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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.