Internship Overview

The Tobu Pengin internship is a four-month, self-directed program in Python, Django, and real-world development on Pengin-Pi-3, the Pengin Open Source platform.

This page sets out what the program is, what we expect of you, and what you can expect of us. Read it before you sign your offer letter.

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At a glance

• Length: four months — sixteen weeks
• Time: about 10 hours a week, on your own schedule
• Location: remote
• Structure: self-directed, with handouts and training provided
• Meetings: a weekly one-on-one with your mentor, one to two hours
• Evaluation: honest feedback on your skill — no pass or fail
• Agreements: an offer letter. No non-compete, no non-disclosure.

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How the program works

This internship is self-directed. We don't hand-hold.

You get a syllabus, handouts, and a steady supply of information and training opportunities. What you do with them is up to you. You decide what to prioritize in your own education, how to organize your time, and how deep to go on any topic.

That's deliberate. The skill that matters most in this work is teaching yourself — reading documentation, reading code, working out a problem you haven't seen before. The program is built to exercise it.

It does not mean you're on your own. Ask questions. Ask in Discord, ask your mentor, ask the other interns and volunteers. Getting stuck is normal; staying stuck in silence is the one thing to avoid.

The syllabus and handouts are on the Program Training page. Setup is covered in Developer Onboarding.

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Time commitment

About 10 hours a week. You set your own hours — early mornings, late nights, weekends, whatever fits your life. We care that the time is spent, not when.

School and life come first

If you're in college, school comes first, and so does the rest of your life. This internship should fit around them, not the other way round.

If there's a conflict — exams, a heavy semester, something at home — tell us. We can defer your internship to another season, or you can leave in good standing, no questions asked. Telling us early is always better than disappearing.

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Meetings

You'll have at least one one-on-one meeting a week with your mentor, lasting one to two hours. It's remote, held on the team Discord for now — and on the team's own communication platform once that's built.

Use it. Bring what you're working on, what you're stuck on, what you've learned, and what you want to learn next. It's your time.

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Working with the team

Talk to each other. Communication between interns, and between interns and volunteers, is encouraged. Other interns are working through the same material; volunteers have already been through it. Both are worth more than another search.

Volunteers are upgraded interns or experienced developers who joined the community. Many of them will review your work.

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Issues, projects, and challenges

Working issues is voluntary. It isn't required to complete the internship. That said, it's the closest thing to real work in the program, and it's how most of the skills in the syllabus stop being theoretical. From week four onward you're welcome to pick up issues as you feel capable — see Contribution Workflow.

Team projects and coding challenges are given when time permits. They're chances to build something with others and to test yourself against a problem with a clear shape.

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The four months

The syllabus has the detail. In outline:

Month 1 — Python and tooling foundations. Classes, inheritance, and MRO; dunder methods; decorators; builtins and operators; error handling and type hints. Then Django basics, Git, GitHub, and Docker.

Month 2 — The Pengin-Pi-3 platform. How the platform is built, its fundamentals, and developing applications on it.

Month 3 — Applied work. Issues, projects, and challenges.

Month 4 — Wrap-up. Final knowledge checks, interview preparation, and offboarding.

Interview prep in the last month is there for a reason: the program is meant to leave you better placed for whatever you do next.

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Evaluation

There's no pass or fail.

You'll be graded honestly on your skill, and you'll get honest advice about where you are and where to go next. That feedback is only useful if it's true, so it will be — including when it isn't what you'd hoped.

What we evaluate is effort and improvement, not where you started. An intern who arrives knowing little and works steadily is doing exactly what the program is for.

If you're not trying and not improving, you'll be coached and warned. If nothing changes after that, you'll be dropped from the program. That isn't a judgement on your ability — it's that the program only works for people using it.

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Location

The internship is fully remote for almost everyone.

If you live in the Northwest Houston area, your weekly meeting might sometimes happen in person at a coffee shop — with all the free coffee you can drink, on the company. Mostly, though, it's remote like everyone else's.

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Your code and the license

Pengin Open Source is licensed under GPLv3. That shapes what you can do with the code, and what happens to the code you write. See License.

Using Pengin Open Source code

You're encouraged to use it. In personal projects, in school work, as the foundation for starting a business, or to sell a service to a local company. That's what an open-source license is for, and building something real with what you learned is the best outcome this program can have.

The GPLv3's conditions apply as they would to anyone: if you distribute software built on it, that software carries the same license and its source. Running a website or service for a client generally isn't distribution. The License page explains the difference.

No non-compete, no NDA

Interns aren't asked to sign a non-compete or a non-disclosure agreement. You're free to work anywhere, for anyone, during and after the internship.

Withdrawing your contributions

Your contributions are yours. If you later want code you wrote removed from the Pengin Open Source codebase, you can ask in writing.

Email legal@tobupengin.com with an official letter of intent that:

• identifies the code that belongs to you
• lists the branches it affects

and give us reasonable time to remove it.

Some limits apply. If your changes have since been heavily modified, only partly survive, are very limited in scope, or are commonly known code, we may not be able to comply fully without a court order.

Removal takes the code out of our codebase going forward. It can't reach copies already released under GPLv3 — the license grants recipients rights that continue for the copies they have, including anything already published to the public mirror or forked from it.

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After the internship

Interns who want to stay involved can upgrade to volunteer and join the community proper. Volunteers sign the Contributor License Agreement and continue working on the project with the access they already have.

Whether or not you stay, you leave with a working knowledge of a real codebase, code you can point to, honest feedback on your skills, and the right to keep using everything you learned.

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Related

• Program Training — syllabus and handouts
• Developer Onboarding — setup and accounts
• Contribution Workflow
• Code of Conduct
• License