Internships in the Post-DotCom Era?

aetherspoon asks: "Reading the Internship at Microsoft story, I was wondering what paid jobs were actually still out there for CS majors in the industry. Coming from a CS major who has a stack of 'We're sorry, but...' letters sitting on his desk, I know that I have not had much luck in this area. Are there any places left offering good paid internships?"

Comments

good place to start the hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

Caljobs is an excellent site if you are living in California

What Aboot the MIS Grad?

[very]

If the people Computer Science degree have trouble finding real jobs today, I wonder what it would be with people with MIS degree.

The dotCOM market is now featured in many INFOMERCIAL.
That's a sign of the time.

Hmm let's see

[Sparky69]

Well I've got an internship at Sun Microsystems... Actually everyone I know has an internship and they're all in CS. Companies like Qualcomm, IBM, Microsoft, man the list goes on and on. Oh yeah. I forgot I go to an "inferior" Canadian university. Sorry. U of Waterloo BTW in Canada intership's are called COOPs. Cheers, Andrew

Re:Hmm let's see

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm ... how can you refer to Waterloo as an inferior school? It was just referred to as Canada's MIT; it's so heavily recruited from -- no wonder you and everyone you know has an internship. They have the best coop program around ... period.

Have you considered University IT Departments

[sotdx]

I started out as a lowly tech grunt in my University's IT department, and moved up through the ranks getting experience and skills. When I was getting closer to graduation, I was able to obtain an great internship with the IT organization. It paid incredible for a student job ($11 an hour) and gave me the freedom to experiment with technology and projects.

I'd credit the experiences I had with the University internship while I was going to school to be the reason I have a Network Administration position right now.

Electronic Arts

[Anonymous Coward]

EA has an internship program.

Re:Internships

[RabidOverYou]

Well, do you or don't you? Does it depend? Tell us!

Ooooh, now I see - you haven't a clue how question marks work.

Apply to smaller companies

[Bush_man10]

In our coop program we have found that since the big companies who used to hire the majority of our class (Nortel, Alcatel etc..) stoped posting jobs a lot of smaller companies are coming forward to fill in. I have a work term this term with a company of 13 people but I'm designing an embedded system from scratch and sticking linux on it. It's a great project but the pay isn't as high as I've had in the past. My advice for you is to check on the local start-ups in your neighbourhood. They are always looking for cheap talent. Although this being my 5th work term also helps out a lot when looking :) Startups offer great experience if you can get hired on with one. Looks great on the resume for when you want to look for a Microsoft job when you graduate.

Internships

[Wogger]

I started my CS degree shortly after the dot-com fallout going to the University of Waterloo, known for it's co-op (internship) program. Since then, I've had 5 successful co-ops, at companies like Corel, Honeywell, Environment Canada (the Canadian Environmental Service), and a university in Finland. All of them were either software development or testing, and they all paid well (enough to cover the semester's housing and tuition).

I don't have high marks, in fact, my average is in the upper 60's.

I'm not finding any shortage of work, and my university has a 97% placement rate for co-ops (all of which are paid).

Granted, my university facilitates all of the leg work in applying to and interviewing with these companies. (I don't have to go out and look for any) Althought many others do find co-ops independently without assistance from the co-op department.

Re:yes - OT

[taliver]

Also Off the Main topic, but to fill in some stuff, I thought I'd mention that I took up the Navy on it's offer.

It's pretty good while you're in college-- right now they pay right around $40K/year for your last two years in school--not bad, since you have absolutely nothing ROTCish or Navyish to do for those two years (I even interned at a national lab while I was getting paid by the Navy-- hooray for double dipping. :)

Anyway, the job I signed on for was instructor, which meant that I taught onshore, never seeing a sub but as a tourist, for 4 years. And then I was out. If you want a military career- this is not the way to go. If you hate paperwork, this is not the way to go. If you despise bueracracies, 'the man', uniforms, power trips from idiots, or senseless rules, this is not for you.

However, it is a job, it gives you in-state tuition for whatever school you're in, it delays having to choose a real career for 4 years, and they do give a reasonable paycheck. (The instructor option is only open for technical majors, however-- otherwise you can go sub, not see the sky for 3 months at a time, go crazy, but get about a $12K signing bonus.)

Key to Finding Paying Internships: Be different

[omnipotus]

If you can differentiate yourself from the other kids in your class, you can get the internship that you want. I'm about to finish as a C.S. major from UMD (Go Terps!) and I have a terrible GPA (which is specificaly absent from my resume. I have never gotten an 'A' in a class for my major. I turn in projects late. As a student, I am a teacher's bane - talented but distracted. What am I so busy doing? Getting a head start on the industry that I want to work in. You can do this any number of ways:

• Joining your local student ACM chapter. Better yet, run for office - I know they need the person power. If it doesn't exist, charter it!
• Want to attend a technical conference? Both USENIX and the IETF have programs designed to get students involved by providing stipends. Often, these programs are applied to by few students.
• If you prefer getting involved with a .com than a .org, consider that Apple gives away about 300 scholarships to their annual develpers conference in San Jose, WWDC.
• If you are an uber programmer, perhaps you should try registering as a student or evan as a competitor or presenter at MacHack.
• The Government is always hiring, and don't let anyone tell you that you have to get a security clearance to work on something cool.
• An earlier posted mentioned that the University IT department is a good place to work, and for the most part I agree - there are few other places with the budget and deployed network size of Univsersities that will teach you as you go.

Re:PhD not a good way to get a job

[taliver]

Just to share, I'm getting paid to get a PhD in CS. Every school I know of does this for every technical major-- nobody pays for a PhD in CS.

Sure, you have to live like a dog for multiple years, making between 13-17K a year, but hey, if you can live that cheap, there are no problems.

From a Current Intern

[LowneWulf]

I am currently sitting at my desk at Sun Microsystems Labs in Mountain View California. I'm a University of Waterloo Computer Engineering Undergraduate student.

The intern positions are tough to get at these companies, but there is certainly no lack of them! And they are certainly paid. I for one am paid obscenely well for my time here in California.

In this area in general, all the big researchg outfits have large intern programs:
- Sun (both the labs and general)
- HP
- IBM
- PARC (former Xerox lab)
- Microsoft Research

The smaller companies each will hire smaller numbers of interns... maybe only one or two each, but I find most companies that have hired interns and done well by it (and most do) believe strongly in it and will be happy to look at your resume.

Make sure, beyond anything, to get your resume into the stacks of these companies. Many of them will only bring interns in during the summer with the university students on co-op, so it helps to know when to get the resume in.

Yes, but WORK whilst your there...

[Anonymous Coward]

The BEST thing you can do is work your butt off if and when you get one. Selling yourself a bit short in your interview may help you here, or the companies past experience with other interns may help as well. If you are truely good at what you do, then show that to them. At big companies I would think this might be a bit complex (my digital systems instructor was fond of telling of the summer internship at IBM writing literally 5 lines of code, and spending the rest of the time playing flight simulator). ASK for assignments, get them done fast, and correct. ASK questions all the time! Don't be afraid to contribute to dev meetings! This probably works better with smaller dev groups / companies, like where i am now :)

try research centers

[tempny]

I'm a sophmore cs student from nyc and a few summers ago stumbled onto an awesome and untapped source of jobs. A lot of my friends in cs do this too. Many research centers (often run by large universities) that don't have much to do with students have a huge need for non professional programmers. However, I'm not sure there are too many of these places outside large cities.

These places do not have the money to pay an adult programmer, but can afford to pay undergrads quite decently. For some reason, they also do not actively look for programmers. However, when I started targeting these places, almost all of them were initially interested and I actually ended up with a few offers. Research centers often require a miriad of small but often highly specified programs, and many researchers are desperate to be untied from the large and hugely expensive software suites they are forced to use when they only need one or two functions of these programs. (like Igor). Also, these are rare places where you get to work with very cool and not commonly seen equipment, meet tons of smart people, and are given the freedom to do your work however you see fit. (It is not likely your boss will understand c++) It is also very cool to have something like "developed a program to do real time memory testing via auditory and visual cues" on your resume before you even hit the mainstream job market.

Still tons of them out there...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm currently an undergrad student at University of Waterloo (CS), and I've had multiple offers for paid internships in the US/ Canada over the past 2 years, all of which were from pretty cool companies - a crapload of banks, Rogers Broadband, VoiceGenie, ExtendMedia, and currently RealNetworks. All of these companies had pretty decent compensation (> $20/hr), with added benefits of subsidized housing, transport, and shipping for the ones located in the US.

I don't think that's a pretty bad deal, considering current market conditions and, none of these were hard to get - the companies all come to recruit on campus, and I never actually had to go 'looking' for a 'good' internship.

Gordon Food Service

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike software and IT companies, there are other industries that aren't as hard hit by the economic slump. Right now, two of the best industries to be in are the pharmacuetical and food service industries. My employer, Gordon Food Service, is ONLY looking for interns; we fill all of our entry-level positions through internships. At a recent job fair, we had far too many seniors looking for jobs and not enough sophomores and juniors looking for internships.

Now then, we're a really high-tech company with heavily automated warehouses, but I know my reaction when my prof suggested checking with a food service company. "Food service? [begin sarcasm] Boy that sounds like a thilling internship." Good thing I didn't go on first impressions.

My advise - eschew the traditional tech companies, and find out who the high-tech players are in more stable industries. Then write up your resume, take advantage of your institution's career services for interview prep, resume reviews, and alumni networking. Get an art major to help with your resume layout, then have an English major proofread. Show up on time for the interview and bring your people skills.

check out national labs

[juan2074]

You can look for internships at other national labs (doing more than just nuclear engineering).

Check AWU about the possibilities at these facilities.

Also, check these:

Sandia

Los Alamos

Argonne

Brookhaven

Pacific Northwest

Lawrence Berkeley

Lawrence Livermore

Oak Ridge

And there are other other national labs that I did not mention.

The DoD / National Security Agency

[Anonymous Coward]

I only saw one other mention about government jobs. No one wants to work for the government because they don't think they get paid enough. I think some people are glossing over the most important aspect of it, you get paid. You have a job.

The National Security Agency is always taking interns/coops. I've applied there myself and feel confident that I will get it (I should know in about 3-4 days). Yeah, you need a security clearance. Big deal, it's not that bad. If you've kept your nose clean in your life (don't do drugs for christ's sake, and yes, marijuana counts) you will have no problem passing any of their tests (assuming you're a stable person).

The government has opportunities everywhere, you just have to give up the stigma of 'working for the man' and get on with it. Government jobs have great benefits too.

In case you're interested: here is a link to the NSA coop program. The CIA also hires people.

You will be able to have real world experience, have a valuable security clearance, and most likely a job working there when you graduate.

Re:The DoD / National Security Agency

[Bangback]

Pay is pretty competitive once you factor in the rapid promotions in IT. You can start applying(normally successfully if you have a good degree) for jobs in the next higher grade after one year in grade. Often jobs are structured for automatic promotion so you'll stay after the first year (it is easier to find a promotion than get the first government job for a variety of reasons). Of course, you have to be willing to move.

And the security clearance is a big, big deal placing NSA or any intelligence agency at the top of your list. You can easily find a job paying nice $$ if you have a valid Top Secret security clearance and are willing to work anywhere (they pay people 30K+ to escort copier repairmen and soda machine guys around the building in some highly sensitive areas -- people with programming skills are 50K+ for junior guys). Read the Washington Post job ads -- they are chockerblock with jobs if you can jump this hurdle.

Of course, there are downsides to working for the government (difficult to execute projects, requirements always change, customers and moneymen constantly struggling for project control). But normally hours are pretty good so you can develop skills or do contracts on the side if you're really motivated.

Oh, and ontopic, you'll never get an internship except through a coop-type program. Government summer jobs are a byzantine process (and ironically, largely random). It takes many months to get a government job.

my 2 cents

[Joe the Lesser]

Sure, this is the 300th post or something, but in case the author reads them all:

Fairchild Semiconductor is an excellant employer of interns.

my company offers a great Internship for CS majors

[browncow123]

The company I work for has a great paid internship program. I work for an oil company. The only problem is that you will not be doing any software development. We are an IT shop where DATA is the product and our customers are the employees in the company. So you're looking at Data Warehousing, writing queries, etc. Being a CS major myself, this can be a turn off, however being employed is pretty important and nice. Anyways: From talking to some of the previous interns, Im guessing that the interns are paid between $15-$25/hr and I believe they even pay part of rent. The company I work for seeks CS majors, but only top students. For more information, look here:
http://www.aeraenergy.com/InternProgram/

Enjoy.
Browncow.

Re:It's funny because....

[btellier]

This is patently untrue. The percentage of people getting CS degrees has stayed relatively static over the past ten years. Take a look here to see that the number of CS majors who enrolled in the height of the dotcom boom of 1999 was the same as the the number in 1992. There were maybe 20% more than normal during the boom, but even by the next year it was only 5% more, then back to normal, even after the bust.

Sorry, but there are just fewer jobs available, and just as many qualified applicants.

DoD labs

[Anonymous Coward]

I currently work at a DoD research lab (NAVSEA) and I know that we offer pretty nice internships and co-ops. Each semester you come back, your pay increases. You also accrue vacation hours and comp time like real employees. It's very nice. You may also want to look into the PET Intern program at ARL with the DoD. They pay for your housing and travel during their internships.
Cheers.

Check out Los Alamos National Lab

[Anonymous Coward]

goto http://www.lanl.gov click on the jobs tab, then select from kinds of jobs. there is also links for internships, grads, undergrads, and posdocs. the pay and benefits are great and you get to hop cattle and shoot wired reporters if you want to also. I know of at least one linux sys admin / protein structure modeling job available. leave a reply below with contact info if you are interested.

Re:The worst thing for CS kids...

[lowe0]

Ah, this old argument. "You're just buying friends." Allow me to tell you a little about my house's budget for the year:

$1000 for rush - having events to get people in the door. Larger houses spend even more on this, so it's difficult not to be drowned out by the biggest houses on campus.

$1000 for pledge education - not only are there parties and road trips for bonding purposes, but we prefer to teach our pledges instead of haze them.

$1500 for formal - we get together to have a nice night out with our girlfriends.

$2500 for social - those parties that everyone likes to go to (whether they're greek or not?) They're not cheap. Someone has to pay for them.

$750 for philanthropy - not only do we hold events to raise money for various charities, but we pay to participate in events held by other houses for the same purpose.

Once those expenses are out of the way, you still have to maintain the house, keep in touch with our alumni, and other tasks.

So, by the end of it, there's no money left to "buy friends." Paying your fraternity dues is about pooling your resources in order to accomplish your goals as a group.