This is a great resource, I wish I had this when I was interning. A couple tips from someone who's done this a bit (3 times, 2 years full/part time intern at Apple, 1 summer at FB):
- Yeah, you get paid a large sum of money, but it really doesn't matter. The $7k/month salary may sound like a ton as a college student, but it isn't. It will pale in terms of your life earnings. Focus on trying out new areas / technologies that you think you might be interested in, but aren't sure. An internship is a chance to try something new out. If you don't like it, you just don't accept their return offer, there's no expectation that you'll continue to work at the company beyond 3 months.
- Do NOT intern at the same place more than once. They will try to lure you back by giving you a deadline of 2 weeks after your internship ends. This is BS. If they were willing to give you a return offer, they will almost certainly wait for you to get your other offers back. Competition is too stiff for them not to do this. Interning at the same place twice yields diminishing returns: you'll be working with the same tech, not meeting new people and learning new tricks. Plus, you won't get to experience more company cultures, finding out where you fit.
- Don't even consider interning part time during the school year. The pay will seem appealing, but it will take away from your college experience. You only go to college once, you should enjoy it to its fullest, you have your whole life to work. Again, money is insignificant compared to your life earnings.
- Interning in the Valley is a rite of passage, but after you've done one internship there, consider other places. NYC is great, I live there and highly recommend it (shameless plug, you can read about why at my blog post: [1]). Boston is great too, lots of biotech startups. Overseas is also a good choice, since you'll get the experience of living in another culture, in addition to doing cool work.
I'll end with another shameless plug. I work for Palantir, a really great company that's growing extremely rapidly and working on some pretty cool projects across a variety of spaces: government, healthcare, local law enforcement, finance to name a few. We've also done some kickass philanthropy efforts, such as our work with Hurricane Sandy: [2]. I've only worked at Palantir full-time, but several of my friends have interned here, and said it's the best place they've interned. If you're interested in interviewing with us (for either fulltime or internship), please email me at <firstname>.g.<lastname> [at] gmail.
As a student in school right now I disagree with your third point. I have to pay for my schooling and don't have the money to live without a job so I don't have the choice. Working various internships has given me more experience at solving problems without the hand holding that school provides, and in turn makes homework generally easier.
Before I was lucky enough to land my first internship I worked for eBay as a customer service representative. While they had tuition reimbursement the job was so stressful that I felt it was a major detriment to my education. Jobs like this also don't care about your schooling or life outside of work.
Finally getting to program on the job and solve real world problems has been a change of pace. Your co-workers and management actually give you space, a chance to breathe, and respect that you have full time school outside of work. Working during school hasn't been half bad.
So, respectfully I disagree with your third point. I agree on the other points though.
$7k is actually on the low end nowadays :). I was as surprised as you, but talking to my friends, salaries seem to have shot up this past year. Dropbox, Google, FB, all pay over $7k, some well over that amount.
Wow. Fuck me only negotiating for $5500/month at a start-up. Many of my other internship applications got lost in bureaucracy, so I didn't get competing offers (ha, in one case, I failed to get an internship offer from a firm that once offered me a full-time job) to see how far up things had shot.
Just want to emphasize my point on money not being a factor in your decision. Consider you could be getting paid $8500 by working for <big company x>. That's $9000 over your summer, peanuts compared to your life earnings. Don't sweat it, you'll have the awesome experience of working for a small startup (something I never did), and probably make some really good friends. Enjoy life, you're getting paid many multiples what people with college degrees are making :).
$7k not-including-housing is only normal if you're a returning intern. Otherwise, it's for the top tier. Last summer, Google was $6667/month for undergrad SWE interns not including housing stipend. The stipend should be a one-time $3500 (last summer, many interns could choose corporate housing instead of the $3500 stipend).
You are correct. This is totally standard nowadays. Source: I've been to about a billion recruiting fairs lately and have a bunch of knowledge of competing offers made to my intern candidates and yes, this is correct, and not just for Google interns anymore.
Including housing stipends of about 1k, but none of the other benefits, most of my friends and I are going to be making almost 7k. Making 7k not including housing would be on the very high end (for non-returners).
Will you be interning in Seattle? If so, you're likely getting an equivalent deal to $8.5k in the Valley. Washington has no income tax and a way lower cost of living.
Even if not in Seattle, the difference between $6k and $8.5k is negligible for a 3 month internship relative to your life earnings.
Yes, I will be in Seattle. Sadly we still have to pay the state taxes of our tax home, so the tax rate of Washington versus California doesn't really affect our pay.
However, It's only negligible if it doesn't correlate linearly with a starting salary.
If my starting salary is 20% lower at Amazon than anywhere else, you can bet I won't be returning after my internship.
>Don't even consider interning part time during the school year
Agreed for undergrads, but part-time internships are great if you're doing a masters. I spent an academic year doing research (most people did their masters thesis research in 1-4 months of full-time work) while I worked part-time at the same place I did my summer internship. Industry pay let me make a phd's salary (i.e. just enough to eke by) with just 12 hours a week of work. It was the best year of my life. I had plenty of free time to enjoy and improve myself (I got in great shape, met interesting people, read a lot) when it was socially acceptable to live like that.
BTW I completely agree on NYC. Moving here from the west coast has its costs, but has been one of the most personally enriching decisions I've ever made.
> Interning at the same place twice yields diminishing returns: you'll be working with the same tech, not meeting new people and learning new tricks. Plus, you won't get to experience more company cultures, finding out where you fit.
Unless you want to work there after school, in which case returning is a very good idea, because the whole point of the returning internship pool is recruitment.
> Don't even consider interning part time during the school year. The pay will seem appealing, but it will take away from your college experience. You only go to college once, you should enjoy it to its fullest, you have your whole life to work. Again, money is insignificant compared to your life earnings.
There are lots of reasons other than money to intern part-time during the school year. It provides an outlet to do real-world work and build relationships that will matter for years to come after you've graduated.
The interns who continued to work in some part-time capacity when I was at Apple (and who continued to make solid technical contributions) were almost invariable hired.
> Interning in the Valley is a rite of passage, but after you've done one internship there, consider other places. NYC is great, I live there and highly recommend it
The company in question and the work you're doing matters as much or more than the location you're in. Obviously, you want to live somewhere nice, but if you want to work at a specific company, then that should be what drives your internship decisions.
>Don't even consider interning part time during the school year.
Really? All the advice I've heard anywhere else said it's extremely important to do as many internships as possible before graduating. And 7k a month? I thought internships were unpaid.
I couldn't get gmail to recognize your email (after plugging in your full name in between the '.g.') I might be missing something obvious, but for now I just applied through the website!
- Yeah, you get paid a large sum of money, but it really doesn't matter. The $7k/month salary may sound like a ton as a college student, but it isn't. It will pale in terms of your life earnings. Focus on trying out new areas / technologies that you think you might be interested in, but aren't sure. An internship is a chance to try something new out. If you don't like it, you just don't accept their return offer, there's no expectation that you'll continue to work at the company beyond 3 months.
- Do NOT intern at the same place more than once. They will try to lure you back by giving you a deadline of 2 weeks after your internship ends. This is BS. If they were willing to give you a return offer, they will almost certainly wait for you to get your other offers back. Competition is too stiff for them not to do this. Interning at the same place twice yields diminishing returns: you'll be working with the same tech, not meeting new people and learning new tricks. Plus, you won't get to experience more company cultures, finding out where you fit.
- Don't even consider interning part time during the school year. The pay will seem appealing, but it will take away from your college experience. You only go to college once, you should enjoy it to its fullest, you have your whole life to work. Again, money is insignificant compared to your life earnings.
- Interning in the Valley is a rite of passage, but after you've done one internship there, consider other places. NYC is great, I live there and highly recommend it (shameless plug, you can read about why at my blog post: [1]). Boston is great too, lots of biotech startups. Overseas is also a good choice, since you'll get the experience of living in another culture, in addition to doing cool work.
I'll end with another shameless plug. I work for Palantir, a really great company that's growing extremely rapidly and working on some pretty cool projects across a variety of spaces: government, healthcare, local law enforcement, finance to name a few. We've also done some kickass philanthropy efforts, such as our work with Hurricane Sandy: [2]. I've only worked at Palantir full-time, but several of my friends have interned here, and said it's the best place they've interned. If you're interested in interviewing with us (for either fulltime or internship), please email me at <firstname>.g.<lastname> [at] gmail.
[1] http://michael-g-miller.tumblr.com/post/20168723440/why-i-ch...
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPqtQ9DbeQY