We took twelve interns in summer 2020 and every one of them worked remotely for the full twelve weeks. Nobody at Terravek had done this before and it showed in places.
What worked: the project structure. Every intern had a defined backlog item with a named supervisor and a separate mentor, and that structure did not depend on being in a building. Ten of the twelve shipped their work to production.
What did not work: the incidental learning. Interns in a normal year absorb an enormous amount by overhearing things. Remote interns hear only what is said to them directly, which turns out to be a much smaller and much more filtered set of information.
We tried to compensate with scheduled 'ask anything' sessions and they were, by universal agreement, awkward. What actually helped was pairing interns with each other across departments — a cohort, not twelve individuals.
For 2021 we are keeping the cohort structure and going back to in-person where public health allows. The programme details are on the internships page; applications for next summer open in January.