Change of project for summer software internship at big tech company

Question

I'm an undergraduate computer science major in my junior year. This summer, I'm interning at a large tech company as a software engineering intern. I was originally supposed to be in the team I interned at last year, but a company-wide restructuring happened and my team + manager has been changed. The new project I've been assigned is in frontend web development and I absolutely HATE it. I have some experience on my resume with web development (from more than a year ago) but that has been largely backend; more importantly, I stopped doing it because I really started disliking it.

Is it acceptable for an intern like me to speak to my new manager, and ask for something I actually like doing? Or should I be speaking to my recruiter? How should I go about doing this?

Thank you very much :)

Answer 1

Yes, you can (and should) speak to the new manager about it because there was a change that nobody expected and that doesn't meet your initial expectation. So asking to swich project is not out of line

Before you speak to your manager, try to know in which department you want to work with, and try to get the name of the manager. In case the manager is an idiot ( it happens), prepare yourself to not have an internship at all in this company and look some other company.

Don't work in something you don't appriciate. Your are an intern so you (supposely) don't work for money. The internship has 3 goal :

• make you discover what is the real work place and how to behave
• learn new skills
• help you to get a job

A lot of people get hired after an intership ( because it is a (almost)free trial for the company and for you a way to show your potention). So doing an internship for something you dislike will be a non sense.

Best of luck.