The Soft Issue
August 2017
Story from Outside
The beauty was that
this was a greenfield,
which
allowed
me
to experiment with
my ideas and grow
within someone else’s
business. The risks for
me were limited,
GOOD
FOR YOU
self interest to get as much
experience as they can, in the
shortest possible time, in order to
grow in this brutal market.
One of the complaints against
internship is that companies give
full-time responsibilities to interns.
The problem : what is a full time
responsibility?
We recently hired a data science
intern who is very smart but never
had any experience with real life
applications for the models she
created. We had a pitch coming
up, and she was drafted into the
research team to build the data
models for our proposals. She ended
up doing the ‘night before’ vigil with
us, and left office at about 9pm. The
rest of us left at about midnight.
Does this count as cruel and unusual
punishment?
The next day, we had her join us for
the pitch. This was a session with
an EMEA Marketing Director of a
global brand, and she got a chance
to not just sit in this meeting for a
real sales pitch, but also provide
feedback. The question then
comes — h ow could she have gotten
this opportunity without getting
the big girl task? How long would
she have waited to get such an
opportunity if she was not getting
real work done?
Experience is an important
ingredient in growing a career. As
college education becomes the
means, experience becomes the
differentiator [sic]. It is important
then to learn much and learn
fast. Every opportunity to learn is
important. The lessons learned
will prove invaluable in the future,
whether they be good lessons or
bad ones.
I learned this through, well,
experience.
One of the most interesting periods
of my life was in my last job before I
started my company. It was a small
company which imported mid-to-
premium European pharmaceutical/
cosmetic products and distributed
same within Nigeria. When I came
in, I was supposed to manage a
technology/change management
project and leave, yet after a few
74
the
LENS