Evolving Traditions: 15 Years of Viget Internships
Our internship has changed a lot over the years, but at its core, our summer program remains a dedicated opportunity to foster curiosity and drive.
This week we will bid farewell to our fifteenth cohort of summer interns. Ciel Park (UI Developer Intern), Faye Stover (Product Designer Intern), and Paul McKissock (Application Developer Intern) joined our team ten weeks ago and have been hard at work learning and growing, teaching and sharing, and iterating ever since – and so have we.
At Viget we are committed to fostering curiosity and drive both for budding engineers and designers but also for our team of full-timers who are eager to learn themselves and flex their mentorship muscles. As we’ve shared over the years, the internship is one of our favorite traditions and while a lot has changed in fifteen years, that commitment remains the same.
Here’s a quick look at three core aspects of the Viget internship that remain flexible.
Cohort size and available roles.
We are not married to a specific number of interns. We recruit for and match interns with available mentors who serve as our interns’ dedicated advisors.
Working location.
This summer our interns primarily worked from our Falls Church, Virginia headquarters. We required interns to work in the office for the first three weeks of the program and the last. During weeks four through nine they were able to work remotely two to three days a week. In the past the internship has been fully in-person and fully remote.
Cross-discipline internship project.
Interns can expect cross-discipline collaboration during their time at Viget but how exactly that takes shape remains flexible. In years past interns spent 8 weeks coming up with, designing and building a working product. This year, with our smaller cohort of interns, we opted for a smaller approach to the group project. The project was pre-defined, scoped by our advisors, and happened over just two short weeks.
Earlier this summer we hosted an internship alumni panel and invited Hayley McMillon (2022 Summer Cohort), Andrea Brucculeri (2019), Gabriel Kay (2019), and Vigenesh Gopalan (2018) to discuss lessons learned at Viget, life after Viget, underrated skills worth developing, tips for remote collaboration and more. The event was open to all and both current staff and other alums sat in on the moderated panel discussion. It was awesome, and everyone – long-timers and interns alike – left feeling inspired. This is my favorite aspect of the internship, our alumni network, and how our interns graduate to be active contributors.
I’m looking forward to staying in touch with Ciel, Faye, and Paul and I cannot wait to see all the wonderful things they accomplish.
Does this sound like an experience you want to be a part of? We’ll host our 16th cohort of college students and recent grads next summer. Bookmark our internship page to keep an eye on future opportunities.
