Snow Shovel
22nd June, 2026
Picture this: you wake up on a cold, February morning. You look outside your window, and it looks like you've been blessed.
Inches of snow covering your driveway.
You need to be on the ON-401 in the next 20 minutes. Clearly, you don't have time.
Do you,
- Floor your car until you get stuck in the snow, reverse, floor, reverse until something happens,
- Find a shovel,
- or give up and work from home?
If you picked 3, this marks the end of your read. Thank you for tuning in, more blog posts below!
A shovel is clearly better. For a short, indirect investment, you can get out of your situation in much less time. Flooring your car will remain fruitless no matter how many times you try. And yet, when it comes to dealing with roadblocks, most software engineering interns opt for option 1.
The Lore
I found myself in a peculiar situation one morning. I realized I hadn't updated my manager on a refactor, and it had been a full week. In order to demo my work, I had to integrate my findings into a prototype repository (my laptop was unable to handle the main repository). To create the prototype repository, I needed some information about dependencies and version resolution for a specific package.
And I couldn't reach out to my manager. The next message had to be along the lines of "XYZ is ready, are you available to take a look?"
Stuck, I decided to check out the remote repository for the package. There, I saw "944 commits", and an idea crossed my mind.
Clicking on the commit history revealed the list of commits with three names. Even though the last commit was made months ago, I decided to copy paste the three names into Microsoft Teams to see where I would end up.
- Person 1: Offline
- Person 2: Do Not Disturb / Busy
- Person 3: Idle
Things weren't looking good, but I still decided to try my luck with Person 3.
"Hi, Person 3! Do you have a minute?" "I noticed you are one of the core maintainers for X, do you know which packages and what version I need to use to set up Y?" "By the way, I've been using your work for a few months now, and I love how clean everything looks! :)"
Minutes pass by, I get a ping. They want me to reach out to Person 2 since they aren't home. Yes, the "Do Not Disturb" person.
Still hopeful, I reach out to Person 2, expecting nothing. I head back to the remote repository to see if I could find anymore leads. Another few minutes lass by, and I get pinged, this time, from Person 2.
And the minutes that followed were the most soul lifting minutes I've experienced in a long time. Efficient communication, screenshots, links, information on where to learn more, rapport, this exchange had it all. And I had my answer in minutes.
A regular intern would have been stuck, gotten into trouble with their manager and would have made a bad impression without fail. Instead, I decided to invest some time and energy in digging more than the average engineer and avoided making myself look incapable and unorganized.
Maintaining your public image at this stage is critical, especially if you want to get a return offer, expand your scope or have more opportunities in general.