The older intern struggled with the speed of things—the group chat that never sleeps, the three back-to-back Zoom calls, the unwritten rule that you answer emails at 9 PM. He needed someone to say, “Here’s how we work, not just what we work on.”
With the fifty-three-year-old, we assumed the opposite. We gave him client calls, project ownership, and a seat at the leadership meeting by week two. We didn’t assign him a “buddy.” We figured he didn’t need one.
If you think of interns as just “cheap labor” or “future hires,” you’re missing the point. The best interns—regardless of age—don’t just do work. They hold up a mirror. They ask the question everyone else was afraid to ask. They remind us why we started doing this in the first place. The Intern
We treated them differently. I’m not proud of it, but it’s true.
Not because they’re incapable. Because the territory changes faster than any of us admit. We’ve started pairing our interns—young and old, first-career and second-act. They teach each other. The twenty-one-year-old shows the fifty-three-year-old how to automate a report. The fifty-three-year-old shows the twenty-one-year-old how to run a meeting without an agenda descending into chaos. The older intern struggled with the speed of
It’s not “more years = more ready.” Sometimes it’s a different language.
The twenty-one-year-old wanted to understand our strategy. The fifty-three-year-old wanted to understand our software. Both asked better questions than most of our full-time staff. We didn’t assign him a “buddy
It works. Not because one is smarter. Because they’re both learners .