"Can't an intern do it?"

Many have said it. Or thought it.

Tossed out casually. A reflex. Someone managing capacity.

But listen to what those words actually say.

This work matters enough to do. Not enough to do well. An intern is overflow capacity. Not a developing professional.

The person saying it never stopped to ask what an internship is actually for.

Here's a distinction I keep coming back to: mechanics versus operating system.

Mechanics can be taught in a week. How to run the software. Where the files live. Steps to the deliverable. Anyone can learn them.

An operating system is different. It's the judgment layer. Which mechanic to deploy. When to deviate. Whether the task as framed is even the right task.

This separates execution from understanding.

You don't build an operating system by throwing people into the grind. You build it through deliberate investment. Mentorship that transfers not just knowledge, but the reasoning behind the knowledge.

This is a trade and a science. It cannot be downloaded. It must be developed.

So why does the extractive model persist?

Partly because high-performance environments are time-poor by nature. The season doesn't wait. Teaching feels like a luxury when you're underwater.

But there's something deeper. Most people in this industry repeat the same grind they went through. They survived it. They emerged. And in the absence of a better template, they default to what they know.

Not out of malice. Because you cannot pass on what you never received.

The cycle continues until someone chooses to break it.

Something interesting is happening with AI right now. We are describing it as: "an intern with a PhD in everything."

Access to all the mechanics. No operating system.

The people getting extraordinary results aren't throwing tasks at it. They're investing. Curating context. Explaining the why. Transferring the judgment that only comes from working the craft.

If we invest that much thought into tools, why do we invest less in people?

I'm seeing two flywheels across the industry.

Investment compounds. Develop people who handle bigger work. That creates scale. Scale attracts ambition. Ambition attracts talent. Talent builds culture. The flywheel accelerates.

Extraction compounds too. Burn through interns as cheap labour. The best leave. Those who stay learn this is normal. They rise. They repeat. Institutional knowledge walks out the door. The organisation survives, but it never builds.

Both look identical short-term. The gap shows up years later. When one organisation can't keep people, and another has talent lining up to get in.

Next time you hear "can't the intern do it?", you'll hear it differently.

It's a signal. It tells you how that person thinks about development. About what you're building.

Ask yourself: Are we developing practitioners or processing tasks? Transferring judgment or delegating mechanics? Building something that compounds, or just getting through the week?

The organisations pulling ahead aren't working harder. They're spinning better flywheels.

Now you've heard the phrase for what it is.

You won't unhear it.