Onboard your interns the same way you would onboard your engineers. At Joyous, the first two weeks are spent pairing and helping an engineer on the work they are doing.

This allows the intern to get familiar with: the codebase; the work that’s currently being progressed; and how the engineering team work together. This also gives the interns opportunities to ask lots of questions.

After their two weeks of pairing, the interns should be able to branch out and start to solve problems on their own. They continue to collaborate and check in with the engineers, but, they slowly transition into being more self-sufficient.

This does not mean the interns are given a bug list and sent on their merry way. Interns work on high impact problems that match their skill level so that they are always making a meaningful contribution.

“At no time are they working on something deemed unimportant.” Kevin Norris

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