How should I have reacted to an intern's work?

OK, so you have two issues to work on here:

1. Your relationship with the intern. This is almost certainly easy: just message them with something like "Hi! Nice to meet you last week. No obligation but let me know if you'd like a quick chat about the project at some point", and then just spend some time being friendly with them.

2. Why there's work on the project happening without everyone being fully informed. I assume you have enough kudos in your organisation to just go and ask that question of your PM directly, so go do it (politely).

You were blindsided. That sucks. When it is all said and done it will be your responsibility for the project(s).

Of course, as you stated, the intern deserves some kudos for their work. Interns are there to learn.

Somebody setup both of you to have an awkward moment.

How should you have responded? Like a teacher to a student if they weren't your direct student. Tell them they did a good job.

If you are up to it, chase them down and do it now. Discuss their methods and logic. Tutor and mentor.

On a separate note, ask the person that setup the meeting to please keep you in the loop. If nothing else, so you aren't surprised.

1. Give kudos to the intern. The intern was able to do the same work that you did with such less experience.


2. Engage with the intern. If they were able to provide such good job, it's worth mentoring them and being close.


3. Start thinking about moving somewhere else (team or job wise). Definitely communications are not flowing as they should with your PM, which might be a sign that your current team/org is not in its best place.


4. Poach the intern to move with you to your new team/job. It's not easy finding interns/juniors that are worth to mentor.

What I understand is that you've done some analysis and now somebody else did the same job. This person presented his work and you presented yours.

I would say there is a lot of money involved and history. If a PM wanna make a move the risk should be well analyzed and reduced to a minimum. How else could you achieve this goal without asking somebody else?

To what I understand you didn't include his analysis on the fly during the meeting into your presentation. I wouldn't see it as a problem per se. The reasons for "ignoring" them might be manifold, like you don't wanna argue without considerations, you have to rethink and recap your presentation.

I would get it clear who is responsibile for the migration? The PMs, the associated PMs? Since presentation time is over ask the PM and CC this person about the next steps and what to do with the intern analysis?

And include in it the answers from here, that you approve of.... etc.