Currently, I'm an intern doing software development for a medical company, and I absolutely love it. It's a very lax environment where I provide value to the company, and I in turn get a mentor to help me with delegated tasks when needed. It's a great thing. However, I fear that this lax environment is a bit too soft for what will be expected for me in the future as an aspiring professional.
Normally, this can be solved with some searching online, but what conflicts me is that the environment is lax for nearly everyone, not just the intern. It's common for people to pull out their phones and start texting without any conscience. Deadlines on projects are very soft, and the idea is get simply everything done ASAP. Most people here are great about this, and are mature enough to moderate themselves. If they are not able to prioritize to this level, they're fired or demoted. Most people are great about this, and find a good level of work/lax balance.
This is a very foreign concept for me, as most other jobs would not allow a single moment of slacking, much less people to use their phones. Going into this, I thought that I was going to have to do a lot of crunching, have hard deadlines, and always be run to my peak, but this simply isn't true? Is what is expected of employees currently in the company for which I intern what I should be expecting to work in in the future?