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Internship Pilot: Program structure

  • Determine duration of the internship
  • Determine timing of the program
  • Decide on all-remote vs timezone alignment vs co-located cohort
  • Define the criteria for teams to be able to request an intern slot
  • Define expected day-to-day activities for interns (skeleton outline)

Outcome

Duration and timing

A priority for the pilot program is attracting promising university students who are nearing graduation. Therefore, we are choosing dates that align with university academic calendars.

The pilot program will be nine weeks starting 2020-06-15 until 2020-08-14.

Location

The internship program will primarily be remote, with two weeks of co-location working.

  1. Week 1: Intern Fast Boot - Amsterdam
    • The interns will gather in Amsterdam for kick-off and a week of onboarding
  2. Weeks 2-8: Remote internship
    • Interns will work remotely in their assigned team
  3. Week 9: Intern send-off - San Francisco
    • The interns will co-locate for their final week in San Francisco to process their experience and socialize with each other
  4. GitLab Contribute Invite
    • We will extend invites to the interns to attend Contribute in March 2020.

Internship day-to-day activities

  1. Week 1: Intern Fast Boot
    • The program coordinators and mentors will facilitate a pre-defined program. The aim is to onboard the interns, prepare them for their seven weeks of remote working, and set them up for success.
  2. Weeks 2-8: Remote internship
    • An intern's daily schedule will generally reflect how GitLab team members work, which is to say we will not impose a rigid schedule.
    • Interns will be encouraged to favor async communication and to set their own work schedule.
    • Mentors and program coordinators will provide coaching if an intern needs help in adjusting to remote work.
    • Interns will participate in the following pre-determined activities
      • Weekly 1:1 with their manager
      • Weekly 1:1 with a mentor
      • Weekly 1:1 with an internship program coordinator
      • Weekly intern coffee chat
      • 2-3 group meetings per week moderated by the program coordinator.
      • Regular pair programming sessions with a mentor and other team members.
  3. Week 9: Intern send-off
    • The program coordinators and mentors will facilitate a pre-defined program. The aim is to process the experience, gather feedback, and share learnings.

Criteria for teams requesting an intern

GitLab teams are be able to apply for an intern to join their team.

Applications get evaluated on the following criteria:

  1. Mentorship
    • Does the team have a manager and 1-2 engineers willing to serve as mentors for the duration of the program?
    • Do the mentors have previous experience mentoring interns or junior engineers? Previous experience is a nice-to-have, but not a must-have.
  2. Workload
    • Does the team have a roadmap containing low weight issues with few dependencies suitable for an intern?
  3. Team Size and maturity
    • How established is this team? Will they be able to take on an intern without risking a decrease in velocity?

The Program coordinators, VP of Engineering, and the HR Business Partner for Engineering will evaluate the applications.

Edited by Jean du Plessis