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I'm an intern at a small tech company, and in the last few days I've been given no tasks. I've been doing research / studying documents about the language we use to code.

However, when I ask for a task / what to do, I always get the answer "I don't know". Should I talk with someone in a higher role than the person responsible for me? Do I just do "nothing" all day?

I already asked my teacher and my teacher said that there's nothing he can do about it. I have 15 days left in the internship.

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  • How long was your internship in total? If it's 15 days out of a month, that's a problem. If it's 15 days out of a year, just kick back, relax and enjoy yourself.
    – Philip Kendall
    Jul 4, 2022 at 10:13
  • @PhilipKendall it's 80hours of 301
    – user135658
    Jul 4, 2022 at 10:18
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    Welcome to the site @AcisSys I've edited your question to focus it on one question as that's how the Q&A format works best. That's not to say you can't post separate questions for your others if you want.
    – motosubatsu ♦
    Jul 4, 2022 at 14:18
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    @nvoigt it's Portugal, its mandatory to have 600 hours total of internship (divided by 300 on 11th grade and 300 on 12th grade) since I'm not in regular school (Professional School)
    – user135658
    Jul 5, 2022 at 8:38
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    @AcisSys, Do you mean 300 hours on 11th grade in high school (in Portugal) ? Are you a high school student now ? In the US, internship mostly applies to college students, and not high school students. (Actually, in the US, I have never heard of internship for high school students.)
    – Job_September_2020
    Jul 5, 2022 at 19:58

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"I've been doing research / study documents about the language we use to code". Did the manager or team lead tell you to do that ? If yes, then that is your task.

I know that this "task" is not very exciting or not challenging. This is certainly not a helpful training experience for interns, and a waste of time for both the company and interns. It would have been much better if they had given you some fun and challenging coding projects to work on. But, unfortunately, interns don't really have any control over this matter.

The realistic option is to finish your 15 days of internship. Then, definitely, look for a new internship at a new company next year.

In the future, when you have an internship interview, please make sure to ask the hiring manager about the tasks that they plan to give interns such as "Will I work on meaningful and challenging coding projects at your company as an intern for this position ?". This way, you can choose the right company to work for.

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  • no, it is not a task given by them. It's something I did on my own to pass the time since i have nothing to do 8 hours per day. And cant do anything of my interests since the Manager has a camera recording ALL computer screens on the offices
    – user135658
    Jul 5, 2022 at 8:36
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Are you working remotely or in an office? If you are working in an office, I would ask to "shadow" some of the developers. If you are not aware, shadowing is just staying by the side of a programmer and watching what they are doing. If something doesn't make sense, you can ask them what is the purpose of that. Is a way of learning the techinic.

You can also try "shadowing" remotely through hopping in some chat room and sharing screens, of course. However that, in my experience, can be much easier to go astray, because its harder to pay attention to a screen you are not inputing anything into than it is to pay attention to a person's actions when they are right next to you

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