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We are proud of our Internship Program at Tidepool. To hire interns, we use the same process we use for hiring others at Tidepool, so we aim to have a diverse intern group and when we interview interns, we look for the same types of attributes we look for in all Tidepoolers.

Mentorship

Each intern is paired with an employee mentor who guides them, assigns work to them, and supervises and evaluates their work throughout their internship. This results in a real time commitment on the part of the mentor, so we expect each employee to work with only one intern at a time. This results in 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 organization and our mission. Ultimately, we hope that successful interns will return to Tidepool either later on in their academic journey (if they are summer interns), or by becoming apprentices 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, we think about what projects they might reasonably accomplish during their internship. Some characteristics of good projects are:

  • Feasible with the intern’s current skills and ramp-up time (typically a few weeks)

  • Important, but not critical:

    • The project(s) must produce real results that help move us forward.

    • It should not be just busywork

    • We shouldn’t bet our future on timely successful completion of the project

  • Stand-alone enough:

    • For example, we shouldn’t expect a new intern to know or learn all of our infrastructure or technology stack to be able to complete their project.

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 planning integrated campaigns

Timeframe

Internships are often timed to match student holidays. Even within the U.S., the timing varies a fair bit, but typically for summer interns it is between early June and early September.

Since Tidepool is geographically distributed and remote-friendly, we are not limited to U.S. university students only or even northern hemisphere notions of summer.

Last, many universities 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 their hours every pay period.

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 or designated as a temporary loaner.

We do not offer lodging or travel reimbursements. Interns work remotely, same as everyone else.

Legal Limitations

Generally, we are limited to employing legal adults (minimum 18 years in most jurisdictions, 16 in states like California) as interns, working no more than 40 hours per week. Occasionally, younger candidates such as high school/secondary school students (16-17 year olds) may express interest in internship opportunities as well. Please contact our VP of People and Culture to discuss exceptions.

Just as with regular employees, interns are subject to HIPAA requirements. Nevertheless, it may be best to isolate their work so that it does not touch any PHI data.

Intern Impact

In prior years, Tidepool has also asked interns to do 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. Here is a list of some past Tidepool Intern Alumni and their projects:

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The content of the Tidepool Employee Handbook is licensed under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication.