TL;DR: We had interns, they did great work, and I am super proud of them and thankful to Google and especially Alon Cohen, Moran Otorgust, Tehila Gourary, Shaked Tal, Netanel Persik, Yoav Yanovski who let me take part in this initiative,
Not So short version:
I am a big supporter of on-the-job-training. I believe our education system is fundamentally broken and the entire way we train people for both work and life needs to change.
When I heard from Shaked that this is a possibility, I started looking for what type of tasks in my domain they can take on.
“What kind of skills do they have?”
“Basic python”.
“I can work with that”.
Our highschool interns wrote api tests that verify api credentials for the integration lab.
They also wrote selenium automation that does the same for UI credentials.
They did meaningful work, and they got paid for it, much better than working the usual summer jobs highschoolers get.
So yeah,
We had to match the tasks to the programmers,
We had to help them a bit with ramp-up, and working with juniors means spending more time supporting them.
But now they are almost fully independent, picking up their own tasks, managing most of the development and testing themselves,
Just goes to show you how quickly people can learn and become productive with the right motivation.
This is useful work, and they were only here for a month, working 3 days a week.
Imagine what we could’ve done if we had them for longer.
I’m super proud of you Daria Dvoeglazova, Darina Grinkrug, Roman Tymoshchuk, Hadas Zelibanski, shlomit abaye, and feel a great satisfaction to have been a part of on-boarding you to the tech industry.