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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?

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This is quite company (and sometimes department/team) specific. Some organizations are lax, and employees are treated as adults who are capable of getting their work done with minimal management, whereas others obsessively micro-manage every second of your day. Most places fall somewhere in the middle. It's likely the culture at your current organization is just more relaxed than at your last job.

Typically the difference between interns and entry level employees is exceedingly small. Entry level employees are generally expected to need slightly less oversight than an intern, and are given slightly more responsibility.

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    Yep. Realistically this will be more different from company to company based on their culture than any intern/fulltime comparison across all companies.
    – enderland
    May 10, 2017 at 22:21
  • And "professional" salaried jobs such software engineering your meant to manage your own time unlike say a blue collar production line job.
    – Neuromancer
    May 10, 2017 at 23:55
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    But to spell something out- only a bad job expects you to be at 100% in an intellectual job 8 hours a day. It just isn't possible to run that hot long term. Its expected that you'll take small breaks to stretch your legs, clear your mind, check your email. You are expected to regulate that and not do so excessively.
    – Gabe Sechan
    May 12, 2017 at 5:17