I'm interning at a small company that pays minimum wage and I utterly despise how shameless they are. Who pays minimum wage to an intern that 1) they don't bother to train while 2) simultaneously expecting good results from?
I'm virtually left alone 9 to 5. There was no onboarding process. There was just: here's the big idea, now go do it. They can't be bothered to follow-up on administrative procedures and I haven't even been paid on time once. They're too cheap to hire more professionals or contract the work out to an external party. Hell, another intern was told to learn how to use a open-source CFD tool which has an immense learning curve since it's meant for researchers who are adept already at software development. That shouldn't be work that should be given to an intern who hasn't had in-depth software development or CFD experience. They're doing this because they're too cheap to 1) buy the license for commercial CFD software and 2) to hire somebody professional to do it. The other intern has been complaining that this is just a dead end with how the company is directing this project.
I hate the people at this company. They're incompetent at project management, providing no clear direction, no support, and no concrete objectives. They fail to teach or train interns properly because they're too busy doing their own work. What is even the purpose behind having interns who are just confused 90% of the time on what to do?
The purpose behind hiring interns is to foster potential, and turn that into a functioning employee. There should be guidance, support, and room for questions to be asked. How else are we supposed to learn otherwise? It's essentially like they threw me on some battered, wooden boat, and then told me to cross the Pacific alone.