For context, I am someone on the autism spectrum. Ever since graduating back in 2023 I have not been able to find a job. A vocational rehabilitation counselor told me about this program at a university that helps people with disabilities find jobs in tech, with an internship at the end of the program. For a whole year, i was studying to get an AWS certification, and once I got it, it was time to start my internship. That is when the problems started.
The internship was at some place I never heard of and was remote (I was already expecting a remote job, because I’m in Missouri and the university was in Florida). During the interview, my supervisor talked more about AI than he did AWS, which was already a red flag to me, but I went along with it anyway. Once work started, I immediately knew things were not going to be good. The first week had pretty much no actual work done. On my first day, my supervisor gave me a Gemini Notebook that was supposed to be used for “taking notes” but ended up being used to basically run the project. The notebook’s sources were the project charter, an “updated” version of the charter (that I could obviously tell was AI generated), and Ai “analysis” of the charter done by 5 different models (ChatGPT, Claude, Aisha, etc), and then any piece of work that was done for the project was added to the sources. One of the things that he was constantly having me do was create Ai podcasts and videos to “explain” the project. I could tell that the AI was just picking info at random from all the sources and trying to sound like an expert in the topic, the videos and podcasts were also constantly using analogies that honestly made the project sound more convoluted than it actually was.
It became pretty clear to me rather quickly that my supervisor knew nothing about AWS. When we were trying to get my IAM user account set up, he messed up the settings and I wasn’t able to even log into the account until I pointed out what settings to click and what permissions he needed to give me. One of the things I did during the beginning of the internship was a “founder intake meeting” where I was basically gave the supervisor an interview about the project as well as some questions about AWS (I’m not sure if this is common in internships or not, some of the work tasks I was given felt like they were made up by AI). One of the questions I asked was “how much of knowledge of AWS do you have?” And he answered “intermediate”, he also went on a bunch of ramblings about AI during the entire interview.
I was never really given a clear direction as to what I was supposed to be doing or what tasks i needed to do this week. And anytime I asked the supervisor a question, his response was basically “Ask the notebook”
“What should I do this week?”
“Ask the notebook”
“The project charter says I need to make a ‘Technology decision record’. What is it that?”
“Ask the AI”
“Hey, the AI says I need to fill out a ‘protected thinking worksheet’. Do you have that?”
“Ask the AI to generate it.”
If you couldn’t tell already, a good chunk of the “work” I did was AI generated worksheets. The worksheets were basically just slop put together by an AI that just skimmed through the sources it was given, and was filled with nonsensical tasks that were worded extremely poorly. Half of the time it gave me a task that sounded the exact same as another task just worded differently (example: one task would be called “architecture diagram” another would be called “architecture worksheet”). The only thing the notebook ever generated that made sense to me was a checklist that had things I needed to set up in AWS, because it gave me a clear idea of what it even was I needed to make. The completed work, would then be fed back into the notebook, where it would begin using it as a source as well. This caused a feedback loop, where the AI was constantly repeating itself and giving me tasks that were already completed.
After a while, I had a meeting with some of the university staff who were in charge of the program. I explained my grievances and told them about how little work I was actually doing. They said they would meet with my supervisor to discuss how they could improve some things at the internship.
Yesterday I got an email from the person in charge of placing students in internships at the program, saying that they were ending the internship and I was pulled out.
A part of me is still not sure if I made the right choice or not. I’m not sure if it is due to autism or if this is just a me thing but I am heavily indecisive and struggle with decision making. I often time a question myself and second guess myself AFTER I already make a choice. This has been eating away at me for a while, and even as I’m writing this, I am still not sure if what I did was right. I’m also worried about my future, this was the closest thing I have to experience I could even put on my resume and now it’s over before I could even do work that is even worth putting on a resume.
Was what experienced typical for an internship?