Interns

In the early days, d-centralize grew exclusively by interns who were hired afterwards when both parties agreed. We still use this mechanism to onboard new talent.

Recruitment

Post Fontys internships on FHICT. You can reuse old internships and update them to publish new ones. Some guidelines:
- When selecting specializations, select those first through using the checkboxes. Then afterwards hit the “Side job” button as it’ll submit the form immediately.
- As images can’t be uploaded, use imgur.com to host them.
Publish Avans internships on SAM.

Shared responsibility assessing interns

If you’re interested in guiding an intern, consider taking up the role internship intake as well so you’re able to have a say in the future interns we onboard.

Mentoring

Ideally each intern is connected to one company mentor who’s knowledgable on the project (core developer). So, an intern mentor role should be taken up by a fulltime employee within the project to ensure proper guidance. If it’s the first time this intern mentor is performing in the role, they could be assisted by peers in the same role and/or the founder. Some insights that lead to this:

Founder doesn’t scale all that well in terms of time availability and knowledge of details (except for Pro6PP)
Cultural barriers that prevent speak an intern’s mind when talking the ‘boss’ directly.

Contracts

Trainee agreement

For Fontys, no agreement is needed, the university provides these.

These are our general guidelines and answers to questions:

“Is a residence permit required?“. Determine if you’re a student from within the European Union (EU) or the European Economic Area (EEA), see the country list. Only if your nationality is from outside of these countries, you need the permit. In the Netherlands, it’s a single permit called GVVA (for living and working).
”Has a copy of the passport or identity card been attached?“. By law, an employer needs to verify your identity through either a passport or identity card, see onboarding{.interpreted-text role=“doc”}.
internship remuneration bachelor: €250 /month
graduation project remuneration bachelor: €300 /month
graduation project remuneration bachelor (if you also did your first internship with us): €450 /month.
internship remuneration master: €325 /month

Repo duplication

Most students work on an internal instance of GitLab inside the university, protected by university SSO. They’re unable to share this code that way. To quickly assess their skills without a full-blown interview, consider pointing to duplicate repository and the possibility to import to an accessible alternative location on one of the cloud based GIT collaboration platforms.

Preparation

If your position is software developer and you’re running Windows, we’ll be supplying you with a external USB3 SSD HDD running an Ubuntu Linux distribution. You’re free to run another Linux distribution or Mac OS. But in case your laptop is running Windows on your internal HDD, this will save everyone a lot of time messing around with WSL2 otherwise.
(Almost) no Linux experience? Follow some basic tutorials. See Tutorials.
For the daily standup meetings, please check if your camera works and you bring a headset.

First month

The first month of the internship usually follows a pattern that is known to be very effective:

From the <your project> README, set up the frontend and backend. Make sure you install the required packages for technologies used in your project, see Setup.
Start working on several startup tasks that are assigned to you (easy technical debt issues, bugs to warm up and get familiarized to the project).
In case you get stuck while performing the above tasks, time to follow some more basic tutorials to fill any knowledge gaps you might have. See Tutorials.
Start working on slightly more complicated tasks which are defined in your personal project plan.

Working from home

As an employee, the handbook applies mostly to you too. There are some exceptions.

Interns are expected to work in the office primarily. Experience has shown most interns need to grow a 40 hour workday rhythm which is much harder to form when WFH, alone. There’s also a lower barrier for asking questions and others in the office can help you when we see you’re struggling on a task. To allow some WFH flexibility, the default agreement becomes 4 days at office, 1 day from home or office.

Feedback

There are some moments to ask for feedback on your performance during the internship. From experience, these are the most useful moments:

Week 3 or 4 after starting. Discussion topics:
- Progress so far
- Do you have everything you need to finish the internship in good order?
- Your company mentor might have some thoughts on how to improve already.
Slightly later than halfway the internship, week 12. Discussion topics:
- You fill in the assessment form to self assess your performance.
- Your company mentor does the same, we’ll compare our viewing points.
Before the portfolio deadline, please make a MR into the internship repo to get it proofread or/and signed (assign your company internship mentor as reviewer). This way we make sure the internship results get archived. Please include your presentation too.
Second company visit.

Insurance

Healthcare insurance

Nuffic is a trustworthy source of information for insurance information.

In short, if all you do is study and have an internship here:

You’re required to have a healthcare insurance to study in The Netherlands.
You should keep your health insurance from your home country.
EU students could apply for a European Health Insurance Card (EHIC).

If you take a side-job, you do need Dutch health insurance under the Wlz-scheme.

Corporate liability insurance

The company has liability insurance covered for all employees including interns.

Continuation after internship

When a successful internship finishes, it may continue as side job or fulltime contract.

You can apply for a tax reduction by filling in the Dutch form or English form from the Dutch Tax Administration.