My Experience at an Organization
This past summer, I had the experience of interning at a financial company for a brief amount of time. My tasks were mainly marketing-related, like mining microeconomic data, providing general insights on how to develop a new financial service, and determining which types of customers would most likely sign up for the service. My double-major background in Economics and Statistics and various marketing experiences in the past were reasons of which I was selected to fill this position.
The physical site I worked at was only interns, with vastly different tasks like designing the company's new website to developing blockchains for for compiling sales data. Despite working at the same site, the interns had different majors and backgrounds -- some were CS majors, some were UI design majors, or finance majors. Because of the decentralized nature of the internship program, many of us were working on solo projects which we would report to our supervisors remotely, through an encrypted video conference software. Video calls would take place rather spontaneously, depending on the supervisors schedule as he/she also has other tasks at hand. In between meetings, the interns would work on their projects depending on the deadlines/subtasks the supervisors assign them with. The experience I had with working remotely from my supervisor was nothing I have experienced before -- the management style was rather laissez-faire with a relaxed work environment. Even with a VP overseeing the site, no intern was truly monitored by the company on what they were doing. In fact, the VP even said "If you guys wanna watch some Hulu while you're running your code, go ahead". Our office was equipped with millennial-friendly resources like a 50-inch LED screen TV, a Nintendo switch, a pool table, some treadmill desks, among others. Most interns would come into the office at 10 am, finish working by 3, and crowd around the pool table until 6 and clock out, as there were no strict rules about the exact time to come into the office and when to leave it. While I appreciated the relaxedness in the office, I was worried the level of productivity that I exhibited during which I worked for the company. Unfortunately, due to some personal reasons, I was not able to continue to work there long enough to accurately determine whether the management style was effective. However, while I was there, I often felt under-guided and prone to procrastination.
I have learned from other friends of mine that their internship programs were much more rigorous, with very organized training sessions and mini-competitions that would take place every month. In my opinion, the transaction costs of implementing these internship programs should always focus on the goal of increasing productivity of the entire company, while maintaining the intern's motivation. Spending funds on things like a state-of-the-art Keurig machine surely takes care of the interns' caffeine fix, which indirectly boosts their motivation, but has less of a tangible impact than developing a training program that the interns can truly benefit from. Knowing how and where to spend the transaction costs that incur during implementing an internship program is vital for the future of any company; therefore, it should be carefully planned and considered.
To provide more background of the company, it was split off from its much older and bigger mother company about 6 years ago. The decentralized intern location was to create more innovative ideas for the newer company, which could be the reason why the management style was much more relaxed and less strict than the internship programs at much more mature investment banking companies.
The physical site I worked at was only interns, with vastly different tasks like designing the company's new website to developing blockchains for for compiling sales data. Despite working at the same site, the interns had different majors and backgrounds -- some were CS majors, some were UI design majors, or finance majors. Because of the decentralized nature of the internship program, many of us were working on solo projects which we would report to our supervisors remotely, through an encrypted video conference software. Video calls would take place rather spontaneously, depending on the supervisors schedule as he/she also has other tasks at hand. In between meetings, the interns would work on their projects depending on the deadlines/subtasks the supervisors assign them with. The experience I had with working remotely from my supervisor was nothing I have experienced before -- the management style was rather laissez-faire with a relaxed work environment. Even with a VP overseeing the site, no intern was truly monitored by the company on what they were doing. In fact, the VP even said "If you guys wanna watch some Hulu while you're running your code, go ahead". Our office was equipped with millennial-friendly resources like a 50-inch LED screen TV, a Nintendo switch, a pool table, some treadmill desks, among others. Most interns would come into the office at 10 am, finish working by 3, and crowd around the pool table until 6 and clock out, as there were no strict rules about the exact time to come into the office and when to leave it. While I appreciated the relaxedness in the office, I was worried the level of productivity that I exhibited during which I worked for the company. Unfortunately, due to some personal reasons, I was not able to continue to work there long enough to accurately determine whether the management style was effective. However, while I was there, I often felt under-guided and prone to procrastination.
I have learned from other friends of mine that their internship programs were much more rigorous, with very organized training sessions and mini-competitions that would take place every month. In my opinion, the transaction costs of implementing these internship programs should always focus on the goal of increasing productivity of the entire company, while maintaining the intern's motivation. Spending funds on things like a state-of-the-art Keurig machine surely takes care of the interns' caffeine fix, which indirectly boosts their motivation, but has less of a tangible impact than developing a training program that the interns can truly benefit from. Knowing how and where to spend the transaction costs that incur during implementing an internship program is vital for the future of any company; therefore, it should be carefully planned and considered.
To provide more background of the company, it was split off from its much older and bigger mother company about 6 years ago. The decentralized intern location was to create more innovative ideas for the newer company, which could be the reason why the management style was much more relaxed and less strict than the internship programs at much more mature investment banking companies.
It is surprising to me that in an environment with that much levity interns didn't demonstrate more commitment and didn't take more initiative. From my experience, a good hire is a self-motivated hire, and such a person almost deterministically thrives in an environment with a lot of independency by expanding their responsibilities.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how the output would have been different had the interns worked under a more strict organizational structure. Would they be more productive? Would they work more or less?
That was an interesting story. I haven't heard before of using interns to foster innovation, so I wonder if you have any evidence that other interns actually produced interesting stuff - even with the three hours at the pool table. Let me speculate on some ways that might have raised productivity that are other than the rigorous training that you mentioned.
ReplyDeleteOne idea would be for there to be a show and tell done each day for between 15 minutes to a half hour, where an intern would say what was the aim of the project, what had been accomplished so far and what were the stumbling blocks. Then the audience would be invited to chime in with questions and suggestions. In effect this would make those projects presented partly the responsibility of everyone there, not just the person who was assigned to work on it.
Then there might be small work groups, rather than individuals, so that you could share both the responsibility and credit for work well done with other members of the team.
I found it interesting that the company seemed focused on individual creativity only. That might make sense if this is also a screen for getting a permanent job with them. In the team case, it might be harder to identify individual contribution.