I Owe it All to Robert De Niro

In 2015, the movie actor, Robert De Niro, made a film entitled The Intern about a retired and widowed New York business executive who, finding himself at loose ends, applies for and obtains a “senior intern” position at a Manhattan tech firm.  In the movie, De Niro becomes the valued confidant of the firm’s young woman chief executive, who comes to lean heavily on him for valued advice both professional and domestic.

Very fortunately, I am not a widower, but beyond that, my situation a couple of months ago was not all that different from the character portrayed by De Niro, when a professional associate forwarded to me an email from BCom Solutions announcing the creation of a Senior Intern position, along with the suggestion that I might be interested.  I was, and accordingly, applied for the position and was accepted.

When I was mulling over the decision to apply for the Senior Intern slot, one of my friends rather cautioned against the idea.  They contended I would find virtually everything about the job and the organization to be so different from my previous professional life experience that I might not care for it or be able to adjust to it.  They were right, and they were wrong.  It is different – very, very different from the world of work which I had grown used to over an adult lifetime. 

So, with one month down and approximately two to go on my internship, how does a soon-to-be octogenarian find working alongside a group of young people less than half his age? Enlightening and startlingly refreshing!

To begin with, these people are brilliant.  Like the one in the movie, BCom is a tech firm, and the common skill among the staff is that each of them are computer literate techies, basing the substance of their professional lives essentially on the electronic compiling and exchange of information.  And they are very, very good at it.

They are to a person enthusiastic and committed to the firm and its mission. And they work hard.  At BCom, the day begins and ends on time, and while wisecracks, creative humor, and the occasional Nerf gun battle are always in order, there really isn’t a lot of goofing off-type wasting of time.  In fact, there isn’t any.

This staff believes in BCom and each other.  If you need help, all you have to do is ask anyone.  If there are petty rivalries, jealousies, or conflicts here, I have not in a month picked up even a whiff of it.  I think a large part of the credit for that goes to the firm’s 24-year-old founder and CEO, Brent Comstock.  Brent has and uses the ability to give to each member of the BCom team the support, confidence, and reassurance they need to do their job confidently and well.

As a part of my intern experience, I’m expected and allowed to develop a personal project.  Having written an online book on George Norris and the Nebraska Unicameral, I hope and expect to lean on the collective IT expertise here to publish a 2nd edition in both electronic and hard copy.  Amazon.com has a feature that allows for that, and BCom has the necessary computer and creative skills to help me make it happen.  Viola!

Finally, at the end of the day, here’s the best part of a BCom internship:  The people here are so secure and mature in their professionalism that they will accept – and even seek out – the advice and counsel, on matters both big and small, of an intern…even the oldest intern they’ve ever had!