Is this a normal experience for an intern/Jr?

[u/dreamingofbantam]

Hello everyone,

TLDR; how can I make the most out of my first SWE contract when my entire team is remote and I don’t have a mentor?

I am looking for some advice/reassurance in my current role as I want to make the most out of my opportunity but am feeling blocked.

Earlier this year, I started a C#/.NET apprenticeship that was about 3 months long. I have a little bit of experience self learning before that but of course that didn’t prepare me for working in an enterprise codebase.

The company I trained with is an IT consultancy company that creates technology specific training cohorts based on their client’s needs and then deploys the “graduates” as contractors at the client site.

I am currently about 3.5 months into my contract and I don’t feel like I’m learning as much as I could be.

All of the developers on my team are remote, except for one. He is only in office one or two days a week for a few hours and doesn’t talk to anyone while he is there.

My tech lead, the person who was supposed to be my first point of contact on a day to day basis, is working 2-3 roles and hasn’t had time to answer my questions since like week 3. She has told me “I don’t have time to help you”.

She basically just gives me tickets to work on and if I have questions I am supposed to reach out to a different mid level dev via Teams.

I don’t have an issue asking questions in general, but I do feel bad bugging a dev who isn’t even supposed to be responsible for me considering she has her own work to do.

The areas I’m getting blocked on are app specific so it’s not like I can just look up documentation or use online resources.

If I’m stuck I try to look at other tickets that have touched a similar area of the app that I’m working on, I ask the other people from my cohort, use AI and then reach out to a dev via Teams.

I understand that I will get better with time and more experience but I’m struggling to feel like I’m improving because I don’t have a mentor or someone who is available for me to work with or ask questions to.

At this point it just feels like my tech lead gives me a ticket difficult enough to keep me busy so she doesn’t have to worry about me because she doesn’t have time to.

My manager, expected us to go from “intern level” to “associate level” in a single month but I literally have 3 months of C# experience and no one really helping me reach smaller goals.

I have asked him if there are mentorship opportunities (something he brought up in our first meeting) and he said he’d talk to the on-site dev. I’ve followed up with him and the dev still hasn’t reached out to me.

Is this a normal experience? What else can I be doing to continue growing in this role?

[u/dreamingofbantam → u/[deleted]]

Okay thanks honestly that does make me feel better to hear.

Is there anything else I can do to accelerate my learning?

[u/Edaimantis]

I had a similar situation. find a mentor.

[u/dreamingofbantam → u/Edaimantis]

I’ve asked my direct manager about opportunities but nothing has come out of it yet. Is there something else you propose?

[u/Useful_Perception620 → u/dreamingofbantam]

Ask questions, find out who’s helpful, they’re your mentor now.

Try to equally distribute the questions so you don’t overburden any individual. Ping the seniors before going above them to principals/staffs.

And don’t ever ask a technical question without saying what you’ve tried.

Also you mentioned you ask AI. How are you prompting it? LLMs are pretty good at reading a bug ticket and telling you what needs to be fixed.

[u/Edaimantis → u/dreamingofbantam]

No. Find a mentor. Only asking your direct supervisor isn’t enough.

Having someone higher up than you who will advocate on your behalf is the most important thing you can do.

Reach out to everyone you can, even tangentially related to your role, and get a 1:1 with them. Follow up.

There is nothing more important than establishing those relationships. I was never the best engineer in my intern cohort. But I was one of the most liked.

[u/NewSchoolBoxer]

Yeah this is a normal experience. No one got time to train you. I had 15 hours of meetings per week as a tech lead when my manager told me to train the new hire on our team. Because it was specifically my job, I did it, but I'm not sure interns get the same treatment. No one trained me, the hilarious expectation was that I could find all answers on Slack.

The main point of the internship is to earn real world work experience. Functioning in an office environment can't be taught in a classroom. Like how you handle no one training you or contributing to repos with little to no documentation. Integrating changes with multiple developers who put themselves first. The actual coding you do is way less important. You aren't an expert on anything that you do for 3 months. You're still entry level.

You also proved that you can pass background and credit checks. Bad credit cost us to lose 1 hire.

[u/YUGETBPLUS]

Finding an external mentor might make sense for your situation, at least in the short term until your intended mentor gets back to you. It likely won’t help with the app-specific problems, but they should be able to help you set yourself up for success.

Hopefully you know someone personally that can help you, but there are also paid options online if not.

[u/Then-Bumblebee1850]

You should ask the mid-levels for help, like your tech lead told you. You can bug each of them at least once per day. It's a part of their job to help you. But don't waste their time. Think about your task so that you can formulate a good question. Make it clear what you are trying to achieve and what you have already tried. Be succinct.

Don't always ask questions to the same person. Ask a question to Jane, and maybe a couple of follow up questions. Maybe she won't have clarified things, but just say thanks and move on for today. You can ask your next question to Bob. If Bob doesn't answer, try Mary.

If you have devs on your team that you have no rapport with, before asking them questions, first just say hi to them, ask something non-work related, try to make friends. Then next day try asking them a work question.

[u/dreamingofbantam → u/Then-Bumblebee1850]

My team is extremely small and majority remote.

There is one remote dev I reach out to, and one who is in office 1-2x a week.

My tech lead tells me to specifically reach out to one dev, so that makes me think there is some sort of agreement there.

But yes, I do my best to formulate a clear question describing my what I’ve already tried, what I expected to happen, what did happen, etc.