There is a related document on the general hiring process. Even though that is primarily oriented towards industry hires, it is strongly recommended reading as most of the basic principles apply equally to interns - especially in regards to the desirable characteristics we look for in good hires. The recommended reading list in that document is an excellent resource for people who are new to hiring in general.
Role of Mentor
Each intern is paired with an employee mentor who will guide, assign, supervise and evaluate their work throughout their internship. Think of the intern as a less experienced extension of yourself - and this may not be for everyone. This means a real time commitment on the part of the mentor, and thus emphasis is on candidates that self-organize and self-motivate (see the hiring document). Realistically each employee can only work with one intern at a time, so this also enforces an inherent upper limit on how many interns we can employ.
The mentor is critical in ensuring that the intern has a good experience and favorable impression of the company and our mission. Ultimately, we hope that successful interns will return back to Tidepool either as next season’s interns, or future full-time employees. Regardless of the outcome, hopefully they also advocate on our behalf to other candidates and the diabetes community at large.
Projects
Before hiring an intern, think about what projects they might reasonably accomplish within a relatively short period of time (more on that below). Some characteristics of good projects are:
Feasible with the intern’s current skills and limited ramp-up time
Important, but not critical
Produces real results that help move us forward
Not busywork
Doesn’t bet the company’s future on timely successful completion
Isolated enough
Don’t expect intern to know or learn all of our infrastructure or technology stack
Consider PHI and PII ramifications
In other words, don’t ask the intern to design the entire Saturn V rocket if they are just learning about the basics of aerospace. Maybe focus on a smaller piece first.
Some engineering examples include:
Tools, scripts, task automation (new or extending existing ones)
Small relatively independent modules, libraries, frameworks, toolkits, services
Data collection (e.g. sample data from medical devices with different settings)
Data analysis
Some non-engineering examples include:
Visual design production
Competitive analysis
Market analysis
Marketing automation and integrated campaigns planning
In prior years Tidepool has also asked interns present an informal brown bag / birds-of-feather presentation of their work at the conclusion of their internship. Some even blog about their experience. No matter how it is delivered, this gives the interns yet another valuable opportunity to stretch their skills, in addition to helping leave us with nicely packaged results.
Timeframe
Unlike industry hires, internships are often time-boxed to student holidays. Even within the U.S., the timing varies a fair bit but typically for summer interns it is between beginning of June and end of August, so about 3 months. Keep this in mind when thinking about what types of projects would be feasible.
That said, Tidepool is geographically distributed and remote-friendly, so we are not limited to U.S. based university students nor even northern hemisphere notions of summer. In addition, many universities (e.g. RPI in NY, UWaterloo in Canada, University of Auckland in NZ) have formal requirements for practical industry experience (co-op programs), so we may see interest throughout the year.
Compensation and Equipment
We offer paid internships, with pay between US$20 to US$40 per hour depending on level of experience and years working for Tidepool. Interns report hours every pay period to Sarah Morris (our accountant). They can make a copy of this template.
We can provide a laptop for the interns if needed, though ideally they use their own laptop after securing it for HIPAA compliance. If Tidepool purchases a laptop, after the internship ends it will get re-used (e.g. upgrade someone’s old laptop, replace a broken one) or designated as a temporary loaner.
We do not offer lodging or travel reimbursements. Interns work remotely, same as everyone else.
To prepare an offer for a new intern, please complete the fields in this Google Form. Follow up with Manny if you haven’t heard back within 2 business days.
Legal Limitations
Generally, we are limited to employing legal adults (minimum 18 years in most jurisdictions, 16 in some like California) as interns, working no more than 40 hours per week. Occasionally, younger candidates such high school/secondary school students (16-17 year olds) may express interest in internship opportunities as well. Please contact Manny to discuss exceptions.
Just as with regular employees, interns are subject to HIPAA requirements. In lieu of that, it may be best to isolate their work so that it does not touch any PHI data.
Some notable past Tidepool Interns and their projects
In her first summer (as a high school student) Eden Grown-Haeberli made improvements to our marketing website, as well as documenting the entire process. In her second summer, she wrote additional tools that launched the Tidepool Big Data Donation program. She was mentored by Lennart, and is now a student at Stanford.
Courtenay Huffman did front end work in React, mentored by Clint. We found Courtenay through the JDRF internship program.
Karina Goot wrote dfaker, a test data generator, mentored by Jana. She went on to be a site reliability engineer at Google, and is now at Lyft.
In his first summer, Ethan Look wrote the first version of Tidepool Mobile for iOS (formerly known as Blip Notes, without really having a mentor, which wasn't great…). In his next summer, he wrote command line data tools that later turned into the TBDDP, mentored by Brandon. He's now at Google.
Michael Pangburn is a Loop iOS developer, being mentored by Pete, and is a student at Cal Poly SLO. He's interned with Apple Summer 2019, and is now back with Tidepool Fall 2019-Spring 2020, then is returning full time to Apple.
Nancy Kao, a design intern, produced this awesome video. She was mentored by Sara Krugman.
After graduating from high school, Anna Quinlan wrote PyLoopKit, a Python port of the Loop algorithm, and developed it into a great tool for simulating and visualizing different scenarios. She was mentored in parts by Ed, Pete, and Lennart, and is now a student at Stanford.
JP Reilly, a student at Stanford, prototyped the web UI for prescription flow. He was mentored by Thacher and Kelly.
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Proceed to: Tidepool Offer Letter