Are Eager Interns Exposing a Management Blind Spot?

Transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.

Hey folks, I am just leaving work. We're going to experience dev subreddit. This topic is on beeping. Uh it's on interns and this person said kind of the inverse problem we normally hear. How do you deal with an intern that seems very eager, like overly eager reaching out to ask about things? And so I thought this would be fun to talk through. feel like normally this conversation uh is around maybe people that are too quiet, not reaching out enough, not getting the help they need. And so we'll kind of look at things maybe from a a different angle. So I didn't read through the whole thread. I don't have it in front of my face. Um there a post was kind of like um I don't know if this is like a one-off thing. I'm assuming not. that I feel like people don't take to Reddit from uh maybe like a one-time thing like this.

So, I'm assuming there's a little bit more to it, but they end up saying that um you know, in their example, they told the intern that they would have something done by the end of the day. And uh throughout that time, the intern like reached out to them like four times or something to like ask for updates and stuff. And uh I guess like I said didn't read through the comments, but it sounds like some people had some thoughts on this and they tried to clarify a little bit more in their post. They said, "Hey, like just so you understand a little bit more, like I'm an individual contributor. I'm on a team of one. The intern is on a different team. Um and it seems like their manager there as in uh the intern's manager has set them up with some some work to do in this area.

I don't exactly understand how it overlaps um or has set them up with some work where this is a dependency um seemingly without consulting with this person is kind of how I am interpreting what's going on there. So it's a little bit of extra context think it should be fun to to talk through. Friendly reminder for folks if you want your questions answered on software engineering career development stuff leave them below in the comments or go to codemute.com. Let's see what we got going on. So, I say that this is a sort of inverse from the normal thing because I find um generally that we we experience the opposite problem where like new people don't reach out for help. They're not getting engaged. They're kind of uh they're shy. They don't want to bother people. They're too passive. They get stuck on things for a long time.

And um and it's kind of like shitty overall for everyone because the that new person is not getting the help they need. They're not getting the momentum built. Um and they're they're not asking questions so they're not learning and they just kind of remain stuck and they you don't end up kind of uh like working with others and and realizing that you have a team of people that that does want to help. Right? All right. So, this is the more common thing that I see. Uh, and it's not just interns. This could be new hires. It could be juniors. It could be even people that are more senior. And I think there's a lot of factors that can tie into that like working remotely, like maybe differences in culture, like uh like maybe level differences and things like that and personality, all this kind of stuff can really have an impact that way.

So, um, we usually see this. Now, I've definitely seen the opposite where people are very eager. Uh, and just I kind of want to start this by saying like I would literally much rather prefer someone is super eager and work through challenges that way. Uh, setting expectations and things like that. Sure, it might be a little awkward. That's fine. Um, we can work through that. But I think it's it's easier to it's easier to to navigate that than it is to try and coach someone like, "Hey, you need to be reaching out, asking for help more, like get unblocked." And I say that from like my own experience at least, right? I have found historically that uh like actions do speak louder than words in these cases. And if you have people that are not reaching out for help, getting engaged, like you can keep saying, "Hey, everyone wants to help." Like, you know, please do reach out, ask questions.

Um, you can keep saying it and a lot of the time like things don't really change until you take an action to proactively reach out to them on like a regular basis. So, it's just a lot more involved I find. So, sure, like maybe it's a little frustrating for this person because someone's reaching out, but I personally would much rather this kind of situation. Okay, with that out of the way, I think there's a couple of interesting dynamics going on here. Uh, one is we have an individual working relationship obviously with this this intern, this new employee, uh, and this this person who wrote the post. So, they have their working relationship. There's the working relationship between the the intern and the intern's manager. And then there's whatever working relationship is between the intern's manager and this person that wrote the post. Right? There's three people involved at least, but three that have been brought up.

And so, uh, I I'm assuming based on what's written here is like all three of these people have not sat down together and talked. That's how I'm interpreting this because I feel like if all three people had sat down and talked there'd probably be alignment between three people and now just because there's alignment between three people doesn't mean suddenly the intern gets less eager to ask for question or ask for status updates and stuff like that doesn't like air quotes fix that but at least gets some expectations set. So I think that would have been a helpful thing. So, I'm assuming that hasn't happened, but we got three different kind of things to look at here. Okay, let's let's kind of start maybe with the intern and the intern's manager. This is all speculation, right? I obviously don't have details on this. Let's get kind of lane change here.

Looks like there's going to be a metric ton of traffic, which is perfect. um between the intern and the intern's manager, the intern most likely told about their project, right? They have an understanding or at least one of an understanding of one of the requirements or um dependencies in this case. And so between the intern and the manager, hopefully the manager is setting expectations of what what this project is, what the deliverable is. Um giving them enough resources to be able to to get up and running, uh you know, the right contact to reach out to for help in this case or to to to get status from or or whatever that is. But we don't really know how the manager uh kind of set that up. Right. Like I said, certainly sounds like they didn't all sit down together. Uh we don't know if the manager uh gave a little bit of coaching for the the intern around this uh has if they're a new person like part of the team and stuff.

Um some guidance around that. We don't know if this is the intern's literally their first time working in a workplace as an intern. That would be my guess. I know that you can have multiple internships. I've done multiple internships as a as a student. So, um might not be their first time, right? Maybe just making this up, maybe they had an internship before and one of the pieces of feedback they received was like, "Hey, like you should reach out more, right? You should be asking questions and getting engaged, getting unblocked. Maybe they're leaning into that." Could be a lot of different things, but um point is it sounds like the manager kind of set up the intern to be able to go focus on something. and um we don't know exactly kind of what the what those expectations look like. Okay. So, is there a is there a super tight timeline?

Like was this manager saying like, "Hey, you know, um here are the milestones I expect you to meet." And this intern's looking at their first milestone being like, "Oh shit." like, well, if I'm waiting on Buddy to get whatever thing done, like, he's got to have that. He's got to have it done by the end of the day, or else there's no hope in hell that I'm going to finish this. So, you know, maybe he's not doing a great job communicating um you know, the urgency around this dependency uh and kind of letting that flow through and just being like, "Hey man, like what's up? What's up? Where's where's the status of this?" Um, this is not like a unique thing, right, to to interns. Like you see this sometimes with uh engineering managers do this. You'll have uh project managers do this. You'll have other engineers that aren't interns do this to each other.

And a lot of the time like this kind of feeling of like nagging or what might seem like micromanagement depending who it's coming from. A lot of the time this happens because of like there's other other details that you just might not be aware of and it feels really shitty because you're like, "Dude, like why are you doing this? Why are you communicating uh with me like this?" It's very frustrating, right? Come on, get in here. You're invited. Or not. Be an idiot. That's okay, too. It's uh at least 17 bus lengths in front of me in the next car, but up to you. Um, so when you don't have clarity on this kind of stuff, like you're kind of left to make assumptions about why people are thinking a certain way or or not even at all and you're just like it's annoying. But a lot of the time it's because of something else going on, right?

So maybe just to give you a handful of examples, maybe there is some urgency based on milestones for this intern. Maybe this intern has had prior experiences where they they don't want to look like they're not busy and this is the only thing they have to do and they're blocked and they can't do work. Um maybe I don't know. There could be a million reasons. But if this intern has never expressed this to the the engineer that wrote this post, let's go one more. Um yeah, like if if the interns never like clearly communicated this, they just end up seeming like they're, you know, being a pain in the ass to this person. Okay, which let let's talk about that working relationship now. So we have an intern that is depending on this engineer.

From this engineer's perspective, they they try to set an expectation where they said, "Hey, like I'll get back to you at the end of the day." And um unfortunately like you know they they attempted to communicate this and uh sure like message may be received but maybe message not fully understood or message received understood but like back to this urgency thing and milestones and timelines. Maybe the uh maybe the intern like wasn't able to communicate like man like that's not going to be okay. um and and they're panicking, but they're just kind of doing whatever they can to to reach out for status. The point is there is a communication gap here, right? And um and it's not to say like the the person who wrote this post did a bad job. I wouldn't say like the intern's doing a bad job. It's just like there's a communication opportunity here.

So to be clear, the way this person wrote the post, they weren't like screw this intern. They suck. I hate them. What a dummy. Like, it's not I don't interpret it like that at all. It just seems like they're like, man, like this is kind of kind of frustrating and like I'm kind of looking for how do I approach this without being an back to them, right? Like they want to be they want to be helpful. Can I get in front of this enormous truck? Please don't run me over. Thank you so much. Um, so I I think that they're, you know, they're trying to be aware of not being a jerk and they're just looking for some feedback on on what to do here. I'm going to be a little distracted because I got to get over one more lane uh before I can get into the fast lane.

And it's it's a it's a wall of cars. Oh, come on. I the bed on that. Come on. Okay, now we got to figure out my window down so I can Oh, well, that was less crazy than I thought it was going to be. I got lucky cuz someone was trying to get out of that lane. Okay. Um, communication, right? So, it's it's clearly breaking down and um I don't think it's one person's fault or anything like that, but I do think this person is being proactive and I think we have to come up with some messaging for like how do we how do we tell this person, right? And I I think it's good if this is early. I don't know if this is the first interaction like this they've had. My, like I said, my assumption is that it's not because I don't know, like it's only one day of asking some questions, but yeah, maybe they're already looking for guidance.

But if it's early in this working relationship, I think it's a great opportunity to try and be a little bit more clear with some expectations. And what I want to like, if you're still watching this and you're like, "Okay, well, I'm not dealing with interns, but like whatever, I'll listen." Like what I'm about to say is not specific to interns at all. It's just specific to like working with other people. So, back to what I said a little bit earlier around when people seem like they're nagging or it seems like they're micromanaging you um and people are asking for information and updates and stuff like that. A lot of the time this is driven from from something else and you're not you're not aware of the full picture and someone's sort of just trying to get their their done. Okay. So, it's with best intentions because that other person is just trying to do their job effectively, whatever that happens to be.

And you're kind of at this receiving end where it's not helping you get your job done effectively. In fact, it's either distracting you or bothering you, whatever, right? So, in situations like this, um, if you are the kind of person that's a little bit worried where you're like, I want to bring this up, but I don't want to like offend this person or like want to do it like in a nice way kind of thing. I think a framing that you can try to apply is like you're not telling someone screw off, I don't want to help you, I hate you, right? No one no one wants to say that. No one wants to come across that way. So, like you're not doing that, but like if you feel like telling them we got to talk about this is automatically going to put you in that situation.

The framing that you can try to apply is like, hey, like it seems like you're looking for information or it seems like you're after something and like I want to be able to help you. I want to make sure that I can help you in this situation. So, you're you're immediately taking it from like a a defensive thing where you're like, "Dude, like this really is getting on my nerves and like again, you're defending your own situation." You take it from that to like spinning it to like, "How can I help you?" Cuz I think if you I feel this way a lot of the time. I know lots of people do where you're like you want to clear things up without being confrontational, you can spin it to how do I how do I help you? And the framing there is like well is like clearly we have to get on the same page then right so then you can introduce cool like it seems like you're after updates.

That's why I said if it's a one day thing it's kind of maybe a little weird but you can say hey going forward like I want to be able to help you. So like what's a what's a good way that I can help you um get the information you're after um because and then you can kind of introduce the the challenge that you're facing. You can say like because it seems like you know you're asking for updates throughout the day and like um I'm not able to do that because of things I'm working on whatever else right and you can be transparent with them right like I don't have capacity to be able to do that or I'm I have meetings or I have other things that I'm focused on and like I want to be able to help you. So like maybe we should talk through like what's an effective way that I can help you, right?

Um, and then you could also say like, "Hey, I tried to clear up at the beginning of the day. I said, you know, I'd let you know by the end of the day." So, you could say, "This is my way of like trying to let you know my availability on this. Uh, but hey, like I'm trying I want to help you out. So, next time like what would be, you know, what what would work better?" And then you can try to meet in the middle on something, right? It might just be that this person like I don't know. I don't know the exact situation and how it panned out. Like did this intern just like forget that this person said the end of the day? Uh did the person who wrote the post were maybe somehow they actually weren't uh as clear about the end of the day thing as they think.

Maybe they I'm just making this up, right? Maybe they said, "I'll I got to work on some stuff today. I'll tell you later." And in their mind, they're like, "Dude, that's obviously the end of the day." And uh in hindsight, it's not really might sound silly to you, right? Cuz you're like, "How, Nick? That's really dumb. Like, how could if someone said they said end of the day, how did they not say the end of the day?" Um, you would be surprised. um the frequency where I've had conversations like this where um someone saying, "Hey, I told someone so and so and like it's not working." And I sometimes I get both sides of it and I'm like, "Hey, like let's maybe we should go back and actually see how you communicated that and then we can see maybe what we can do better next time." And then they'll go back and read what they wrote and they're like, "Oh like I actually didn't say that.

I didn't say it that way. right? Or here's what I said and then we talk through it and I'm like, "Ah, you could you see how this person interpreted it a different way and they're like, uh, yeah." Um, so I think sometimes, especially when we're getting frustrated by things, we can we can sort of misinterpret what we said even though we said it. Um, so when you reflect on it, you're like, maybe there is this opportunity to be more clear. So we don't actually know what happened in this situation, right? like exactly kind of just going by what this person said. But there is this opportunity where you can bring the conversation up if you're concerned about sounding abrasive, sounding like a jerk, whatever. Like I said, uh my suggestion to you is to frame it as, hey, I want to help you. So, it seems like you're after something.

You're you're after updates. You're blocked on whatever. um how can I help you do this next time better because and then here's my constraints or my restrictions and then that's where you're setting boundaries cuz I think that is the important part. I think the important part is that you are clear about boundaries and expectations, right? This is level setting expectations. It's not necessarily between you and your manager like I always talk about on this channel, but it's level setting expectations with other people and setting boundaries. That's the important part of having this conversation between these two people. I'm only bringing up the like, how do I help you thing if you have concerns about sounding like an to other people. If you don't have that concern and you're like, I don't need to like worry about that, then don't. That's cool. It's just, you know, one more tool if you find it helpful.

But the most important part is being clear about the boundaries. And again, this person, you know, they tried to communicate that in the first place. And you know, it's sometimes these things take a little bit more communicating. It's okay, right? People are human. It's like it's fine. And I I realize it might be annoying, but this is exactly why if you don't want it to become a problem, like go have the conversation sooner. I also understand that this is easier said than done for many reasons, right? Like as you know the more senior person in this in this scenario, you might be like it's not it's not my responsibility to like you know overcommunicate things to people. Like kind of frustrating this person didn't get it right away. And like I get it, but at the same time like they are an intern. So like maybe they just need a little bit more clarity.

Maybe they need a little bit more communication to clear these things up. It's okay. So that's most of what I wanted to talk about. I want to talk about um one other sort of angle on this cuz I said there's three people there's three relationships to talk about here. Um there is the the uh the working relationship between the person who wrote this post and the manager of the intern. Okay. So I had said that I think it would probably have been a good idea for all three people to sit down and talk together and in this scenario I would sort of put that expectation say on the manager. Okay. So the manager can say to the intern hey here's the project you have. Hey, you have this dependency on this other person and as a result like we should all sit down and get on the same page, make sure that we understand timelines and whatever else, right?

Priorities and things, like I said, feel like it didn't happen. So, let's talk about this working relationship between these two people. Um it's not like the first thing to mention is like we literally do not know because there is no context that's been provided. Um you know did this manager actually reach out to this person and communicate it on the side? Did that happen? Um and maybe like maybe this person is working on this thing because they did talk to this other manager. Um was there timelines set? Were there like were there expectations on milestones for this dependency? Like we don't really know. So unfortunately they're already in this situation. So maybe not a lot that we can like dwell on. That's fine. But okay, going forward. So let's say this person feels like they've done as good of a job as they can trying to communicate this kind of stuff to the intern.

Okay. And I want you to keep in mind we don't have to use the word intern here for sort of the advice and navigation of the scenario. You could say like another senior engineer. You could say another junior engineer. Whatever. Doesn't have to be an intern. So if this person has tried to communicate to the intern clearly like hey here are my boundaries. Hey I am working on this thing. I will communicate my status like as as I'm able to and you know here are the boundaries I'm setting for this if they feel that they've done that and that's not being respected. Um and this could look different right where in this example we're talking about giving updates. Uh this could be other types of interactions and you're setting boundaries that aren't being respected. So you can kind of take that however you'd like.

Um just think about other interactions you have with other people at work right so if that's not being respected then I think there's this opportunity where you're like okay like I have been trying I have tried to have this conversation set these boundaries okay like what who's their manager and like maybe clarifying things with them is the next step if you need help doing this depending on the severity of it how uncomfortable you are trying to have this conversation I do recommend that If you need support, like you can talk to your manager about it. Especially if you're like, "The situation's severe enough that you're like, "Man, it's like it's really causing me to like feel like I'm not getting my work done cuz I'm getting distracted, blah blah blah." Like maybe it's a good opportunity to bring that up to your manager, say, "Hey, by the way, this is going on." And if you need more support at that time, you can ask them for that support.

However, um if that's not the case, you don't really need like active support from your manager. I think we need to go talk to the other manager about this employee. And again, depending on your personality type, you don't have to go into things being like, "Oh man, I got to talk to someone's manager, so immediately that makes me an asshole." Um, you know, the whole point here is that you have boundaries that you're setting so that you can be productive in your role and like you acknowledge that someone else is trying to do their role effectively too. Okay? So, the outcome that we want is for both people to be successful in this, right? It's not like you're trying to tell some manager like, "Hey, it's all about me. Screw your employee. like they suck and I hate them and blah blah blah. It's like no, like you can go into this being like, hey, I'm trying to get my done here and like I have some of these constraints.

I've tried, you know, talking to this person about it and like I understand that they're maybe they're under some pressure or um you know, they're just trying to get their their work done effectively, but like you know, I've tried communicating this a few times and it seems like we're not really aligned on uh on what they feel they need to be successful. So, I wanted to talk to you about it because this is now causing me some type of whether it's discomfort, whether it's like stress, um, you know, just being honest about how that ends up affecting you. And you can frame all of that in a way that's not that person that reports to you is a piece of right? Like, it doesn't have to be anything like that. It's just you acknowledging that this other person is looking for help or assistance and then you acknowledging that you tried to communicate, you know, your boundaries and expectations and that's not really being met and then have that conversation with that person's manager.

Now, this is where um obviously I would hope a manager receiving a conversation like this can try to take some action. So they might be able to say, "Oh, like, hey, you know, I was telling the intern like this is the timeline for this. I was kind of setting up some milestones." Uh, maybe that manager realizes that they never really communicated that effectively to to the person, like maybe to the intern, they were pretty clear, but for the person who's the dependency, not so much. Or maybe the manager didn't realize that like um the timeline for getting whatever dependency figured out was going to take longer and they didn't give the intern anything anything else to do, right? like the this is where we can start uncovering some things.

And I would just hope that um the manager like takes that feedback seriously and tries to communicate to the person uh like the person who wrote this post in this case would you know communicate to them sort of the expectations they set for their intern. Try to clarify maybe the expectations that they're hoping that this person has. Um and then try to get some alignment that way. the I would say probably in a situation like this I I would probably expect that the manager has maybe some coaching opportunities for the intern right it could be very very simple too like hey you know it's actually great that you're reaching out to ask for help um you know uh urgency around this is actually like hey uh you know if that person's not as responsive or whatever, like maybe don't worry, like kind of readjusting the manager's expectations for the intern.

And if you're still blocked waiting, like here's some other things you could be doing. And like and hey, I recognize like you're trying to make progress on this and I appreciate that. Thank you. Um because it's like it it could be something where the interns is trying to make sure that they're perceived as like I'm trying to do a good job. I'm trying to do what I'm told uh and they're kind of overstepping some boundaries that someone said. But to me, if you are the individual here raising this concern to the manager, I think that could be a really good opportunity for the manager to do some coaching for the intern. Right? So if you have tried and that is always what I would recommend first is like you you try to take care of um you know improving your relations with other people. You try that first.

If you need support ask your manager for help but you try to take care of that first and then as necessary you know try to escalate if uh if things aren't really moving. Escalation does not have to be um you know as scary as you're potentially making it out in your head where you're like, "Oh god, I'm suddenly going to be an asshole." Um you know, it's it's all about how you approach the conversation. And if you genuinely are like, I want to help this person, but like it's it's kind of frustrating. It's not it's not working for me. If you genuinely want to help people, um, approach it that way, right? Like, start that way. I want to help. I want to help, but this, uh, this current situation's not not working, and I and I tried to set expectations. So, that's what I got to say about that.

I think it's important to think about all the parties involved. Um, I think it's important that you try to take on other people's perspective to understand where they're coming from. I do feel that the person who wrote this post was at least doing some of that. They're not they don't sound like they're trying to be a jerk. And I think that that's important because the more you do that, the more um you know, you might not totally understand why people are doing things and that's frustrating. And if you can try looking at um potentially their perspective, at least trying to understand it, that might help you feel less frustrated about something. doesn't mean you have to agree with it, right? That's there's a difference between agreeing with something versus trying to understand it at least. And I think that makes a really big difference when you're feeling frustrated.

So, those would be my recommendations. Um, I hope that helps. And just to kind of bring it back full circle, if you're an intern that's that's watching this or someone who's going for an internship, um, or you're just new to a a company, right? I would I would recommend that you I would m like much rather someone leans into asking too much or uh or whatever versus not like like cutting themselves uh cutting themselves off from the team, not not reaching out to ask for help, um all this kind of stuff. It's so much more challenging to uh to navigate that versus a situation like this where maybe you're asking a little bit too frequently and you didn't take a hint and might be a slightly awkward conversation where someone's like, "Hey, like slow down on that." Um, but like really that's the conversation's potentially pretty short.

So, I I would encourage you reach out, ask questions, get help, get unblocked. Like, please be proactive doing that. Air on the side of being too eager. Um, I think it's a much better position to be in. So, I hope that helps. um if you're kind of in a situation like this or you are the intern in a situation like this, lots of different things to think about. And uh friendly reminder, if you have questions you want answered, leave them below in the comments or you can go to codemute.com, submit questions there totally anonymously. And uh because I'm heading home to go do the live stream, there is a live stream every Monday, 7:00 p.m. Pacific on the Dev Leader podcast. It's also on other social media platforms where there's live streaming under my main alias, which is Dev Leader. So it's uh on LinkedIn. I guess that's under my own name.

So Nick Causantino on LinkedIn. It's on Twitter under dev leader, Twitch, kick, Instagram, depending on what it is. But today on the live stream, we're going to be coding stuff with the co-pilot CLI. Should be pretty fun. I probably won't put that to Instagram because watching a vertical video of coding is uh I think everyone's worst nightmare probably. Check that stuff out. I hope to see you in the next video. Take care.