asurne

I think at most top of line places, internships are viewed as a two way interview. Firms get to see how the intern performs over 8-12 weeks, and the intern gets to see company culture/fit for 8-12 weeks. The work the intern is doing isn't the goal of the internship.

My previous company had IRC as a backup in case their primary form of communication goes down. You get the benefits of advanced communication systems with the ability to continue to work in an outage, and while it would be nice for everyone to have IRC, only ops folks really need it to sustain operation.