In my work experience, most fresh out of school programmers are set right to creating reports for 6-12 months or so. While I see the benefit of doing something non-crucial, it seems to really discourage them.
So my question is, should organizations allow newbies to work with someone experienced right off the bat, obviously doing non-critical phases of a project, do get a real feel for what their career choice has in stock, or throw them on reports out of the gate?
Ah, there really is nothing like exploiting interns for remedial jobs…
Seriously though, you get back what you put in. Forcing them to do a thoughtless, thankless job for a long period of time is a quick way to build up a useless team member.