Slashdot Mirror
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?"
No.
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.
But it wasn't paid and they didn't give you kneepads.
From what I understand, they've cancelled the program, though.
I have been pwned because my
...instead of looking for a job right now. If you are an undergraduate, go get a Master degree. If you are holding a Master degree, go get a PHD. The time you finish your education, the economy may have recovered, and you are right there to ride the next wave.
Good luck.
To this end, I suggest graduate study in another field. Many graduate programs in the hard sciences (especially PhD programs in the sciences) offer good compensation packages and sometimes include low-cost housing. On top of that, you don't have to pay off your student loans for a while.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
I hear some positions in Iraq will be opening up real soon...
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
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.
You can be a team player. Sure its not so much as developing software, but using already integrated e-commerce software products (knowing which button is used to super-size a meal for instance). Corporate employers always look to see technical ability, ability to follow instructions, as well as being part of a successful team environment.
In other words, C.S. students are a dime a dozen, just like mcdonald's employees. What makes you stand out?
You know some math above first year calculus? You know some science above first year biology? Do you know anything besides programming? If you don't, then don't expect to get a job that any other second year CS student can get. Cause you won't get it unless you know someone (which is still the best bet for finding internships).
The "dot.com bubble burst" three years ago, now the students that went into university to study Computing Science purely because of the "get rich quick" scheme are graduating. They are having problems getting into work.
Now let's think.... 5 years ago there was maybe a tenth of the people doing CS as there are now, internships were available and reasonably well paid. Now all these companies have ten times the applicants that would originally have applied (but this time the other 9 want the money not the job).
If you were a CS company. Who would you want to hire?
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.
I'm a CS major, and I decided to work construction this summer rather than chase an elusive internship. The way I look at it, I'm going to have many years ahead of me where I will be spending my summers working behind a desk. So while I still have a chance, I'm going to take some time and have a job where I can work outside, hang out with my friends (who will be working at the same company), and generally relax (save for inspection days). There is something to be said for getting outside and hauling some lumber or pounding some nails. Admittedly, it is probably not something I would want to do for years and years, but for a summer it can be a pretty good time. It gives you a good sense of balance in life, something that CS majors tend to lack.
Some people like my father have scoffed at this and told me that I "need" to get an internship now or I'll get left behind. I'm sure many other CS majors here have felt the same pressure. However, I think this is when you should take a step back and look at why you got into CS in the first place. I did it because it is something I love to do; the potentially lucrative job market is an added bonus. So what if I don't get an internship and I don't make $foo money when I get a job after school? I'm confident in my abilities so that I will do well in the long run. However, as long as I make enough to live comfortably, I'm happy with that because I would much rather do CS than get a degree like Business where I really have no interest.
Don't take this as saying internships aren't important. It is definitely a good idea to go out and get some real world CS experience. (You can do this to some extent with open source projects on your own schedule.) But just remember, jobs/money are NOT the be all end all when it comes to CS or any other field. Don't forget to enjoy yourself sometimes or you will be left as one of those bitter coders getting mid-life crises in a not-so distant future.
My company hired a coop (we're a 5 person shop, so we only have one). Despite getting lots of resumes via email, I rarely read them. This one came to me from my cousin. Previous hires came from people recommended to me by people in my fraternity.
People I know that are still undergrads are mostly people from my college fraternity (i.e. they were freshman my senior year or first year out when I visited friends there). The ones getting jobs are the ones that network well. The rest are finding research jobs on campus.
The days where you float your resume and get 20 phone calls are over. Sorry.
Time to work on the people skills.
Alex
actually, if youre willing to travel to Tennessee the Oak Ridge National Laboratory has a nice summer internship program for nuclear engineers and other scientists. The web site is at www.orau.gov/orise/educ.htm.
I think that you need to be a US citizen to get it though, but if you're not and still studying Nuclear Engineering, you must be a terrorist.
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.
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.
But I think a big problem after the .com fallout were the people who put up this facade and were hired on, even if they didn't know a think about the job they got (Learn C++ in 24 Hours kinda folk).
.com hiring is that the majority of people who have jobs, think that only a minority of people out there know what they're actually doing.
So what I see in post
I think these days the job place and market are less forgiving to incompetence, and to that degree, don't even give people a change because of that fear.
At least that's my experience (being on the hire-er end).
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".
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
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.)
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
"You can't dissect him, predict him, which of course means he's not a lunatic at all."
Apparently you have to be a complete weenie, though.
You've got to suck it up and get experience somewhere. Great paying jobs aren't necessarily as good as great experience. My first job paid barely enough to live on (in Dallas) and I still say I learned more there than in the 4+ years since.
The experience pays off loads more in the long run. Trust me on this one. I make over 60k in oklahoma of all places, and with my contracts and side jobs I make over 150k combined (although i'm very lucky in my relationships).
Hard work pays off if you do what Scrooge McDuck said "Work smarter not harder!". Best lesson ever from a stupid Disney cartoon.
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.
People like that are no more programmers than the guys who pump gas are mechanical engineers. Programmers don't just write code, they should design code. They should resolve and reduce the complexities of the real world into an abstract form on which processes and humans can interact. Programmers should understand the beauty of abstraction, the hard realities of computation and the subtleties of resolving the two. Programmers need to more than glorified code monkeys. Unfortunately, too often, they are just that.
Of course, that's not saying that a degree in non-CS is a bad thing, far from it. But just because you know C++ syntax and some libraries doesn't make you a programmer.
EnkiduEOT
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Actually from what I hear. That paper you signed going in has a clause that even if you're out. You can be reactivated, and be brought back. So unless one wants to be effectively owned for the rest of their lives, no! (For those who don't see this, it's an AC that I'm answering).
I'm actually in this group as well, and honestly, if you're in the country, and you're male, you're already owned. Remeber that Selective Service card you were supposed to fill out when you turned 18? The liklihood of that being used is actually higher than the liklihood of you getting called back after you resign your commission.
Now, I'm actually in the Active Reserves, which gives me around $400/drill weekend and I get to go on all sorts of nifty trips as well. The only thing I have to fear is if we go to war, but what, I ask you, are the odds of that happening these days?
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
I'm surprised that they called you. Reactor techs on nuclear subs (or nu-cu-lar, if you're Dubya) are enlisted posts, not orficer. And the above poster was correct, it's a paperwork nightmare. And nuclear engineering types on subs have the crappiest sea-shore rotation. So, if you like wearing dungarees, getting dirty, loud working conditions, and crappy pay, hey, the Navy is looking for you!!! Oh, did I mention occupational exposure to radiation?]
Is this thing on? Hello?
You might want to consider doing one for free. I know it sucks, but it's great experience, looks great on your resume and will give you a good idea of the field you're getting into.
That's what I did last summer after many interviews, a lot of "we went with someone who had more experience" and one "we don't have room in our budget." I called the latter back and asked if they would take me on in an unpaid capacity. They agreed and it was one of the better decisions I've made. Not only did they end up paying me something at the end (not as much as I would have made with an hourly wage, but a decent amount) but I firmly believe that it was that experience that enabled me to land the job I have right now.
So if you don't have anything better to do with you summer (or whenever you're looking for an internship), consider doing one unpaid.
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.
"oh well, at least counterstrike still loves me."
.
Yeah, the interviewer tossed me out of the building when he discovered my CS degree actually referred to 4 solid years playing CounterStrike
Well, I got the last laugh when I hacked the company's game server, and wiped the floor with that bozo. Yeah, like he's going to dare enter that gameroom now. ha!