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.
It’s not “more years = more ready.” Sometimes it’s a different language.
So here’s my slightly uncomfortable takeaway: The Intern
Both assumptions were wrong. The younger intern struggled with confidence, but he learned our analytics platform in one afternoon. He caught a bug no one else had seen. He just needed someone to tell him, “It’s okay to speak up.”
Here’s a clean, engaging draft for a blog post titled . I’ve written it in a reflective, story-driven style (suitable for a career, leadership, or personal growth blog), but I’ve also included a few alternative directions at the end. The Intern We’ve all seen the movie. The one where a seventy-year-old widower, bored with retirement, shows up as a senior intern at an online fashion startup. Robert De Niro’s character, Ben, doesn’t know Slack from a slingshot. He uses a briefcase. He shows up early. He offers unsolicited—and unexpectedly wise—advice. The twenty-one-year-old wanted to understand our strategy
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.
Last month, our team welcomed two interns. One is twenty-one, halfway through a computer science degree. The other is fifty-three, halfway through a career pivot after his manufacturing plant closed. It’s not “more years = more ready
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.
Here’s what I learned: