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How OpenTeams Interns Navigate Real Product Work
What the GW Coders Lunch and Learn revealed about curiosity, collaboration, accountability, and learning to approach product problems first as a user and then as an engineer.
At the GW Coders Lunch and Learn, hosted by the GW Open Source Program Office, Vaidehi and I joined participants in the room and on Zoom to talk about our experiences as OpenTeams interns. We began by briefly sharing how we prepared for the interview process and how OpenTeams ultimately selected both of us as GW interns. That shared starting point led us into different but complementary roles: Vaidehi in security and me in product work.
Learning through questions
From there, the conversation focused on what working as an intern is actually like. Vaidehi opened with her presentation, What I Got Wrong, drawing from her experience as a security intern. She shared how some of her initial assumptions changed as she investigated systems more closely. Her experience showed that getting something wrong can still lead to a better understanding when someone examines the evidence, questions the original conclusion, and discusses what they discovered with the team.
As questions came from the audience, I added perspectives from working as a product intern around Collab, OpenTeams’ desktop application for private and agentic AI. One recurring challenge was deciding whether unexpected behavior represented a bug or something that had not yet been understood. Interns did not have to answer that question alone. Mentors helped us describe what we observed, gather evidence, and improve the question. Sometimes the team provided missing context. Other times, an intern’s fresh perspective revealed something that needed further investigation.
Starting as users
Being new to the product could also be useful during QA. Interns often encountered Collab more like first-time users. We first approached the product as users by following the workflow, considering what the feature appeared to promise, and noticing anything confusing or unexpected.
Shifting into engineering
If a problem emerged, the perspective shifted from user to engineer. The next steps involved reproducing the behavior, investigating its cause, discussing the expected experience, and working toward a tested solution. This approach kept the focus on understanding the user’s problem before changing the code.
Contributing to real product work
The discussion also covered what it meant for interns to contribute to real product work. Some intern pull requests went through professional review and were merged into the product codebase. Interns worked alongside senior engineers and other interns, contributing from areas they understood while learning from teammates with different experience.
Trust, communication, and accountability
Weekly meetings helped keep that collaboration moving. Everyone shared what they had completed, where they were stuck, and what they planned to do next. A task that initially appeared to require one or two days could take a week after the team discovered more complexity or received additional review feedback. Communicating those changes allowed the team to adjust expectations, offer support, and make sure that nobody else was blocked.
OpenTeams also offered flexibility in working hours, supported by trust and communication. Interns could organize their time as long as they completed their commitments, remained available for important discussions, and considered how their schedules affected the rest of the team.
The same sense of accountability applied when using AI agents. AI could help explore a codebase or suggest possible solutions, but responsibility remained with the person contributing the work. Every change still needed to be understood, tested, and explained.
Turning questions into product improvements
The Lunch and Learn showed that interns do not navigate challenges alone. They bring fresh questions, mentors provide context, and teammates offer different perspectives. By approaching problems first as users and then as engineers, interns can turn those questions into meaningful product improvements. That combination of curiosity, collaboration, and accountability shaped our experience at OpenTeams.
Takeaway
Interns do not navigate product challenges alone: fresh questions, mentor context, and team accountability turn uncertainty into meaningful improvements.