Do internships still make sense in the AI era? Does your company still offer them?
Recently, I came across a discussion where someone asked whether to skip the internship and build the product with AI instead.
I see the same trend on X. Some founders are just 14, 15, or 16 years old already building tools, and some are even raising funding. AI has completely changed what's possible.
Today, we welcomed a new summer intern at Minimalist Phone. I still think internships have value. You meet people, learn how a company works, and gain experience you can't get on your own. [it gives you a clear structure about processes and how to work with collegues]
But it made me wonder...
Will internships become less common?
And if they survive, should companies redesign them so interns have a real path to a full-time role?
With AI reducing the need for many junior positions, I wonder if building your own project will become the better career path for many. What's your take?
Replies
100%. Interns give us the most fuel at @Reline. Actually, 50% of our website was built by a summer intern, and he used Claude incredibly effectively.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@reline He co-built a solid website. Did he ask about any opportunity to continue in your company?
I still think they're incredibly valuable. In fact, we're currently looking for backend interns at the company I work for.
AI can help you write code, but it doesn't teach you how to work with a team, review code, communicate trade-offs, or build software that other people depend on. Not everyone needs to become a founder. Great engineers are built by working with other great engineers, and internships are still one of the best places for that.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@sebxdev What company are you in? :) Maybe you can share and someone will notice a free intern openings :)
@busmark_w_nika Its call Ugofresh, and we are looking for a junior / intern on backend w/ python.
Position is on-site in Barcelona
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@sebxdev aaa, couldn't find your website, it is a stealth startup?
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@pranay19 So socialising part, right? :D I wouldn't pass then :D
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@pranay19 I need to expose myself more to strangers :D
I personally really like working with interns. They have a fresh take on everything and sometimes ask difficult questions. There fresh perspective helped us alot.
With experience we got bound to work in a particular way.
Also congratulation for new hires :)
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@shikha_shandilya Thank you! :) I do not know whether they are new hires for good, but probably only an intern stuff thing:D
I read your question less as “Are internships still useful?” and more as “Do people still want to enter existing structures at all?” AI gives full product autonomy. You can build, ship, and iterate alone. Internships only matter if someone wants exposure to real organizational systems — not if they prefer the AI‑driven solo‑builder path.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@askim_stucki In general, Gen Z and younger generations want freedom and that's something against corporate structures. So they rather build their own solutions.
@busmark_w_nika Right. Freedom is good, but it can also mean missing out on knowledge. Many things start alone or with a friend and become real only when the right people join later.
AI has definitely changed the equation.
A motivated teenager today can build in a few months what once required an entire team. That's incredible. But building a product and building a career aren't always the same thing.
Internships still teach things AI can't easily replicate: how teams collaborate, how decisions get made, how to communicate, prioritize, and deliver in a real business environment. Those lessons are hard to learn in isolation.
That said, I think internships will have to evolve. Companies can't expect interns to spend months on repetitive tasks that AI can already do. The best programs will focus on ownership, critical thinking, and working alongside AI, with a clear path to a full time role.
One question I keep coming back to is this:
Will the strongest candidates of the next decade be those with the best internship experience, or those who have already built and shipped real products with AI? 🤔
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@md_khayruzzaman i think that whoever is more capable will build something on his/her own and will not be dependent on a company :D
Congrats on the new intern.
The part I would push back on is the idea that AI reduces the need for juniors because juniors produced output. Mostly they did not. A junior's first year is usually net negative on output, since the time spent reviewing and correcting exceeds what you save. Nobody hires a junior for year one. You are buying the person they become in year three.
So AI taking the boilerplate does not really touch the reason juniors were worth it. What it does touch, and this is the part that worries me, is how they get to year three. If someone produces work they cannot evaluate, they never build the judgement, and then they never become the senior who could have reviewed it. The pipeline does not break because there is no work. It breaks because the work stopped teaching.
On building your own project instead, that teaches you to build, which is the easy half. It does not teach you to inherit someone else's mess, disagree with a colleague and still ship, or maintain something for two years after the interesting part is over. Those are what make someone worth hiring, and a solo project never puts you near them.
If you are redesigning the internship, that is where I would point it. If AI does the producing, make the internship about judging. Hand them AI output and have them find what is wrong with it, then explain why. That skill is getting scarce quickly, and it is one you cannot pick up on your own, which is exactly the argument you made for internships in the first place.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@abdullah_javaid3 I think that I should introduce him to things that are not doable only with AI :D I wanna give him a sort of different experience; probably will take him outside to record videos. :D
@busmark_w_nika Recording outside will teach him something a prompt can't, though I'd watch which muscle it builds.
Doing work AI can't do gives him experience. Judging work AI did gives him the thing that's actually getting scarce. They're different, and the second one is harder to arrange, because it needs you to hand him output that's plausible and let him find what's wrong with it before you tell him.
The video shoot is a good place for that, though. He'll watch the footage and know it isn't working without anyone marking it wrong for him. Does he get to make the call on a reshoot, or does that stay with you?
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(Un)fortunately yes. I wrote my ideas about it here https://vasylivanov.com/2026/07/07/how-to-learn-independently-in-the-age-of-ai/
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@vasyl_ivanov It seems that not only students and young interns will use the approach of self-learning with AI :) I am doing that too for coding :)
internships as we knew them were always a proxy for "this person can handle a real job." when you can build a real product in your bedroom at 16, the proxy loses its function.
but the underlying signal, someone with authority saw them do the work and vouched, is what actually got translated to a hire. the intern's manager wrote the reference. that's the primitive.
replacement isn't "skip internships." it's "find someone with credibility who watched you ship and can vouch when the reference call happens." the form changes. the vouch is still the entire game.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@thenameisarian That's a fact but what will be with those people next? Because I honestly do not think that there will be so many open positions for future for juniors.
@busmark_w_nika real question. the current junior pipeline assumes companies grant the credential. if that shifts to 'someone in the field will publicly sign for your work,' juniors dont need companies to open 'junior' slots. they need mentors and seniors to name-vouch. thats basically how apprenticeships worked before HR became gatekeeper. AI kills the corporate junior pipeline. doesnt have to kill entry itself.
Both can be true. I have shipped a stack of products solo with AI tooling alongside a full time analytics job, so the build your own path clearly works. But the thing an internship gives you that a solo project cannot is watching a real team decide under constraints: handovers, politics, why a good idea dies in review. AI compresses how to build, not how organisations actually work. If internships survive they should lean into that, a real slice of ownership and exposure to how the business runs, not fetch work.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@oshylabs IMO, they will be more about learning soft skills.
@busmark_w_nika Agreed, and that is probably the honest rebrand internships needed anyway. The hard skills were always going to date. Reading a room, disagreeing without burning bridges, knowing when to escalate: none of that comes from a solo build.