On Interns and Daft Punk

So, I'm actually going somewhere with this.

Start the video (for the sound), then keep reading.




I love having interns. I had (I have a spreadsheet) 24 interns over the course of the seven years I was at my last job. That's a lot of interns.

Some interns were bloody brilliant. Some were, frankly, drains on my time.

I miss having interns.

I'm trying to work on getting one maybe sometime ever again...

Anyway, by now the song should be going (you did press the big play button, right?) and I can talk about what LCD Soundsystem has to do with interns.

The song is basically the intern/mentor experience distilled.

You got to set them up boy.

The better the intern, the better the assignment.

I’ll show you the ropes, kid, show you the ropes

The worse the intern, the less creativity and independence they were given.

All the furniture is in the garage

Every intern was assigned to read segments of Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think (I told Steve Krug this once, he objected to the phrase "force fed.")

You got the set them up, set them up

So, reports I've written 6,549 times? They aren't interesting to me anymore. Give them to the intern! (Teaching point? There's more to this than pretty pictures).

I bought fifteen cases for my house, my house

Have meeting number 435 of the month? Mix it up, take the intern! (Teaching point? What a meeting in a job where no one wears name tags is like.)

There’s a freak out brewing in my house, my house

Need a usability test subject? Intern! (Teaching point? Take home Don't Make Me Think.)

You got the set them up, set them up

Need to write a memo? Intern! (Teaching point? Don't ask interns to write memos unless you want to edit them 11,435 times.)

No never, never, never let them go

Sometimes, yes, the intern gets the crap task.... but only the crap task I've done myself 4,324 times. Looking up interesting facts for the intranet comes to mine. (7 years x 52 weeks/year x 5 facts a week = too many damn facts.) (Teaching point? Someday you can make your intern look up these. Or maybe, "effortless looking things can require a lot of damn work.")

I love interns, but don't make them make copies.

My coworkers used to mock the interns--- me and my herd of ducklings -- but there's a lot of work that got done that would have never been done otherwise.

I’ll show you the ropes, kid, show you the ropes