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

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.

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.