Outreachy ended last month. Given this was the first time the kernel team has tried to do this, I think it went well. I’ve been reflecting on what makes an internship successful based on this past summer and other experiences.

  • Mentorship takes time. It needs to be accounted for when agreeing to mentor. Life happens and you can’t predict your time perfectly but if you have doubts about your ability or willingness to commit, err on the side of not mentoring. “rock-paper-scissors you get the intern” or “surprise you are mentoring1” are very bad ways to start off a mentoring experience.

  • Mentorship is a skill. I don’t always get it right but I work on getting better every time. I ask for help with mentoring skills the same way I would ask for help with a technical question.

  • An internship is about learning. Work should be getting done but part of the outcome of an internship is skills for the intern. Don’t tie intern deliverables to crucial deadlines.

  • When I mentor an intern, I consider it one of my most important tasks. An intern is going to have exactly one chance at this experience. I think of this as a temporary management role in that it’s my job to enable them to be successful and make the most of the experience 2.

  • Have a plan set up. Set goals and outcomes and have a schedule of when things will be completed. The schedule may change, but you should have one in mind.

  • Learn to give clear feedback and evaluate progress. There is no formula for this (I’ve asked!) but you need to have some way to judge whether adequate progress is being made and if not, what is causing issues. Both mentor and mentee should be on the same page about how much progress is being made.

  • Set up regular meetings at the beginning of the internship to check in and see how things are going. Schedule more than you think you need until you are sure things are going well. It’s much better to cancel meetings you don’t need than not realize something is going wrong. Ask your mentee how they think things are going and if they want to meet more/less.

  • Know what it takes to be successful for the project. Programs like Outreachy give a lot of leeway in projects. This means you need to be specific about what kind of skills are needed. Set your application tasks to be able to gauge if applicants can complete the tasks successfully. Know that aiming a project at a 1st/2nd year student will take different mentoring skills from a project for an almost new grad.

  • Communicate why the project is important and how the work is going to be used after the internship is over. Everyone wants to know that the work they are doing is valuable in some way.

  • Choose your tasks carefully. Tasks with a specific goal but multiple ways to solve are best. Too open ended tasks can be frustrating for all involved but there should be some chance for decision making. Just giving a list of tasks and exactly how they should be completed isn’t good for learning. Give your intern a chance to propose a solution and then review it together.

  • Speaking of review, code review is a skill. Model how to respond to code review comments. Encourage interns to practice reviewing others code and ask questions as well.

  • Problem solving should be a discussion. Ask what they are stuck on and how they think they should try and solve it. Don’t just give the answer right away, debugging skills are valuable everywhere and internships are a great opportunity to spend time digging into a problem and really solving it.

  • At the same time, be ready to jump in and help. Making slow progress is okay, getting stuck is not. Learning how and when to ask for help is an important skill so be on the look out for interns who still need to develop this skill. Anticipate what could be trouble points and have a plan to mitigate if the intern doesn’t have a good solution.

  • Model the change you want to see in the world. There’s nothing like having a new person around to make you think about what you could be doing better. Show the best of yourself and your community/company.

  • Follow up on their work post internship. Share with others what was accomplished. Have a plan how it’s going to be finished or used.

a mentor.” Not my finest hour.

think I can actually do the management parts properly. When you screw up people management, you are screwing up something much more fundamental and important than anything technical. This colors a lot of what I wrote here.

  1. Okay, it was more like “How did this conversation result in me becoming ↩

  2. I’ve vowed to never accept a full-time management position unless I ↩