My Experience With Side Hustle Internship: It’s The Worst!

Side Hustle internship platform is a free online learning platform for young people to learn tech skills. Since 2020, the platform has been educating youths (undergrads, graduates, and corp members) for six (6) weeks of world-class training in soft & hard skills.

The teaching is free of charge; however, the certificate is not free but for the price of ₦2,500. They also offer a BootCamp for finalists who pay an extra ₦5,000 to join a team working on a startup or collaborate on projects.
The Bootcamp phase is not employment but a chance to garner experience working for others.

As yours truly TASMAG, we interviewed a couple of interns who were members of the 2022 cohort of the Side Hustle internship. We spoke with two(2) interns about their experience with the training:

1. Speaking with Gbenga

How was your experience with the 2022 Side Hustle internship?

I have mixed feelings about my experience with the program. It was a free program, so I did not expect to get the best experience, but that doesn’t mean I should lie. It was the worst.

The first week we began the internship in April, the website was really bad. The dashboard was terrible, the quiz portal kept shutting down, and the backend must have been on fire. The internship covers a host of courses that include web development, but their website just happens to be a really shitty example.

What was your worst experience?

Side Hustle accepts a ‘massive crowd’ of interns but cannot manage them. In this case, I will blame both interns and the side hustle team. Why would you accept over 7,000 interns in a one-course track when you don’t have the efficient capacity to tutor them?

I studied product design, and we had just two tutors. Conveniently, most interns were inactive; though they signed up for an internship, they kept it aside. It may have seemed like a good thing since the numbers got trimmed, but it was actually bad. We have to do two capstone projects as a group of ten people. Our groups numbered up to 390, if not more. If you were in a group with inactive members, you would have to do all the work yourself.

It’s a free internship, and we are not making demands, but they have a paid certificate in the end. Isn’t it best to manage your active interns so they pay for the certification?

My experience was not the best like most interns out there, but I know that side hustle is not losing. There are about five courses and nearly 7000 plus interns in each course. If just a quarter paid for the certificate, which is ₦2,500, that would be over four million Naira per course, and that is before paying for the Bootcamp.

Did you achieve anything?

I achieved knowledge that is theoretical knowledge but not practical knowledge. We are provided with video lessons and live classes, but both were done on PowerPoint presentations and links to reading online articles. We didn’t have a chance to use Figma and understand the basics. The quiz questions were out of the blue and were sometimes about things that were completely foreign or alien to us.

What was the best experience?

The Telegram group was interactive with live class sessions. That was the only thing I liked about the entire learning experience. However, the live classes were not interactive for everybody; the tutors muted everyone but chose only a few favorites. This limited me from asking a lot of questions.

Do you think the Side Hustle certificate is of value?

I don’t think so oh. The courses are just fundamentals, and I don’t think it’s powerful enough to get you a job. I believe it’s good to start a foundation.

What is your advice for future interns?

They should register early. At least by registering early, they can be guaranteed to be put into a group with active participants. Groups beginning from groups 1 to 200 have the best chances of having active people. If you find yourself in group 320 or 389, I doubt that you will have active group members. You may have to do all the capstone projects yourself, while others will have their group members to rely on.

Another thing you have to note about the grouping is that the early groups that I mentioned are also the first to get graded when it comes to capstone projects. The tutors start grading from the first group to the last; imagine if someone were tutoring a course with almost 400 groups, he would get tired before he even hits half of the group.

Candid Advice: If you plan to take this internship, be focused and be prepared to burn data on telegram video calls. If you plan on getting the certificate, make sure you work very hard and develop a sense of worth in the program.

Would you recommend others to learn on Side Hustle?

It wasn’t entirely a bad experience for me; at least now I have a vague idea about what product design is. I did another course, too, but I am not proficient in any of them. Life is all about learning. If you have enough data to burn and aren’t learning any tech skills, I think you are in the wrong. Side Hustle classes are free, and I believe people should make the most of it, but they just have to overlook the annoying system they have.

2. Speaking with Sharon

How was your experience with the 2022 Side Hustle internship?

Honestly, I did not enjoy it. Maybe because I have attended other tech training that is more organized than this, I believe this is because we are too many or something, but I’m not totally sure.

I know that I applied for this internship in 2020 when we were much more than this but got kicked off with so many others after a week. It was the same problem back then; the internship was not well-organized.

What was the best experience?

I don’t think I’ve had one that I will call the best experience. It wasn’t terrible, and it wasn’t terrific either.

What was your worst experience?

My group submitted our capstone projects early, but they weren’t graded. As the team lead for one of the groups, I reached out to the tutors several times on Telegram and the website for weeks before they could do something about it.

Apart from that, the video lessons for each week are always taken down. So it’s impossible to access videos from the past weeks. According to them, the server cannot handle the load. That’s the most unprofessional thing I have heard. Why start a program when people can’t access the materials?

Did you achieve anything?

I must confess I did learn a thing or two, but I don’t think I will go further in the course I took because the disorganization did not give me enough ginger to pursue it as a career. I learned Excel during the live classes, and they are so different from the video lessons online. I didn’t always have data to join the weekly live lessons, but it is evident that people who don’t join miss out a lot. Most of the interns only go through the video lessons on the website before taking the quiz.

Do you think the Side Hustle certificate is of value?

I don’t think so, but I will collect the certificate sha, you can never tell where you will need it one day. I joined the internship to polish my skills, and I believe my experience and portfolio are enough to speak for themselves.

What is your advice for future interns?

Go in with an open mind. The will to learn begins to thaw or fade out with time, and sometimes, you might just want to give up. I will advise future interns to remain steadfast and committed because you will see yourself wanting to quit when things become frustrating. But if you are determined, you will never give up, regardless of how tough it gets.

Would you recommend others to learn on Side Hustle?

If you don’t have money for a course on Udemy, Coursera, or Edx, Side Hustle might just be where you end up. It’s not totally bad, but I wish the Side Hustle team should develop an efficient way to tutor people.

Do you have a different experience with Side Hustle? Please share it with us via the Contact Us page.