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Intern's CV says they have technical skills with MS Office, MySQL and JavaScript. Last month I let my manager know that this intern doesn't really know anything, so we let her do a Freecodecamp course, after which she still cannot build a basic HTML and CSS page and doesn't understand the relationship between HTML and CSS.

My manager bought her a Laravel course for beginners and today I discovered that she also doesn't understand databases, because she tried to enter an alphabetic character into a column that only accepts integers. She doesn't read/understand the error codes thrown by the application.

She tried to access a route which she created in her Laravel app by accessing it via the phpmyadmin dashboard and called me and wasted my time by asking me why her route isn't working. She literally does not understand how computers work, or how the HTTP protocol works, even less so how a file structure works. She cannot translate abstractions to practical solutions.

She either deliberately lied on her CV to get a job, or she's just really dumb and doesn't understand what the term "technical skills" mean.

I've told my manager multiple times how I think she's in the wrong job, but they keep pushing things beyond her capabilities onto her desk. I was told I'd get an intern to help me with my work load, but I got signed up into an experiment I did not consent to (manager's words, it's an experiment to help uplift people with bad degrees and a poor background). I am not a good teacher, I hate doing it.

Comments
  • 8
    Can we have help?

    Help at work:
  • 28
    My 48 years old mother decided to learn QA. Out of experiment i give her my self study materials and she already built simple html CSS web site.
    Considering her nearly zero PC skills at the beginning... I find her progress impressive.
  • 6
    @darkwind How the fuck?! A prodigy!
  • 5
    @ElectroArchiver yeah, in his eyes, she is the next Marc Zuckerberg
  • 7
    Well that sucks

    I hope you get extra time for your work, because you have to babysit.

    For me I pretty much enjoyed helping others to learn coding, but they need to at least be able to think logically

    Had a study colleague who refused to type "sudo chmod 666 somefile" (learned about handling Linux Distros )because 666 is the devils number *facepalm* after two Semester she was never seen before >.> I wonder why .... :D
  • 3
    @darkwind she is in my age range. We just figure things out. That is what I have noticed. But I tend to travel in technical circles. So the generalization may not hold.
  • 2
    @jackpearce When do you chmod 666? I always have done 644. 666 seems a bit risky.
  • 2
    @Demolishun It was in an VM and some exercises to understand how we can set the permissions with chmod nothing serious but that wasn't the only story I have of her

    She was someone who changed her course of studies from social to IT without even knowing anything about computers and I don't mean programming I mean how to use a computer normally outside of MS-Office
  • 2
    another team is getting rid of their intern by pushing him to us. he's not dumb i think, he's just slow and doesn't have that pacing for picking things as they're moving. I'm really concerned about that, even more so since we can't give him access to anything we need done, so we're probably just gonna give him some useless tasks to eat up his time, and still not get the extra hand we need
  • 5
    @ElectroArchiver I gave her "Head First Html CSS by Eric Freeman". Genius author, who makes very accessable materials.
  • 0
  • 0
    @darkwind is it updated for html5 tho?
  • 1
    @darksideofyay yup. It is updated to html5
  • 3
    I’m in the same boat but with two interns. They come 30minutes to an hour late, then eat breakfast at their desks, take their full lunch (which would be fine if they sat down on time), sit with the same error for days without effort to fix it, struggle with basic concepts, touch their (work issued) tech with oily hands, scroll facebook on their machines IN MEETINGS they need to desperately pay attention to because it’s directed towards them. The list goes on, I’ve mentioned it to my boss. Don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes and I’m over it tbh. It’s none of my business, I’m way under qualified to teach people who are unwilling to learn and I have my own deadline coming up. Just frustrating, so I feel you dude
  • 3
    @jackpearce You could have told her to write "sudo chmod a=rw somefile" instead. There are a lot of people who suffered psychological abuse and conditioning in their childhood when they wheren't able to defend their mind against religious fake facts.

    @Nanos WTF, you got illiterate people trying to work in IT?!
  • 1
    In general, an intern is most often not of any help and most often gone before thee could become helpful. That is to be expected. If they where capable of helping you, they would apply for a real job.
  • 2
    I am also facing this. Luckily you have only one intern to face this. I am handling three :(
  • 0
    @Nanos You got an actual mugger in your workforce?! A mugger like that: https://youtube.com/watch/... ?

    If it is government-owned, i wonder why they don't just let those people stay at home and give em the money for _not_ trying to work - should be cheaper that way...
  • 1
    @Oktokolo I know, I expected to have to do SOME coaching ( which is fine, because I help other devs a lot with CSS stufff), but not like this. I was an intern too at some point in my life, so I understand what it's like, however I had to figure stuff out on my own and it wasn't too hard. My manager told me this person has experience working with the tech stack I use, but when you have to explain to an intern that they need to save their files after making changes to it is a bit unacceptable. I guess my standards are a bit too high and I don't like babysitting.
  • 0
    @Nanos I totally get that some people need some work to not get stupid ideas. But that doesn't have to be skilled labor. It has to be possible to just come up with fake jobs if there really is no use for them. We got entire industries of fake jobs for non-criminals already. Can't be too hard to create some chilled out manual labor fake jobs for criminals too.

    Or let em disassemble old PCs and sort the parts for recycling or something. It would negligibly, but still, benefit society. So their job would even have more reason than that of most white collar workers...
  • 0
    @Nanos So what - you obviously wouldn't force them to actually work. Just tell them to do the hard work and then ignore them just surfing the web or playing candycrush all day... As long as they don't mug someone, it's mission accomplished.
  • 2
    This is management's fuck-up and the lie girls fuck-up.

    If you have physical access to your manager. Just trow random shit away and mess up the calendar. When asked wtf you are doing say you are the new assistant. If I'm a teacher of the incompetent all the sudden you can also get a block of cement on your leg until you fix this fuck-up.

    If you don't have access just shove of all the responsibility to the intern. Step back and collect pay. That makes it their problem again real fast and you have a free holiday.

    Yep I'm a senior and I don't do this BS anymore. You never have to tolerate active sabotage in your workspace. Nip it in the butt.

    Interns can do some work and after some time actually be valuable. In the best situation you can even get a colleague after graduation that you know is going to work out.
    You need to have a place that can utilize that quickly and even quicker with weeding out the bad interns. There are a lot of them. Not all jobs can be handled by interns. A lot of things require intimate knowledge of both the process and technology.
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