Inspired by Fog Creek’s summer intern program, for the last few years we’ve (occasionally) thought about a summer intern program at Oasis Digital. We’ll going to try it out this summer, with a single intern; a more substantial program is possible in the future.
Serious Work
When some people hear (or say) the word intern, they imagine someone who makes copies and fetches lunch. Perhaps in some work cultures that is helpful, but here we have in mind serious work. Our interns will work on serious work:
- Projects that are helpful to our company operations
- Exploratory programming, to try out ideas that don’t yet warrant commercial attention
- Open Source programming, such as improvements to tools we use
- Perhaps even a few bits of our real customer projects
The kinds of work could include…
- writing software
- testing software
- reading and writing about software
- marketing work around the software
Twofold Purpose
The purpose and goal of our internships will be:
- Educate and enlighten the intern
- Hopefully also create something useful to Oasis Digital and its customers
Paid vs Unpaid Internships
Many companies are eager to get free help from interns. But it’s clear from a few minutes research that a for-profit company with an intern working on potentially valuable project, must pay. Therefore, we will only offer paid internships.
Location
The internship work will be conducted at our at Oasis Digital office; interns must live in the St. Louis metro area.
Can I Apply?
Sorry – No. We’ve already selected an intern for our trial-run 2011 program. If we decide to continue and expand it for 2012, it will be announced in the spring (of 2012).