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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?"
I am currently a college student working towards a degree in Computer Engineering. As far as internships go here, to have a chance at one you need to apply to the major companies that give the your University money, such as Wal-Mart, JB Hunt, Axciom, and some others in my school's case.
-Poo will never be unfunny.
and summer camps were hiring camp councilors. The Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines were all looking for new recruits. Some non-profit organizations were looking for volunteers.
That's about it.
It is almost summer time, I myself am going to look for a job in construction.
Also, it may be beneficial to get out of the sciences altogether and study Something Else. There's a whole world out there of other things besides computers, and you can major in some of them in college.
A coworker of mine was just saying the other day that he can't believe he wasted so much time studying CS in school. Now he's got a skillset limited to computers (he's a really good programmer), but nothing marketable outside of that. Frankly, he could have studied basket weaving in college and still learned enough to be a good programmer from on-the-job experience.
To be a programmer, you just need to get a foot in the door. That means you just have to have some exposure to programming and CS topics, not a full-blown major.
In short, study what you want, but don't expect a major to open doors for you.
I have been pwned because my
As an MIS major about to graduate, I can tell you that the job market is dismal at best. The only jobs that will even give me an interview are in the realm of Application Developer (i.e. cubicle code monkey) and the competition for those is fierce. Any jobs in systems, networking, or security all want 5-10+ years experience so it looks like I'm stuck in the same old catch-22. Oh well, I hear McDonalds has a great 401k plan.
If you are serious about landing a job, bashfully asking for a low-or-no paying internship position is completely worthless. In a job market like this, no manager is looking for the smooth young minds to take under their wing and mold into productive, successful workers. They are looking for the people that can get the job done, make the manager look good, and not gripe and grouse about petty issues.
The only way to crack into such a market when you are green is to really dazzle 'em with examples of sharp work and present yourself as someone pleasant to work with!
Also, never try to land a job through an HR department. If you can't get direct access to a project manager, meet someone who can. Try thinking from the perspective of a project manager: He/She wants to look good in front of the peers and boss and make sure the new hire isn't going to rub the existing team wrong and waste a lot of time with interpersonal drama to resolve.
I remember back when I was in college, I kept on getting letters from the US Navy, asking me to apply for jobs as a reactor tech on nuclear subs, so you might want to try that. (Unless you're a big fan of daylight and regular bathing...nah, this is Slashdot.) Scary thing is, I was an econ/poli sci major.
Its no better in the Physical sciences I can assure you. Bioinformatics is a BIG growth area, if you can code in PERL you will obtain god like status in bioinformatics
Getting a pHD in cs is a good way to become over qualified and have a harder time getting a job than you did before you had the PHD, unless you were previously devoid of skill and unable to get a job in the non-academic world and are happy pigion holeing yourself into an academic niche.
Instead I would suggest doing a degree in a different field, hopefully a complementary field and moving yourself into a niche which few other people are qualified to compete within. For example, Bioinformatics. You combine a degree in say genetics and computer science and you've opened a lot more doors than if you had just completed a masters or phd in cs.
But at least Johnnie Frat Boy knows how to spell!
:-)
No, don't shoot me, this is not meant to be a flame. I actually hire interns and IT guys in my company (I am the CTO). Now put yourself in my shoes for a second. There is enough on offer. I have to hire those who show most promise. I have to defend my hires to fellow execs. If I hire someone who writes things like "easist", "acronims" and "sentince", I will be asked why I did not at least hire someone who can read and write.
I realise this sounds dismissive, and I really do not mean it to. I am just trying to impress upon you the importance of basic skills. If you cannot distinguish "sentince" from "sentence", how can I be sure you can produce functional code? These are not mere typos.
Yes, I know there is much more than spelling to a person. It's just that this is kind of a basic skill. If you can improve on it, I am sure you can compete better with Johnnie Frat Boy. And please do try to see this as a constructive suggestion - I may be shot down but felt it needed saying.
Michael
PS ATM in a sentence? OK... I'll give you two: "ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) was not the panacea it was once thought to be to solve Internet connectivity woes". Or try "ATM (Automatic Teller Machine) technology has more than kept pace with Internet security technology and losses are minimal".
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BDOS ERR ON A:>
I love slashdot for insular comments like this. Wait, no I don't. But I do look at it with a certain fondness.
Seriously, though. Almost 100% of the computing population run commercial closed source software on a commercial closed source operating system. They browse the Web using a closed-source browser, read email using a closed-source client, write documents with a closed-source wordprocessor. Microsoft is definitely going to lose market share to OSS, but if you and they were honest they'd admit that they never *had* that market share in the places that matter for OSS. Just look at the rise and rise of Apache, for example. You'll be hard-pressed to find Microsoft citing a potential OSS threat to their desktop environment, for example. And it's been the "year of Linux on the desktop" according to various OSS luminaries for how many years now? Perhaps four.
Even among geeks, there's a not-insignificant move to a closed-source OS - Mac OS X - simply because it's cool. What's been happening is a huge increase in support for open *standards* - HTML, XML, all the old Internet standards - because they allow interoperability.
So stop fighting the system. Find a niche, find some capital (small business loans, family, rich friends), and fill it. Use your computer education to supplement a career instead of beating yourself up with rejection letters in a bone dry job market. You'll be happier if you're the boss.
Jack
IBM's Extreme Blue internship is looking for 80 technical students to incubate emerging technologies and business opportunites from Stereo Cameras, to GRID Systems, to Cell processors, to Content Addressable Storage Systems, to Privacy Databases, to Autonomic Computing, this is some of the coolest work you could be doing as a CS Intern this summer. They pay for housing, competitive rates, and fly you to IBM Headquarters to present to the CEO and alot of the top Executives at IBM. Each of the 4 labs has 25 top technical and business students in the country.
Check it out at www.ibm.com/extremeblue
Everything you say makes great sense in theory, and I wish I lived in a world where talent and drive alone gets you jobs.
Excuse me for being a smart-ass, BUT:
If you want to get ahead based on your talent and drive move to America, because that's what we have. If you are going into too many companies where "talent and drive alone" aren't cutting it, then YOU'RE LOOKING IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES. Some advice:
-- Move to an urban area; "talent and drive" won't get you diddly squat in a rural sh*thole like South Dakota, and I know because that's where I grew up; there are ALWAYS opportunities in the urban areas (and I mean ALWAYS).
-- When you get to that urban area, apply for any and every job you are capable of doing, as if your life depends on it because IT DOES; as long as the company has interesting positions you could potentially move into in the FUTURE, you shouldn't limit yourself to engineering or programming jobs today.
-- Learn to swallow your pride to survive, because we are talking about YOUR SURVIVAL; I can't tell you how many out-of-work-techies I've seen unemployed for the past 2 YEARS because they're holding out for a job like their last job; future companies WILL understand if you had to survive in a lesser job for a couple of years until the economy turned around.
I graduated with a BSCS in 1990 (the last recession), looked in California for any technical computer or programming job I could find, but couldn't find anything for over a year. I happened to take a receptionist job at an electronics "start-up" just because I was desperate to pay the bills -- I was within weeks of being homeless at that point. I kept looking for a better programming job (Netscape, etc.), but my company kept growing and moving me into better-paid and more appealing positions than I could find with other companies.
Today, I'm still with this company, we've merged with other companies to form the largest power supply distributor/manufacturer in North America and Europe, and I head up the I.T. Department. Most people can't believe that I started as the receptionist with the President at arm's reach behind me, but THAT is what talent and drive can get you in America, but America isn't kind to those who are picky.
(By the way, we've always been profitable, we still are today, and we've done it without mass layoffs)
- 85% of employers surveyed in July 2001 prefer "a job candidate with great reviews from his/her internship supervisor, but who had only mediocre grades, to a candidate with outstanding grades but no experience." (source: Information Week)
- "Having an internship or co-op on your resume will earn an 8.9% larger starting salary over a new hire with no experience." (source: www.jobweb.com)
- "College graduates with less than one year of [internship] experience will have approximately three times as many jobs to choose from than college graduates without experience. College graduates with more than one year of work experience will have fifteen times more opportunities." (source: CareerBuilder Job Market Report)
So it is reasonable to expect the emergence of for-profit internship providers.(As it happens, not long ago my business plan for such a provider was circulated internally at Microsoft. I subsequently received the following e-mail from Randy Hinrichs, Manager of Microsoft Research's Learning Sciences and Technology Group:
You can see an updated, open source-friendly version of the plan here.)In the future, then, there will will be paying internships -- it's just that the interns will do the paying.
On the upside, the benefits of a really well-run, well-documented internship will outweigh the expense.
Enjoy,
Frank Ruscica :: Have Fun to Get Ready
Founder
The Opportunity Services Group
www.opportunityservices.com
It's who you know. I can't stress enough the importance of job fairs. Sure, most of the time you'll get the people who just take your resume and file it away, never to see the light of day again. However, I think you stand a much better chance of landing an internship when you meet with recruiters face-to-face as opposed to just being reduced to a GPA on a resume. Also, if you go to a school that has engineering societies... join them! I got internships and a job right out of college through my connections with an engineering society (SHPE if anyone is curious). I was a corporate liaison and often company reps would ask me for the resumes of the society members in a certain major. If you're one of those resumes, then you'll be 1 of 20 as opposed to 1 of 1000+ applicants which gives you much better odds of being noticed. I know you might feel dirty doing the whole networking, business card, laughing at all the stupid jokes scene, but it's how you get a spot at the corporate poker table. Skill may get you the job, but connections get you the interview.
"Oh dear, she's stuck in an infinite loop and he's an idiot" -Prof. Farnsworth (Futurama)