased when you can have good relationships with people. When you can ask the people around you how you can serve them best, how you can help them best, how can you help them today? How can you do to maximize the efforts of your teammates? This is ultimately the epitome of leadership, the idea that you are going to empower those around you to move forward. If you are only leading the way, then you're leaving other people behind. As an intern, your best efforts will be in empowering the people around you, serving the people around you, helping them do what they do best even better. Ask what you can do to be the most effective intern that you can be at the start of your internship. Do this from day one. Ask for regular feedback. Make sure you listen. Take notes. Continuously act on those pieces of feedback that you receive. To find the expectations, you can exceed. Always be looking for ways to exceed expectations. And the things that you will be explicitly told, those things that you're going to ask about, you can also look for your teammates' pain points and the businesses' pain points and take every opportunity to eliminate those pain points. Don't wait for permission to do great things as an intern. Let me say that one more time. Don't wait for permission to do great things as an intern. And in fact, that applies to every level of your career. Every single job title you hold. Don't wait for permission. Take leadership and do something great. Usually that's something great is going to be helping someone else. It's going to be empowering the team to do something that they do well even better. Remember, as an intern, your goal is to create enough value for the people around you that they don't want you to leave. What this means is that the moment that you are getting ready to pack up and leave your internship, whenever the summer is over, those people are going to have a conversation. The people that you worked with are going to have a conversation. If you work in such a way that you leave people with the impression that they don't want you to leave, they're going to have a conversation and start talking about how they can keep you. They're going to talk about how they may be able to hire you in the future. And if you ask them for a recommendation to a different company, well, they're much more likely to give a positive recommendation if you provided them value in the past. So once again, three focuses, practical experience, personal relationships, and finally, higher ability. All of this comes down to being so valuable that they don't want to let you go. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. I hope that this will help you in your internships, no matter what stage you're in in your career, in your internships, or in your first job, or even in your last job. Hopefully this can clarify how you can become really a better worker in general, right? But also how you can become more hireable, how you can become more valuable to the company that you work for. Thank you so much for listening. We did not have a sponsor for today's episode. So I'm going to take this moment to say thank you to you, the people who listen to this show. Sponsors are an incredible part of what we do at spec, but the people who listen to this show, you are really where the value is generated. And I'm so thankful that you take the time to listen to Developer Teaon a regular basis. You know, we're just over 300 episodes. And I couldn't be more thankful for all of you. Thank you so much for listening on a regular basis to this show, if you would like to listen and this is your first time, if you want to become one of those people who listens on a regular basis, make sure you subscribe and whatever podcasting app you use, you'll get the rest of the Developer Career Roadmap in the coming episodes of Developer Tea. So thank you again so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea.