Hi everyone. I just started a new internship I work in IT, and am paid 25 an hour with a bonus that is supposed to pay out later this month. Anywho - I was told my hours were 9-5, and my boss even said working 7-3, or even 8-4 was fine as well, just somewhere along those lines. My team doesn’t come in until maybe 10-10:30, and we all go on lunch at around 12, where we all take lunch for 2-3 hours, returning to the office sometime around 3, and then work until 4 where everyone pretty much goes home. Most of them are working 2-3 hours a day MAX. I had a talk with my boss, asking if these long lunches are okay, and he said to just record them as 30 minute lunches, and that I don’t need to be working a full 8 hours. Just make sure I am getting paid for as such. While we are out at these lunches, my boss encourages us to loosen up, and have a few drinks.

I am not sure if I just scored the best internship ever? Or is this normal in office culture? I am not a drinker at all, so I felt a little uncomfortable as I was worried about making a bad impression. This is my first “office” job as I have only worked retail and fast food previously. I almost feel as if I am committing time theft. Thank you everyone in advance for responding. :) [Edited some sections for anonymity]

I am gonna laugh at it because if I don’t I will cry. Apparently the company has been mistaking me for this one person, and come the end of the internship, they wanted to extend her throughout the school year but sent the offer letter and contract to ME. WITH MY NAME AND EVERYTHING!! A Docusign contract that I ALREADY SIGNED.

They admitted their mistake and are working on rectifying it. But holy crap talk about disappointment.

I'm from UWaterloo, 3 SWE internships, all return offers.

Wanted to share some learnings that helped me get a return offer 1 month before my internship even ended.

1. Do side quests without asking for permission from your manager.

- Expectations. You don't want to give the impression that you have too much time on your hands, because you'll be asked to do more tickets (ew)

- Side quests are why the company hires you in the first place. Or "innovation". They don't want you to just do tickets. Claude can do that.

- Your manager should hear about your side quests providing some sort of value from elsewhere. That spike of surprise will leave an impression. Not "this guy did his assigned tickets".

2. How to get Side quests: coffee chats.

- Book the team member's calendar directly, then Slack/Teams a quick message. Start with your immediate team, then as you get more comfortable, move onto other people.

Example: I started with other senior devs, then staff engineer, then PMs, head of design, and even head of social media. Each brought me a new problem I could try tackle.

- Use your coding agent's mcp to find information about each person before you book the call, to find something interesting about them that you can bring up.

Example: paste into ChatGPT: "use the atlassian mcp and slack mcp to find me information about this person and 3 high value questions I can ask in an upcoming 1 on 1, with the goal of solving problems for them and learning from them."

3. Do High Visibility Things

- We have this weekly demo thing. I demoed at every single one of them except for the first one, when I was onboarding.

- It doesn't matter how small your "project" is, as long as you can justify the problem you see, and the potential impact of it, you're chilling.

Example: I built a PR babysitter dispatcher to handle CI failures across repos. I built an onboarding script because I got too annoyed at the onboarding process so I wanted to automate it.

Other examples of high-visibility: Being in the Slack/team channels and asking/answering questions, consistently. Soon enough people will see you being everywhere and, that's the impression of a high-performing individual.

Conclusion:

- Do all of these without compromising your actual task. But I see people say they have nothing to do for weeks, which is why doing things like I mentioned above could be helpful.

Anyway, best of luck everyone on the return offers and new internship offers!

- HungryChungi

I see a lot of posts from people who are unhappy in their internships, and most of the comments tell them to just “suck it up” or stick with it because they’ll learn new skills.

I wanted to share a different perspective.
I recently graduated with a degree in marketing and accepted a marketing internship. After three weeks, I quit.

Toward the end of college, I started losing interest in marketing. The work began to feel repetitive, and I felt like I was just checking off tasks that consisted of building campaigns, creating content, nurturing leads, and chasing metrics—without finding much meaning in them. I know that’s the purpose of marketing, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, but I realized it just wasn’t for me. I wanted a career where I could feel more present and where I felt like I was directly helping people.

During those three weeks, I felt completely lost and uninterested. Every day made me feel more certain that I wasn’t on the right path, so I quit.
Do I regret it right now? No. Could I regret it in the future? Maybe.

For context, I’m not promoting laziness—I have a job, and I’m still figuring out my career. I also understand the value of internships and the opportunities they provide to learn and grow professionally. But if you know something truly isn’t for you, don’t force yourself to wake up every morning doing work that makes you unhappy. Sometimes walking away is what gives you the chance to find something that’s a better fit.

Same as the title

tomorrow is my last day of a 3 month internship, and i'm overthinking how i should leave.

for some context, this was my first corporate experience. unfortunately, my manager has been away for the past month and still hasn't returned due to an emergency, so i won't get to say goodbye to him in person.

this also wasn't the most structured internship. some weeks i had work to do, but on many days i genuinely had nothing assigned to me, even when i asked for work, especially while my manager was away. most days i just sat at my desk unless someone gave me something to do.

there was one employee who too the time to teach me, explain the the workflow, and answer all my questions. he was always kind to me and was the only person who greeted me and talked to me every day. i honestly learned most of what i know from him, so i definitely want to thank him personally before i leave.

the rest of the team is where i'm unsure. we all sit together in a small open office with about six people, but i barely interacted with anyone else. they weren't unfriendly, but we rarely spoke. they mostly interacted with each other, so giving everyone a personal goodbye now feels awkward and out of place. at the same time, walking out without saying anything feels rude, especially because when i thank the coworker who helped me, everyone else in the room will inevitably hear it.

tomorrow i'm planning to thank the coworker who helped me, meet the head of the department before i leave, and ask hr about an internship certificate.

what would you do in this situation? is there anything else you think i should or shouldn't do on my last day?

Fucked up in a minor way today but it was so stupid that it shouldn’t have happened at all. Feeling pretty shitty and would like to know that I’m (hopefully) not alone.

Pretty much the title: Took my 7 months to get a summer internship and I was super happy to get an offer from a very popular advertising and marketing firm in Manhattan. My managers are super nice but they are the busiest people on Earth. They just gave me light work like checking Excel and Smartsheets so I can have the gist. That’s it. This is my 3rd week and I still don’t have a project🥲🫩

Oh before you say it: I asked them not once, but TWICE that If they ever needed my help, please loop me in, anything! I am more than happy to learn and do it. Other than that I’ll be chilling and looking at those spreadsheets.

I mean I don’t want to come off as complaining. I’m really grateful for this opportunity but I’m really scared that they think I’m a lazy kid in the office. I really want to come back post grad (i graduate in Dec) and work for them and I’m really trying my best. My manager even asked if I was willing to come back to NY after graduation but I’m really unsure if she was just having a casual convo or being serious.

I brought my personal laptop to the office today and start applying for Fall internships lol because I can’t keep rotting without doing anything

But really I just want to prove my performance and ability to them, and really show them that I’m genuinely interested in working in this company its really my BIGGEST flex 😭

Edit: Bro i just got home and saw this TikTok i guess im cooked (it’s number 3 ) :) https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTBqFGX7a/

I’ve been doing a co -op with them since January and this summer it continues to full time, but I walked into our office.

They got name tags for the other interns and not me. To make matters worse, the have a whiteboard up front celebrating people or whatever and I read it:

Celebrating ALL finance interns EXCEPT ME!! most of my team doesn’t know me because my manager never introduced me or anything. WTH I’m so sad. I come in person too yet people still don’t know me!!

It’s my first week at my internship and I recently attended a corporate event where they had some food. I took two plates of food when I attended this event. I’m a hungry person and lowkey wanted more but I stopped myself. I stopped myself because I do not want to make it look like to ppl that I do not get fed at home or something (I do get fed at home btw). So my question, is how many plates of food is acceptable at a corporate event?

Wanted to share this so other students don't walk into the same situation.
I joined Zettawise Consulting Pvt. Ltd. as a "Cybersecurity Intern" on 10th August, referred in through a personal connection with the CEO, who verbally told me the stipend would be ₹10–15k/month. Nothing in writing at that stage — I took it in good faith because of who said it.
No joining letter was issued for the first week, despite this being required by my college for internship documentation.
When I pushed because my college needed it urgently, they finally issued one — a week in.
The letter turned out to state explicitly that the internship is unpaid, with no stipend or remuneration at any point.
When I raised the verbal stipend conversation, I was told there was "no official talk about stipend" and that as a college student I "shouldn't even expect one."
The actual work had nothing to do with cybersecurity — I was set to build webpages for the company with instructions but essentially no technical guidance or mentorship.
After that, myself and a fellow intern decided to leave. We deleted/erased the week of work we'd done before going, since none of it had been paid for or properly onboarded/contracted in the first place.
Lesson for other students: get the stipend and role details in writing before your first day, no matter who refers you in or how senior they are. A verbal promise from a CEO means nothing if the paperwork says otherwise — and if a company won't issue a joining letter promptly, that's already a red flag.

Look. I'm an intern. The person who wrote the fanfic is also an intern. If age matters, I'm 20, she's 26, and my manager is 40.

She has commented several times before that she thinks my manager and I would be "cute" together. I always found it creepy, but I let it slide because I didn't want to make things awkward. This morning, she opened a fanfic she wrote about me and him and showed it to me and several other people at work.

Honestly, I was disgusted by it. It has very explicit details, and also some weird things about both of our ethnic backgrounds. There are also parts about my manager's wheelchair that I found gross and ableist. On top of all that, both of our partners get killed in horrible ways in the story, and I know it's fictional, but it made the whole thing feel even more messed up.

After that, I told her I thought this was a very weird thing to do and asked her to delete it. She told me I needed to calm down because it was "just a joke," that I should be flattered, and that she's thinking of turning it into a full novel and trying to publish it. I told her I was considering going to HR, and she basically warned me to watch myself because she's been here much longer than I have. Three of my coworkers saw/heard this conversation.

So I'm asking whether this is worth taking to HR. I'm extremely upset that she's showing it to people and saying she wants to keep writing it. But I'm also an intern and I don't want to come across as dramatic or ruin my opportunity here over something they might consider stupid workplace joking.

update: I decided to go to HR. They investigated the situation and spoke with both of us. However, what shocked me was that they ended up treating both of us like we were equally responsible. Since we were both interns, they decided to terminate both of our internships.

I was honestly so shocked that I didn't even defend myself properly. I was overwhelmed and didn't know what to say. Looking back, I wish I had explained everything more clearly and made sure they understood that I was the person being targeted, not someone participating in it. I've already started contacting other companies and applying for new opportunities, but so far I haven't heard back from anyone.

Update 2: A company actually replied after only 3 hours and sent me an email with an interview time. I'm happy, but now I'm extremely stressed. I have no idea how to explain why I was fired if they ask about it. How do I talk about this professionally? Any advice on handling this situation during an interview?

Update 3: Some people in the comments mentioned interview tools that can help with answers and handling difficult questions. Has anyone actually used any of them? I'm considering trying one because I'm really nervous about explaining this situation properly.

update 4: Thanks everyone for the advice. I decided to try the free version of Interview VIP before the interview. Hopefully, it helps me structure my answers, stay calm, and explain my situation professionally. Wish me luck.

What do you guys think the sweet spot is to get a comfortable salary post grad?

Hi (21f) I joined an unpaid internship in backend dev for 3 months starting from sep in some random company through a referral from my friend. My friend said we could leave office at around 5:30/5:45 but the offer letter and the hr told me the office timings were from 10:30 to 7:30. Still i believed my friend and joined the company. Yest was my first day i wasn’t assigned anything to do since it was just the beginning and i did my own thing and at 5:30 when my friend left. I went to ask for permission my hr asked me to go and ask permission from the boss. He gave me permission to leave. Today again my friend left at 5:30 hr had no problem then when i went he told me the office timings were till 7/7:30 then i went to my boss and he told me since its my first week he is okay with it and from the next week i had to stay till the end. Firstly it isn’t any big MNC. Its a startup and its not even profitable tbh. Considering im still in my 7th sem. And i spend money bec i travel in auto for commuting. Is it even worth to stay back? If not how do i tell my boss i don’t want to continue. Will my friend who still has 1.5 months left in this company have to face anything?

::: P.S Thank you redditors

I’m a year into work after my MBA, and honestly... no one warned me how big a role internships would play.

Here’s what I learned the hard way:

• PPOs are real, and they change the game. Around 40% of my batch converted their internships. If you get one, you skip the final placement madness entirely.

• Don’t blindly chase brand names. I went for a big-name firm in a domain I didn’t care about. Looked good on paper, but I honestly didn’t learn much.

• Internship projects become your placement pitch. Every second interview I gave circled back to what I did during the summer.

• It’s the best time to pivot. Saw folks at Masters Union switch from marketing to product, or sales to ops purely through internships. Pulling that off later is way harder.

• Start prepping early. Like… uncomfortably early. The good roles were competitive as hell. People were doing mock interviews, solving cases, and brushing up on tools weeks in advance.

• Pay gaps exist too. Some got 80K/month, others 35K for similar work. If that matters to you, research before you aim.

Just putting this here, hoping it helps someone

Current college student working with a bank for the summer, today I overslept my last meeting for the day and I feel awful.

Throughout my time at this bank, I’ve been asking detailed questions in all meetings and engaging with the content. We have a group project and I’m doing a lot of great work with that.

Immediately when I saw the time I called my manager and apologized, owning up to my mistakes and not giving any excuses. They were frustrated as expected, and didn’t really want to hear me out. I feel so stressed and can’t stop thinking about it.

I’ve really been on my best behavior throughout this program. There have only been two instances where I feel like my manager and I didn’t see eye-to-eye, but I fixed both situations promptly.

1. On my first day she thought I wasn’t doing any work on our modules, I immediately followed up and sent her a screenshot of my completed module. She had checked her system earlier and it didn’t update my progress, and since then I’ve reached out whenever I complete a project ensuring that my progress is the same on her end.
2. Joined a morning meeting 1 minute late. I owned up and have been early to everything else.

We have the opportunity to interview for a position next year if she approves us, but at this moment I feel like the sleep thing cooked me. I’m gonna keep joining meetings early & asking questions during sessions etc, however I feel very bad about this whole situation :(

I’m in college and recently started an internship in a field I was actually excited about. Instead of learning, I spend most days wondering wtf is going on.
The vibes are just off.
People openly gossip about employees in front of interns, and I’ve had coworkers literally come up and tell me about things people have said about me when I wasn’t even there. At this point I don’t even wonder if people are talking about me I already know they are.
The weirdest part is that I don’t even feel judged based on my work. It feels like I’m being judged based on my personality.
I’m not rude. I do my work. I report to the person I’m supposed to report to. I just don’t think I need to become best friends with everyone in the office to be a good intern.
I genuinely can’t tell if this company is just weird, or if this is what working at a small company is actually like.
The worst part? It’s making me question a field I was genuinely excited about.
Has anyone else had an internship that completely killed their excitement for something they actually liked?
And trust me I wish I could tell you some of the actual things I’ve heard people say at work because they’re genuinely insane 😭 but I can’t without making it way too obvious where this is from.

Today I overslept 3 hours on my first day of my first internship. When I woke up I called them and told them I overslept and kept apologizing.

They pushed the start date to tomorrow for me, but they sounded annoyed. Now I’m really anxious about it and afraid I’ve set a bad impression.

I haven’t been this “late” for school or work in years. I’m mortified. Somehow my alarms were set of PM instead of AM.

I hope I don’t get let go so soon. What I can do to make this situation better. Omg

I’m doing this internship and I’ve been doing a co-op with them since January but it’s a fucking mess.

I haven’t ever gotten trained, literally ONE 30 min meeting per day and I just sit around there’s nothing else to do!!! FOR 9 HOURS!!

Now they are requiring me to come to office and I’m wondering what the fuck I will do all day?? Will I act like I’m being super productive?? WTH and it’s an open office concept so I’m really cooked

Hi so I'm 22 yo and I got into a 2 years internship in a really big pharmaceutical company as a data analyst. For more context, I'm following an academic path where I'm 2 weeks to 1 month in the company, then 2 weeks in school, etc, but it's part of schooling.

And the thing is that I'm just SOOOO BORED to the point where I wonder if it's normal?

It's been almost a full year that I've been in the company and ofc some periods get busier than others, but I rarely get enough work to keep me occupied for the time I'm actually in the company. Most of the time I get tasks assigned at the start of the first week I come back, I try to make them last enough to keep me busy for a week but most of the time I end up being done with them in less than a day! And then I'm left with nothing to do.

The thing is that I get to work remote 2-3days/week (which is really great) so on these days I can just play games while keeping the Teams status active lol, but my question is: is that normal?? Ofc I saw in this sub that a lot of people relate to the boredom and stuff but the thing is that I feel like it only applies to me in my environment.. whether it is my workplace (every time I look around everyone seems to be full of meetings and of things to do and they don't even look like they're pretending!) or my classmates (they all seem to love being interns so much that they HATE the periods of time we're in school because they prefer being in their company??😭), I don't relate to anyone around me!

I'm just so bored to the point where some days I don't even want to go to work because I know I'll just spend another day frying my brain while trying to pretend I'm working. I know I can always find something to occupy myself but that's not really my point.

Pls anyone to relate on this?

Can you guys tell me your most embarrassing moment at your internship? Today I invited a bunch of people to go to a cafe and hang out and I asked them face to face and they told me yes and they all flaked on me. It just felt mad embarrassing that I initiated plans and no one cared for them. My friend ended up pulling up and we had a good time but I’m also kind of dreading of showing up and people asking me how did it went and the only thing I can say is no one showed up

So hello everyone actually yesterday that's on 21 I joined everything was good office is good and all It takes me 3 hrs traveling(Total) for coming to office , my manager is so sweet and she is also the one who had taken my interview. The only problem is all the guys in my team are above 30 and I am just 21 and I am not able to bond much with them it feels boring on day 1 she made me learn everything and on day 2 she has given me a whole project and then I worked for almost 7-8 hrs completed the project validated it with a senior and She(manager) told me to do half hour overtime and recheck it again if any error is there I checked it twice already.

She told me that Friday is deadline for 14 projects as all of my team is on leave only me and her have to do it anyway. She told me she understood it's lot of work and she doesn't expect much from me but we have to do it anyhow.

I think I am getting a lot of work as an intern isn't it ?

I started an internship at a medium sized company working in Insurance about 5 weeks ago. The first week was decently busy just doing orientation and training things. The next week after that was alright because I was shadowing people a couple hours a day and studying up on Medicare. Now, the last 3 weeks have been a nightmare. My supervisor is never here and i have nothing besides one meeting on my schedule per week. I’ve watched hours upon hours of training videos, studied on quizlet,etc, but now I have LITERALLY nothing to do. I ask people if they need help with anything but everyone is so busy it just doesn’t work out. I’ve asked my supervisor multiple times for work but all I’ve been given are tasks that can be done in less than 15 minutes. I’ve now worked over 150 hours at this internship and I’d say 80-90% of it has been me trying to look like I’m working at my desk. It’s making me lose my mind to just check the clock every 5 minutes just wishing time would pass by faster. I have a little under 2 months left in this internship but I don’t know if i can handle being mind-numbingly bored for that much longer. Does anybody have any advice for my situation? Would quitting be a bad option?

Edit: I didn’t expect to get this much feedback on my first ever Reddit post but I want to thank everyone for some great answers. And to clarify, yes I am being paid, but I would rather be busy than try to look busy 8 hours a day doing nothing, it gets very draining. I guess I’m just disappointed that I haven’t got as much out of this internship so far as I would’ve liked. Once again, thank you everyone.

I started my internship about three weeks ago, I work in the tech department at a well known bank.

Now, in the past three weeks I’ve been given next to no work to do. In my first week I was supposed to be issued a company laptop but every-time Id ask for an update, I’m told that there was some issue leading to a delay in giving me a laptop. When I asked if I could bring my own laptop, I was told no as it’s a very secure facility and they don’t even give WiFi to anyone.

Due to this, my first week was spent just watching my
Supervisor doing work and just chatting with the employees. I did learn abt the work but there’s only
So much I can learn by just watching.

I was finally given a laptop over a week later but even then there were issues as the LAN stopped working and I needed it to be able to download VScode on the laptop. Then, the only work I was given was just some basic excel work. They wouldn’t even let me run queries on sql myself despite me telling them I know how. All I was tasked to do was copy in for from one table and format it in excel and then just send the work over.

It’s week 3 now and this is all I’ve been doing. I’ve consistently asked for more work and expressed that I want to do more but it doenst seem that anyone’s interested in giving me more.

So at this point what do I even out on my CV since I don’t have anything valuable to add?

I joined an internship around two weeks ago, and honestly, I'm at a breaking point.

The work itself isn't the problem. My manager is.

Almost every day I feel anxious before going to work. Whenever I finish a task, instead of guidance, I get criticized. If I don't know something, I'm expected to learn it immediately. When I explained that I couldn't retrieve a report because I don't even have access to the required software, I was told, "What do you mean you can't do it? You have to do it idk I will not spoonfeed you everything."

Yesterday, I finished the work assigned to me and was waiting for the next task. The rest of the team was talking, so I looked over to understand the context. My manager immediately told me to stop looking at them and focus on work. When I said I had already finished my task, she replied that after 12 days in the company I should already know what work to pick up on my own.

Throughout the day she kept sending me back and forth between floors multiple times, and near the end of my shift she assigned another task saying the CEO wanted it. Today, after I took leave because I had a fever and there was severe rain and waterlogging, she again criticized my work and told me you are dumb, you are of no use, nothing.

The biggest issue is not the workload—it's how I feel. Every day my confidence drops a little more. I feel stressed, anxious, and constantly afraid of making mistakes. Instead of learning, I feel like I've stopped learning altogether.

This internship is affecting my physical health as well as commuting 4 hrs daily is tough.

I've spoken to my family and my college placement officer. Both suggested that I resign after completing one month and serving my notice period.

Am I overreacting because I'm new, or is it reasonable to leave an internship when the environment is affecting your confidence and your ability to prepare for your future?

I'd really appreciate honest opinions, especially from people who've been through something similar.