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Summer Internships - The Good, and the Bad?
loquacious d asks: "This has been a spectacular summer for open-source student internships. Google funded a huge variety of open-source projects through the Summer of Code, including GCC-CIL and other improvements to Mono, new features and fixes for Gaim, and even new packages for Common Lisp. Joel Spolsky at Fog Creek hired four interns to produce a highly modified version of VNC called Fog Creek Copilot, and Paul Graham's new venture capital firm Y Combinator helped students create their own tech companies. What internships did people enjoy this summer, and which ones didn't work out so well? Which ones would you recommend to next year's applicants, and which should they avoid?"
Paul Graham's and the Fog Creek internships aren't necessarily open source. VNC isn't in a copyleft license, and the web backend to the system probably won't be released anyway.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
So it brings together people who have Y chromosomes? I thought we'd moved beyond such sexism!
I once did an NSF funded REU internship and it was one of the greater experiences of my life. I met people I'm still friends with, I became a researcher in the area and I still do some of the things I learned then. I highly recommend them, they also are great for the resume when finding a job, when I hire now, internships make a difference. Obviously at the undergraduate level is an excellent time to do this, although many CS/engineering grad students do this successfully. Bio grad students not so much.
OutdoorDB - The outdoor Wiki
I am a Danish computer science student, currently interning for a small telecom/tech startup in South SF, working mostly on Java and frontend stuff. This is my first internship overseas.
It's a lot of fun to see the dynamics of such a small company (less than ten employees as compared to my previous employer which had 3000 in the main location).
I can warmly recommend trying it out! If it's not for you, hey you only wasted a couple of months, but you got a lot of experience and something nice to put on your resume. If you like it, well then you may even be a future hire!
I gotta admit though: Going back home in 3 weeks, I am starting to feel a bit of homesickness. Plus I miss public intoxication, oh God.
I'm an intern at Sun Microsystems this summer, working with the Java Swing team on look and feel oriented stuff. It's very interesting to work on such a huge project. I've also had the chance to talk at JavaOne. Overall it's an excellent and wonderful experience.
When you're funding 200 projects for only a few bucks apiece, you end up with a potential slew of product for a very minimal investment.
The same goes for summer internships -- you might end up with a brilliant idea, and it costs you next to nothing.
My internship was in front of my TV.
It was HORRIBLE. It didn't pay at all, it always seemed that I was unappreciated, and worst of all I was forced to do the same tasks over and over...
Many companies are willing to take students iterns for the summer. I know of a couple of iterns at Sandia National Laboratories that did an amazing amount of software development. Local companies often have openings and are willing to work with people. Use your imagination and don't just try big name projects.
Ok, so maybe this should have been obvious. One of my internships ended up being for a company that eventually taught me only one thing; pick your jobs carefully. I picked a small company that had a programming internship, got picked up, and found out quickly that I was THE programmer. Turns out they do this regularly, and use the cheapest labor they can find to do their projects. In turn, the permenant staff which was less skilled was making 3 times as much while I worked my ass off and they played horse shoes outside during hot days.
Lesson learned?
1. Check out the capability of your employers, supervisors, and fellow employees just as they check you out.
2. Don't be afraid to ask LOTS of questions!
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
come on guys, that was pretty funny.
or maybe i'm just a sucker for "your mom" jokes...
These aren't even close to half-decent internships. Google summer of code paid out a handful of students. That's it. It wasn't an internship. It is exploitation. Paying people very little money and getting more done from them.
Y Combinator is some kind of an investing firm...and seems very suspicious to me. Joel Spolsky hired four interns and it made slashdot ! Puhleez. As much as you hate it, the best and the most sought after internships are at Microsoft, which hires 800 interns every year and then hires most of them full-time.
Common Lisp has been attracting a lot of attention lately, compared to previous activity. Several of the Common Lisp projects funded were for the purpose of improving things like foreign function interfaces, and thus speed Lisp's popularity and utility even further.
There are a lot of applications written in Lisp that are special enough and powerful enough to justify lots of attention. For example:
ACL2 : http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/acl2/
This is a high powered proof assistant and IIRC was used by AMD to verify some parts of their chip design.
Maxima: http://maxima.sourceforge.net/
This is a computer algebra system, with the ability to do things like symbolic integration. Not your run of the mill program, and very difficult to do except in a language like lisp or a similar language
Axiom: http://www.axiom-developer.org/
A second computer algebra system, with a slightly different approach than Maxima. Also extremely powerful, and is pushing the envelope of robust, literate program design for computational mathematics.
None of these has a pretty interface, granted (at least not one written in lisp) but these are not your everyday programs. Lisp is a real language in real, non-trivial use.
There are a variety of other projects being undertaken, check out http://common-lisp.net/ for many of them. And if you want to code lisp remember to explore SLIME+Emacs.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Now that's an internship to avoid for as long as possible.
A simple Troll, born of Rock and Fire, leaving in the basement of my parents volcano and typing on an asbestos keyboard.
I had an internship at a small software company (100 employees) this summer, and I highly recommend going that route. I had a close working relationship with several veteran engineers, and was able to learn a great deal of programming tricks/tips because of it. It was also a nice introduction to the corporate environment, without being too much of a shock (with a smaller company they can afford to be a little more lax on policy).
Best of all, they actually put me to work doing something useful, instead of on a "special" intern program.
Overall a very positive experience; a great deal was learned, I got to do some worthwhile coding, and I had a lot more support/help than I expected.
Let's hear your stories!
Make Work Project!
WURD!!
My advice would be that if you're a student, you NOT avoid any internship in your field! Any experience will be greatly beneficial in helping you get your next internship / real job. If its between lifeguarding and taking a crappy job in your field, I'd take the crappy job in your field.
I thought I was getting a simple internship about 5 years ago when I joined a start-up. I was asked to do some informal software testing. A few weeks into it, I got a big pay increase and was asked to put in more hours. They were flexible and would let me come in any time of the day and the sr.programmers would help me with CS homework too. Free diet cokes too. That internship turned into a full time job and made school a part time thing. It took me forever to finish my CS degree, but I think I made the right choice. I learned Windows development there and moved on to bigger things even before I had my BS. I think it could've gone bad had I quit school (with all the dot.com frenzy at the time) but I'm glad I didn't. I always tell interns at our company to not get lazy and just chill on the Net while their here. They need to be pro-active in trying to get involved with the real-world problem solving that is around them...instead of focusing everything on class projects. Now I'll sit in on some interviews for jr.level developer positions and I'll quickly be able to tell who spent real time interning, and who didn't. Ofcourse I was fortunate in that I didn't get stuck interning at some place that made me create crossover cables for 3 months. Just my 2 cents.
If you think
The Good: Clint Eastwood
The Bad: Lee Van Cleef
The Ugly: Eli Wallach
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I'm doing an internship at IBM this summer and its been a lot of fun. I'm only going to be a 2nd year in college, but they have me coding and doing the same type of things as regular employees. Internships are highly worthwhile because of the experience you gain.
Tomorrow will be the last day of my 5th summer internship at Sandia Labs . I haven't worked anywhere else so I can't really compare, but I thought it was pretty enjoyable expereince overall. I did alot of web programming (mainly asp and PL/SQL web toolkit). Being a CS major, I found this job more suitable someone with an MIS background, but for 17.50 an hour I wasn't going to complain. I could have requested to get moved to another job, but I was too lazy. Now it seems that they want to hire me full time once I graduate. It's a very laid back environment here. You can pretty much come in whenever you want, and leave when ever you want. My manager was really cool, he never got on my case about anything. It's operated by the federal government so you know they are gonna push back the deadline for projects almost every time. The catch is to get a job at Sandia, you usually need some contacts working on the inside for you. If you can your foot in the door with Sandia, you will most likely be in good hands.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Microsoft! Highly recommended.
Last summer, I did a penetration testing internship with the one of the Big Four's consulting groups. We were paid very well, learned tons on the job, and spent the final week at Disney for "training". Oh, and we got to break into our clients' networks :) It was an all-around awesome summer.
There were also groups who worked with security policies, identity management, data forensics, etc...
(Full Disclosure: I now work there full time)
Now that's an internship to avoid for as long as possible.
That's internment
Best internship I've had? NSA's Gifted and Talented program.
I spent my summer working on Swift http://swift.gsfc.nasa.gov/ at Los Alamos National Laboratory. They pay very nicely for undergraduates, and a lot of the work to be done here is not classified that vastly improves your employability and resume. http://lanl.gov/education/ is how to apply to Los Alamos for next summer.
The best way in, however, is to poke around http://lanl.gov/ and find a project that interests you, contact the person in charge, and see if they're willing/have the money to take on a student. The student programs here are absolutely fantastic and it's a long standing tradition of training the next generation of scientists/engineers during the summer.
My entire life has changed because of my experiences at LANL. I've met the leaders in the gamma ray burst field, started feeling out graduate schools, published about 10 papers, and I still have 2 years until I graduate!
Seriously, I love my work, I love my job, and my summer was amazing. I just want more people to know about this opportunity.
I have an internship (for another week) at The Linux Box (linuxbox.com). I love it. Great people to work with. Get to work on Open Source projects. Learned a LOT. Great atmosphere, it was even paid!
I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a summer internship.
I worked this summer under a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology's Computer Science dept. It was great. If your a student i highly reccomend doing this!! i found it to be quite interesting and great experience.
For anyone looking for good internships, I highly recommend undergraduate research. I found the experience to be quite fun and educational. This summer, I did some Linux kernel research and built an extension of the kernel. The project records system call information. (It's similar to the Linux strace utility, but with several important modifications.) During the spring, earlier this year, I started looking for a summer internship. I didn't find my school's career fair too helpful. Submitting a resume via email is also rather impersonal, and doesn't allow you to show an employer why they should hire you. If you want to find a good internship for the summer, getting in front of someone who can actually hire you is key. (As oppose to some human-resources person). Also, ask about the project(s) you'll be working on. Make sure it fits your interests. At the same time, keep some opportunities as backups, even if you're not that interested in them. I got my internship by going around to different professors, asking them what projects they were researching, and if they'd like any help on the project for the summer. Most universities post the professor's research-interests on the staff webpage for the department. That's a good place to start when looking for interesting projects.
I did internships a few years ago (yikes, I feel old) at three different companies. Regardless, of the company, I highly recommend them for obvious reasons, i.e. you get great work experience.
One tip I would give, though, is that wherever you do end up working, you are going to have to prove that you can take on challenging tasks. No matter how smart they are or think they are, companies who hire interns assume interns aren't very knowledgeable and aren't responsible enough to take on more challenging tasks. I can see where they are coming from, so I don't dispute the validity of their actions. With that in mind, if you really are good, don't be afraid to ask for more work, and more interesting stuff at that. I've found that in the past, I was able to breeze through tasks and was quickly bored. Initially, I was too shy and lacked confidence to ask for something more difficult, so I "wasted" my first internship by repeatedly doing simple things they tossed at me because I thought that I shouldn't rock the boat.
Also, don't be surprised to find that you are left on your own and have nobody to hold your hand through things. I've never worked anywhere where somebody has always been around to help answer questions or knew enough to answer all my questions. But then, that's the reality of the work (and "real") world.
As a summer intern my own personal experiences have been invaluable, this is not always the case. Certain things I have found that contribute to the internship experience are, personal drive and abilitiy, most people don't have time to be a babysitter and show you how to do every mundane detail. Another factor is the sponsoring group of the internship and their attitudes toward the internship.
Here is an example of what I mean; One of my class mates and I were chatting a few weeks ago, he has been stuck installing deskjet printers and sharing them for an internship because of several factors, he isnt overly self motivated or experienced, and the organization does not trust him with tasks beyond that. Conversely there was my experience I went into the intership with a year of Active Directory management experience and a CCNA right out of high school. This helped establish a level of trust at the organization that I was capable and could be trusted. I am entering the final two weeks of the summer and have just finished implementing an infrastructure upgrade that I researched designed and tested.
In summary, be qualified and knowledgeable for the kind of work you are interested in performing. Also carefully chose the organization you want to intern at based on resources and size of staff, being the sole staff member can be as bad as being a mailcart pusher. Also working with poor hardware due to lack of budget can hinder your experience. The corporate culture matters as well, find an organization that will let you grow as you need to rather than hold you back because of a lack of experience.
if you have any questions, feel free to ask and I'll try to answer them.
I got accepted to NASA's first Robotics Internship Program, based out of Goddard Space Flight Center around Greenbelt, MD. After a 10 week stay, tomorrow's our last day, and we'll be giving final presentations on the projects we've worked on.
/.) among other robots. We worked with an IR range imager, a pretty cool off-the-shelf gadget that can be described as a black-and-white 3D camera. Several companies make them, in case anyone's interested, but they're a bit pricey. In any case, we ended up with a wheeled rover prototype capable of decent obstacle avoidance in a variety of lighting conditions after 30 man-weeks of work.
I got to help with the design and implementation of a computer vision system eventually to be used on the TetWalker (previously featured on
All I've got to say about the Robotics Internship Program is it kicks serious ass. I learned more here than I do in a year of school, plus I actually got to do something interesting. They're planning on expanding the Program beyond just Goddard next year, I think to JPL, Ames, and Johnson, -I think-. In any case, NASA has -lots- of internship programs available to students in a really wide age range. They even sponsor robotics activities for K-12 age kids that I had no idea about (google first robotics, botball robotics, etc).
In other words, I'd definitely do it again. And I would've done it sooner had I known about how seriously NASA invests in educational programs.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
I was looking for some internships and got a full-time engineering job (I'm at it right now) with a startup. Purely through networking with my teacher. Go figure. But I was doing masters.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
I started out at Red Hat as a co-op last summer. Unfortunately 'co-op' means 'intern' to them for the most part, especially in terms of pay. But since then I've gained a serious amount of experience. And, well, I never left. I'm still working there now. :)
Then I graduated. I was enjoying working at Sun, so I decided to stay there. Since I wasn't an intern any more, they gave me a promotion -- to the lowest entry-level rung on the technical job ranking ladder, the only place their HR rules would allow me to proceed from an internship. On its face that might not seem unreasonable, but even before graduation I was already doing the work of people two or three ranks higher.
Okay, fine, I figured, I'm sure I'll get promoted up to an appropriate level before long. Nope! Once again, Sun's HR rules kicked in: it's not possible to promote people at more than a certain rate. I would have to stay for several years before my job title and pay matched the work I was doing.
Still, I liked working there, so I got over the annoyance and plugged away for a while.
A year or so later, I got a job offer from a small company for about 40% more money than Sun was paying me, plus a decent chunk of equity, to do work that was just as interesting. My manager at Sun couldn't match the money; he had already maxed out my salary for the pay grade I was in, and HR wouldn't let him promote me for another 6 months or so. I took the offer, and I've never worked at another big company since.
Now, I don't regret my time at Sun, but I guess the moral of the story is, keep your eyes open and make sure you don't get sucked so far into the first interesting place you work that you miss out on other opportunities. It's a fluid job market out there.
True. Internships are wonderful things but there are other options available besides that (at least if you're at a 4 year institution like me and are in a semi-science related field)...
Research projects - This will provide you with other means to accomplish your goals and maybe further your interests beyond where you currently are at. Who ever knew that that robotics vision recognition project or P2P software project (2 projects that were given at my school to CS/EE majors) could look so good on a resume, would help you get contacts with faculty for grad school and possibly pay for things as well as help you earn credit towards your degree?
Co-ops - Although it's not really something I'm looking for because I'm up to my neck in earned credits (pre-high school community college program - Running Start for anyone that knows..), it is another available alternative to internships. Sure, you might have to pay some money and write a paper, but you get paid in return most of the time and get credit for your work.
Just a thought. But yeah.. doing either an internship, co-op, or participating in a research project is important in order to advance in many business pertinent fields nowadays. Employers want to see someone who got more than their cap and gown.. they want to see potential, interest and experience.
Missing option:
The Ugly!
So they have started providing airfare to India for summer internships? Wow...
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
Actually, things are quite pleasant. They're giving stock options which should be quite valuable soon - just some legal trivia they have to work out. I get a discounted computer, which runs windows, I just vnc into the *nix boxes.
;)
All I have to do work-wise is integrate linux code into our kernel and occasionally help with the inevitable "this code works in ___ OSS package, why doesn't it work with the kernel". Of course, they typically just hose up when they integrate the cut pieces from the OSS package.
I begged for an intern but between the slow job posting process at our company and the fact that MS hired the decent local talent it did not go well. In the end we found a person through the grapevine who was looking for a job instead. I doubt I'l bother again. Can't compete with the big companies.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Oh, I did hear that doing an EE internship with HP at their Corvallis, OR facility was pretty simple, but also very uneventful and not as frutiful as one might expect. A friend of mine complains about it being boring and simple, as he and the other interns aren't expected to really do much. I heard similar points from a CS major that did another internship with HP as well.
(Assumption: you're a computer science major.)
If you have the luck of going to a university with a reputable computer science department, I would recommend you look to do some research under a CS professor.
In general, it's a good opportunity to find a project that you're interested in. At this point in your life there will probably be many projects that interest you. Find one! Find a couple! Contact the professors and ask to do a summer internship. Offer to help out with ANYTHING for FREE. Typically the experience itself will pay off.
The reason why it's such a great experience is that you'll work on interesting projects and the latest stuff. It's also a good opportunity to build contacts within your CS department should you need recommendations, etc. After you've contributed for a couple months, typically professors will find a way to get you some money as a part of work-study.
Personally, my summer internship turned into part-time research year around. It's probably the most interesting work I've ever done since you're actually doing research. It was an opportunity to do something really challenging. The goals are typically more groundbreaking.
Plus, this experience will help if you either 1) are looking for a job or 2) apply to grad school. It also helps you figure out what you want to do later on for a career or further CS studies.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
I just landed an intenship for the IAEA doing .NET development, in Vienna. (http://iaeainternship.bnl.gov/Internship/Home) Can't say much about it yet, I start in a few weeks. Has anyone else worked for the IAEA or the UN and lived abroad, and if so, what was it like? I've spent my entire life in New York and have no idea what working with an entirely linguistically diverse and all-over-the-world team is going to be like, but I'm definetily looking forward to it.
I'm finishing up a unique internship next week. I'm an intern working for Proctor & Gamble. I work with a Bioscience group doing web development and creating custom database solutions. The basic role of the group is technology solicitation. There are 6 directors based in 6 areas of the world, The Americas, Central Europe/Africa/Middle East, London/UK/Russia/Baltics, India/Singapore, China/Taiwan/South Korea/Japan, and Australia/Ireland/NZ. I work with brilliant biochemists and neuroscientists, the Chinese guy I work with got a PhD in Biochem and also his MD in China. He's now finishing up his MBA at UChicago. Anyway the group goes around the world traveling to Biotech conferences, forming partnerships and alliances, yada yada yada. The interest in the group grows, but they as a team don't. They needed some kind of infrastructure to streamline their work process and make it much more seamless. I've developed their website that is going to go live in late October. It has a high usability factor, and it it's real achievemant is the specificity of needs to which it allows the external world to view. Obviously it would be a loss in competetive advantage if all these needs were published. So I developed a custom database solution based in XML/SOAP/WS/XSDL that allows for all of their needs to be tagged with meta-data, and this meta data can be vetted, viewed, and filtered logically by internal parties, but only allows the outside world to see it if their technology cross references with the meta-data sufficiently. Interest in the site has grown exponentially. Many groups within P&G want to adapt it to their needs internally and externally. We even had the leader of the team who developed P&G's main solicitation interface for the external world come and try to tell us that we need to use their system, but then when I demo'd it and explained all it's capabilities, they told my boss that they wanted to use ours! It's been great working with brilliant scientists, because even though they know nothing about IT, they were able to get me in touch with the IT component of the company to provide mentors and guidance as to what kind of tech I had at my disposal. The only downside is that I didn't get to work with a formal team in a development cycle, all the protocycling was my own, and it will be reviewed and probably refactored if need be by the IT guys when I'm gone. Anyway, I highly recomment finding a job out of the mainstream, I love what I do.
I had a year long internship where I wasn't expected to do anything. It paid well, provided accomodation, good benifits but the hiring managers pretty much expected the interns to be useless.
:) Whole thing worked out well for me, although i just quit them to pursue a consulting position.
As such, my assigned workload was around 4 hours a week. Most others in the group slacked off, but i made it a point to find things to do.
Most of what I did resulted from me going to the boss and saying - "look here's a proof of concept for X", and more often than not i'd be tasked with doing that in production.
Ahh the dot-com days
The FogCreek Intern program is the best, the interns were filmed during the software development process.
In the end, aardvark will be an interesting project. It is clear that the software companies are focused on training young talent. It would be nice if the other large IT shops would follow suit.
---- Berlin Brown http://www.newspiritcompany.
If your school allows it, I'd recommend a 12 or 16 month internship. You won't get tiny jobs or (as much) busy work, and if its in your home town, you can live at home and save tons of money. Some Ontario universities call it a PEY(Professional Experience Year). I did mine at IBM in Markham.
You'll also get a very good idea of if what you're doing is really for you. During my internship, I decided that doing graduate school was better for me right now. This is the most important thing - if you can do it for one year, can you do it for a career? (If you decide its not, don't make my mistake and tell people that it isn't.)
Finally, if you work in a big company, you'll see how politics *really* works. I got handed a hot potato project that caused all kinds of problems for three different teams. It nearly got me fired because of all the power plays (none of which were my fault, if you believe me) and I'm still bitter, but I don't regret my time there.
I got hired almost entirely through networking (and impressing) my prof. He's exceptional though--many industry contacts.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
There were plenty of proposed enhancements for FreeBSD. So far, I haven't heard a single progress update regarding any of these. Is there a deadline or similar required completion date? It would really be great to see a few of these in FreeBSD (such as UFS journalling, for example). What happened?
Best regards, A.C.
hehe
You were working with the Java Swing team on the look and feel stuff ?! Didn't you realize that 'swing' and 'look and feel' shouldn't be used in the same sentence ? Java on the desktop is dead because of stuff like Swing.
Swing makes Java blow. The whole Swing project should have been shelved a long time ago and the whole time publicly fired and humiliated for providing such an ass of a 'look and feel'.
You hopefully learned a little bit about how to be a senior programmer in the real world. No one was there to hold your hand through the tough parts, you had to make architectural decisions with somewhat lasting ramifications, you had to deal with tough business realities.
This real-world experience will help you in the long run.
Act professionally regardless of how much you aren't being paid. Consider each person you work closely with to be a potential reference - they are. Work hard: don't surf or IM. Especially don't go to forbidden sites...like slashdot. Also, if you fubar something, admit it freely and describe what you did as best you can.
I worked for National Instruments this summer. They are a pretty awesome company and have a *wide* variety of positions ranging from SW engineering to HW engineering, marketing & communications and leadership tracks. They pay very well and pay relocation costs which is a huge plus. Many interns get offered full time jobs at the end of the summer and go on to move up in the company. They have been listed in Fortune 500's top 100 companies to work for for 6 years in a row.
I worked in both SW and HW positions and learned more than I did in 4 years of college and had a pretty awesome time here.
Along with that blog I have (see link below) that no one reads!
/. on linking up to maybe a few dozen positions there. Summer internships are a PAIN, as there are no one (or even two, or three) organized listings of them, and every company seems to hire at a different time. For instance Boeing hires summer interns starting around September and October, where as other companies have interviews in January and February, and a lot of companies, if you call them anytime before June, they say you are too early they have not even begun to think of those things yet!
:)
Seriously though, they are NOT easy to find, good job
Oh, for reference, the BEST source of summer internships is just to post your resume up on Craigslist and say you are looking for work as an Intern, I got 3 offers within one week that way. Up until that point I had tried using numerous free (for student) intern-based employment agencies, including Campus Point, umm, they all suck. See almost every company has someone in HR that reads CL, but for any given employment agency, only a few (relative to the overall number of companies out there) companies are signed up with that particular agency.
As for how the internship is going, rather well. I have my own nice sized office, lots of free food and drink, and the work isn't bad either. The coolest part would have to be seeing how much more advanced the stuff used in industry is over the crud they teach us in school. Of course the most depressing part is seeing how messed up the stuff used in industry is as well!
The $$$ is nice, as is making contacts with people so I can hopefully get another internship next summer. That has to be the most valuable part, the communication with people who have been working the field for their entire life.
My GF got a better deal than me though, (and no offense to the guys I work with, you are all great!), she got put in a Unix shop, I am in a Windows shop! Doh!
(as much as I rant and rave against *nix, I DO like it!
I would really like to continue on here for another 3 months (they offered) but of course I had to prelease an apartment for this coming school year back in June as well. Bleck.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
well it kinda makes sense that they are working on it then, numbnuts.
I'm studying ME and did an internship in a Power station. I think this picture about sums it up. A co-worker held the hopper hatch door shut with a broomhandle whilst I carefully opened it and got the hell out of there. My advice- check out your employer before you get into anything. If they have a history of not treating employees right, stay away.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Overall, they were great! Each year I was somewhere else, but mainly in design since that is where my interest lies. I got to work on Prescott, Cedermill a bit, etc. Great exposer to what it's like being an engineer.
My project last summer though was the best. My supervisor didn't treat me as just a lowly intern or throw a project that he was just kind of interested in. He treated me like a coworker and had me working on his person pet project (which succeeded beyond even his wildest dreams!) and it was very challenging and rewarding.
Intel treats its interns very well and rewards hard work. As they say around here, you get out what you put in. If you sit around not doing much and never leaving your cube (hehe, like me this summer), you don't end up doing much. But if you get out and talk to engineers and ask for work and take the initiative you get interesting work and a lot of respect.
Space for rent, inquire within
This is my third summer at Sandia National Labs in New Mexico.
Positives:
1. Great weather.
2. Great pay.
3. Opens up many avenues for future employment (or so I've heard)
No LANL scandals + no LLNL funding cuts = long-term job security, at the only lab seriously exploring the only feasible fusion production method
Negatives:
1. Not a lot of desk space.
2. Shortage of windows.
Desk space at the lab is currently in high demand, so if you're an intern, you'll likely be stuck in a borderline liveable area, at least until you get your clearance (ie not the first year).
And if you think that IBM is a shiny, happy company, then I've got a story to tell you about when I worked there about 10 years ago and had to ask to go to the bathroom.
Come on now, don't leave us hanging. Seriously, as an undergrad who will be hunting internships next summer and jobs the one after that, I want to hear this.
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What if you never had a job, and you are in school? How do you go about getting an intership with a blank resume?
What about us non-CS majors?
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I'm very serious. I was a phone jockey at the main IBM office in RDU, NC. I was answering calls for the "Craptiva" line as it was called. We literally had to ask to go to the bathroom. If it was busy, they often said no. They were painting the walls of the cube farm one week, and people were literally not allowed to go home, even if the paint fumes were making them sick. I also wasn't allowed *unpaid* time off to get married. Keep in mind that I was one of several hundred people with identical jobs. And, morale was so low when I left, that people were walking out of the buildig with all kinds of equipment. By the time I left, they were literally chaining PC's and monitors to desks so that people wouldn't walk off with them.
Now, IBM is a *huge* company, so what I'm describing isn't necessarily indiciative of the entire company, I'm sure. I just wanted to point out that it's not as simple as "IBM=Good because they sell Linux products".
Best company I ever worked for: SAS Institute in Cary, NC.
I don't respond to AC's.
It's a far more interesting project than CoPilot, for two reasons. First, the people making it are actually going to own the business. Second, the thing they're making isn't scheduled for obsolence in the next three years, as CoPilot is (when MS releases Longhorn with an RA feature).
My experience at Microsoft this summer was exceptional. I had exteremely good pay, got to work with world class researchers at MSR, and had a lot of fun. Out of all of the internships I've had, MS definitely treats their interns the best. I don't know about full timers, but the great things they do for you start with an awesome 3 day trip to interview. Does anyone have any compare/contrast stories with MS?
I've never had so much fun - non-stop sex for three months with 20 different women. But I'm exhausted and ready for a new semester.
That is good to know, my family lives in NC, so I spend much of the summer here (Jacksonville - home of the 24/7/365 sausage festival), and I was going to look for an internship in the area.
University of South Alabama - CIS Department - A great school.
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Google ended up restricting their internship program to people 18 and older. That pretty much locked out us high schoolers. Are there any companies interested in professional-level programmers who are looking for internships but happen to be in high school? Or is this just a college thing?
I am finishing a summer internship with IBM in the Cambridge, MA area, and can safely say it's been one of the best experiences of my life. I've learned more than I can explain during my time there. From what I can tell, a lot of places give their interns busy-work and annoyances that the fulltimers don't want to deal with. This is not the case at IBM. I am working on a major component of the project, and am set to finish it in the next couple days. I work with a team distributed across the east coast, and have learned a great deal in communications, collaboration, and cooperative programming. My boss is a great guy on the fast track to exec-dom and done a great job of managing over the summer. He's helped me put together a patent proposal, and helped me network with people all over the world. At first, I wasn't going to apply for the internship because I was still just a freshman. One thing I learned was that qualification and enthusiasm means a lot more than academic credits or age. I'm working with two rising seniors who are very talented, and would probably repeat the content of this post if asked about their internship. The pay is amazing, but you really work for it. I don't think I've worked less than 50 hours per week since I started (12 week duration). I'm on track to do Extreme Blue next year, which is reportedly a great experience as well.
I am a senior and my major is CS and this is my first internship actually (don't ask) anyway this summer I am doing an IT internship at Axcelis here in Beverly, MA. But even though I am a senior its never too late to have an internship. We have one guy, he's also an internt but he's married so I dont even consider myself a late bloomer if you will. Besides there will be something new to put on my resume. Other than that my internship is going great, the only thing I hope for is that I will get hired for a full time position because its pointless to look for a programming job.
Its nice to be important but its more important to be nice
I was (and in fact I am) summer intern at Microsoft and i simply love couple of comments on MS internship that happened to be here. I wonder if any of commenting people have ever seen MS from inside. Anyway.
;) or having the day off (although I took none, it's just a matter of communication with your manager). If you're tired, you can have some fun playing pool or whatever you find around the corner.
;]).
It's great. Nobody forces you to do something against your will - you are a member of your team like any other person. You shape the product just like anyone else (you can even say "no" about something but just like in life - you have to convince others that you're right or that your idea is worth consideration). People are really pleasant, it's nice to work in this environment. People eager to answer your questions and you gain knowledge really fast.
There are no problems with going to bathroom
You don't work in a box and you don't work on junk-PCs, you're not a slave. There are lots of informal activities, tech talks and stuff. And they pay pretty well (but that's my point of view - I'm from Eastern Europe so for you, spoiled kids, it can be not enough
I figure that I can't be the only political science nerd on slashdot, so I'll post about some good polisci internships - my apologies if this is too far off-topc.
I've spent the past few months interning in the Governor's Citizen Services office in New Hampshire. I'd highly recommend it for anyone in-state - you work with a good, small group of people, and much of the work is interesting. Yah, you do a lot of data-entry and phone-answering, but there's also interesting research work if you want it. I've written summaries of several state bills - I even briefed the Governor on one. The only real downside is that there is *no* possibility of getting paid - check to see if your school offers summer grants. Oh - and there often aren't enough computers to go around. Bring a laptop, get used to working in the state library, or think about "telecommuting" on research-heavy days.
In the spring semester, I interned with COLEAD in Washington - the Coalition for American Leadership Abroad. It's a two-person advocacy group that tries to coordinate NGOs that want Congress to spend more money on foreign affairs. This is *not* a "mover and shaker* internship, but it's educational -of necessity, you end up learning a lot about NGOs and the cognressional budgetary process.
I'm the stranger...posting to
I am in third year of a three year software engineering program at my college. This is officially my third and last co-op semester of the program, as I only have one semester of school left after this.
My first co-op was very unsatisfying. I was in second year then, and I was hired by the college to basically unpack and image new Dell machines and put them outside of people's desks so the real help desk staff could install them. I was greatly dissatisfied with this, but I plugged away ar it anyways. It paid $8.50 an hour, but it did pay for my next semester of school (and a breakfast club every morning). And I did do a lot of self education, specifically learning a lot more about PC hardware and operating systems.
For my second co-op term, I was interviewed against about 8 other people for the job of Helpdesk technician for Environment Canada. This was sort of a neat job because you never know what 's going to come next and how you're going to deal with it. There was a lot of learning at first, mostly hardware and networking things, or specifics to various Microsoft products. And this job had its extreme tediums as well. I enjoyed it for the most part, though when it was frustrating, it was REALLY frustrating (spending 45 minutes cleaning spyware off a Windows 98 Pentium II). I was responsible for answering the help desk telephone line, which makes me more or less a secretary as well. This means I would be doing about 80% of the helpdesk calls while the other two people I worked with worked on their own things like server backups and software rollouts.
This paid for college once more, as long as a few other nice things. The whole semester allotted me about $6500 @ 11.50 an hour. Not great compared to what some of my classmates who were doing real code analysis for the big banks were making. What intrigued me the most were what the other two people I worked with were making. They both have super secure, nice jobs with the government that has great benefits, job security, lots of room for growth and promotion, and these two were barely a few olders than me, graduates of my own college and making approx. $50,000 a year.
So after my first semester in year three, my third semester rolled around. This semester meant a lot to me in terms of computer knowledge in programming and Linux. Perl instantly became my favourite programming language, and Linux my favourite OS, though I still depend on Windows for quite a few things. However, rather than pursue by reinspired lust for code, I went back to Enviroment Canada for a second term; something not uncommon for co-op students to do at this place.
And here I still am, largely doing the same stuff I was doing last co-op, which makes it that much more tedious because there's a lot less to learn from there. I was having regrets for a few weeks about coming back, as I was apparently going to graduate with pretty much no real world programming experience from a software engineering program.
I don't feel so bad now though. I'm going to learn an awful lot more during my last semester of school about Linux administration and Java programming and creating a major software engineering project and offering it to a company. My resume will look good with 8 months experience for this very corporate-like government institution. And I will have some great references. This particular place more than likely won't hire me because it is much cheaper for them to just keep getting co-op students for the monkey-work, but there are a lot of other government institutions in Canada that have an IT staff. And all of the baby boomers are retiring, former punch card programmers that have worked there for 35 years and now their main job is creating new email accounts in Exchange and making $80k a year. That is job security.
I guess the moral of the story is you can take some great experience out of anything you do, even if it's not quite what you expected to be doing. For the most part, you decide what you want to do with your life in the end.
I interned for Amazon.com this summer, and it was an awful experience. It seems that my case was particular though, as most of the interns here are working on interesting projects.
Yup tomorrow is my last day as an intern at a pretty large(think largest) financial institute.
I am a CS major, one semester left. Basically I am working with a team of developers and tech support(internal tech support) and my awesome summer internship consisted of waiting around for tech support to write up procedures so I could mark them up in html and post them on some crippled website. I was lucky it let me use css. The job should have taken a week max, but the ones afraid to lose their jobs by publishing their tasks streched it out to 10 weeks. About 3 weeks in I approached my manager(very hands off type of guy) and told him of the situation and asked if I could work with the developers in my many downtime hours.
Scheduled a meeting...
"Hey website looks great, content is key, make sure we get those procedures up"...walks away.
So I took it upon myself to offer my services to the developers, well, the project is so far ahead of schedule, the developers have no work for even themselves.
So, I waited out the summer, and tried to learn about my favorite new technologies, even started do top coder competitions during work.
And for those saying get research experience, i've also had bad luck with that. Pretty much since sophomore year, I have offered my time, for free, to every professor in my department. No interest. I applied to every REU site listed, got accepted by colorado, then rejected 3 days later.
Its not as easy as you people make it out to be.
Now you know you don't want to work for a large organization - many of them are as screwed up as you have found.
Remember, there is no consipiracy of pointy-haired-bosses doing this, things just kind of get that way when lots of people are involved.
Try working for smaller companies. It might be frightening to hear about cash-flow issues (in the next room over), but in the end, you are no worse off than working for a mega-corp, with the illusion of stability. Mega-corps do mega-layoffs.
Small companies go out of business, but at least you will have tried.
Smaller companies allow/force you to keep up-to-date. If you stick with a fortune 500 company too long, pretty soon you won't know anything useful outside of that company.
IMHO, YMMV, etc.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I'm currently an intern in Japan. My job isn't as glamorous as some but getting the opportunity to live and work in a different culture has been a great experience. I have not been translating Japanese->English thank you, just a typical power engineer job. Some other interns I know are working with robotics and if that's your thing then there is no better place in the world. I'll be here for another 10 months but JETRO internships can be as little as 4 months. Just don't expect to be paid much.
Just to share my experience, I interned at GarageGames last Spring. Had a great time, and got to work on all kinds of cool game tech. GG of course makes the Torque Game Engine, and I got to work on the RTS Starter Kit for Torque, and some other cool stuff. Like many others, I'd wanted to get into game programming for years. I got hired at GG not long after I started interning and now I get to work side-by-side with guys like Mark Frohnmayer, Tim Gift, and Rick Overman, who were leads on Tribes, and are just plain brilliant programmers and people. Also get to work with Jeff Tunnell, who created some of my all time favorite games. It's pretty f'n cool. :)
We've had a ton of really talented interns in the house over the past year and half or so, and we've ended up hiring about half of them.
GG does internships throughout the year, and is pretty much always looking for talented web engineers, artists, marketing folk, and of course game programmers. People apply at interns.gg at gmail, and we do our best to get back to them shortly. All kinds of cool projects in the works here, and it's fun being out in indie game land.
The eID program (for undergrads) at GE comes highly recommended. I've spent the last 3 summers working for the GE Healthcare company working on Java for their upcoming Java-based patient monitor.
Had I been working on a Bachelor of SCIENCE degree instead of a BA, I could have moved on to the Edison Engineering program, a *very* prestigous post-undergrad internship program that pays you (VERY well) while you get to travel (if you want), earn 2-4 credits for a masters degree (or PhD if you already have a masters).
If you want more information (all of this stuff isn't on GE.com for some reason), please e-mail me at: my slashdot user name @gmail.com.
I am also a summer intern at Sandia. This is only my first year, and I have really enjoyed the work. However, with regard to the government-doesn't-care-about-deadlines statement above, I would disagree. I work on an open source project called Trilinos (a R&D100 2004 winner). We tagged our code a couple of weeks ago for the next release, and this deadline isn't going anywhere. As for the rest of the previous poster's comments, Sandia is a great place to work. It seems that they like to keep their interns, although my department (as a rule) only hires Ph.D.s, so getting job a after graduation can entail many, many summer internships.
So far Ive only done one real internship, an NSF funded project that didnt really involve too much in the actual computer engineering field. While it looks good on paper it was not very enriching. This summer however I worked with a professor on a research project studying standards of quality and commonalities across open source projects. While it was not a true internship i feel i learned alot more from doing this than most internships available out there. Besides getting paid to do research and getting a paper or two published in journals isnt too bad either. Just always keep your eyes open for other opportunities that may not be labled as internships but can turn out just as well, if not better
It's funny that this topic should come up on Slashdot today. Just a few hours ago, I was wrapping up my IBM Exterme Blue internship by a final session at Corporate Headquarters in Armonk, New York where teams from accross North America presented their projects to executives. We got to talk to, and dine with, some very interesting people from very high up in the company, both from the technical and business sides of the company. A detailed description of the internship is on http://ibm.com/extremeblue. Basically, it's a very fast-paced internship where teams of 3 technical students and 1 MBA student put together a new project from a very vague topic provided to them at the beginning of the 14-week term. The mentors who come up with the ideas and guide the projects are very influential and experienced people within the company, so the projects are truly important and innovative instead of being just "toys". Because each project is like a mini-product, we got to see all parts of IBM, not just the different technical departments we were working with but also the business side and even clients, and we managed to accomplish real work with each of them. The actual projects are very strongly aligned with IBM's goals, but they vary quite a bit since the company is large; they include new features for existing products, new solutions, research, client consulting, and even open-source (several involved Linux or Eclipse). The internship was very hectic, but it was an excellent way to see how a project goes through an entire development cycle at a big company, how the big decisions are made as it goes along, and most interesting to me, as a tech intern, how the business side of the company works.
And ExxonMobil is really, really proud of their internship program. They'll already have a project, mentor (for your project) and buddy (for adjusting to non-work related things) lined up for you in advance (probably a few months in advance). They make sure the project they give you is meaningful and hopefully something you can finish in the few months you are there. That way you go away with a sense of acomplishment at having done something useful at the company. To that end they constantly check up on you to make sure you have the help and other resources you need to do your work and get the job done. And throught the internship you'll get to go on several outings just to have fun with other interns.
ExxonMobil has got to have of the most well-paid and meaningful internships around.
I don't know how much this counts as a summer internship, but this past January I did an internship at Lockheed Martin and they ended up hiring me.
I learned a lot and got some great experience. Even if they wouldn't have hired me, it would've been well worth it.
I definately recommend them.
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
they're eager to learn, they've learnt the latest language features of Java and Python and C# from college, they're relative low-cost, they work hard and are willing to work overtime with no questions asked, and it'll also give them valuable real-world experience which will make them a much more valuable asset when they graduate and are ready to enter the work force.
the hardest challenge i find as a manager is to balance the challenge of the work, while not overwhelming them
So whatever your politics are think about this one for a minute.
I worked for the Army this summer in the Army Research Lab (ARL). They have work for all sorts of areas from CS (me), Chem, Chip Fab, Acustics, etc. Just about anything that you could want to do the Army does, and they are some of the best at what they do. The area I worked they were simply the best in the world. I worked on a defensive technology, something which will actually e saving peoples lifes. Very cool stuff.
The pay was good (can be very good if you get into the correct program), mine is turning into a long term project/employment. If that happens one can end up with a security clearence, which gets one working on VERY interesting projects (and can be worth big $$$).
I got to live in another part of the US (MD/DC) and very much enoyed it!
Check out the below if you are a undergrad, or high school in MN. They run a great program.
http://www.ahpcrc.org/education/
There are also PET interns who are gov't workers. And one of the nice parts is that they can't ship you ass out to an interesting place to kill people.
bmayer 9@9 cs.umn.edu if you want to get ahold of me.
I got a "come-see-us" reply from Graham's Y-Combinator program. Before the interview I got an offer at a reputable search engine company in Mountain View, CA. The Y-Combinator people didn't like my idea, and the amount that they were going to fund for a three person team was less than what I'd make in California, so I ended up putting my startup on hold. My internship has been fantastic, but I somewhat regret not getting further on my project. I'll be working on it full time next summer.
I'd advise anybody in a similar situation to ignore VC's (including Y combinator) and start working on version 1 as soon as possible.
Sun's HR department really needs to be clued in. They should be forced do read every Paul Graham article.*
*I've read every one of them voluntarily.
Obviously if you have a moral objection to working for Microsoft, then don't bother applying. But if that doesn't apply to you and you like hacking code, MS has been a great experience for me in the past.
It kind of reminds me of the patronage system that existed between rich people and artists during the Renaissance. The artists (coders) get paid and have a good reason to do their very best work -- you know people are going to see the results, so you want it to be good engineering, not the rushed-together job you might do for a class where it only matters that it runs -- and the patrons get what they're paying for plus street cred.
There have been some frustrations, mostly having to do with taxes and verification of student status, but I've really enjoyed working with my mentor (even got to visit the Google campus on a recent trip to the Bay Area -- the food is as good as their webpage claims!) and will definitely apply again if they decide to renew the program.
Dance like nobody's watching. Sing like you're in the shower. Fuck like you're being filmed.
I worked and am still currently co-oping for PPL (www.pplweb.com) excellent company. They hire lots of interns each year and are based mainly out of Pennslyvania. They do however have offices in montana, chile, and europe. Extremely interesting and surprisingly lots of tech jobs.
There exists some positive integer N that you are the Nth person to read this signature.
IGS is shithole that you don't want to work in. The only people who are staying are the poor fucks that have 2-3 years until they can retire. They basically have guys with 0-5 years and 22-28 years. Everyone else leaves to make more money and be treated better, since the pensions and benefits suck.
I know skilled IGS people (DB guys, top-notch programmers) who are stuck with failing 5-6 year old Thinkpads and are on waiting lists for someone to quit, be fired or die to inherit their laptop.
Myself, along with 2 other people, were selected to work in an Extreme Programming group this summer at the NASA Langley Research Center. We enhanced their current code repository to be more functional. This included making an API to allow for interfacing with CVS (their current source control system) and subversion (hopefully they will upgrade to this soon enough). Furthermore, we had built in automated testing which check all tests as soon as commits were made and continous integration, which checkout the entire repository and built it on seperate machines (also each time a commit was recieved). We build a webpage using Ruby on Rails, which displayed all the feedback from the integration and building. Not bad for 3 summer students and 2 months. All our code will be available on http://www.rubyforge.org/ shortly. A VERY noteworthy internship! (Also had 2 of the best mentors EVER!)
See above.
I'm currently in the second month (of six) of a software quality engineering internship at Bose, and definitely enjoying the experience more than any of my previous internships. At this point they have a large and mature internship program, so you don't get crap jobs or get swept under the rug by management. I can't say for sure whether it's the tight scheduling constraints of the project I was assigned to, or the way they usually conduct their internships, but right off the bat I had a lot of autonomy and responsibility for a first-time intern.
Like any job, it has its ups and downs, but I'd recommend interning at Bose to anyone interested in getting into software testing as a career, or interested in breaking into development of embedded systems. Sure beats my previous CS internship where I basically spent 6 months making Powerpoint slides...
Rock over London, Rock on Chicago. Wheaties: Breakfast of Champions.
This HAS to be the biggest bullshit I've ever heard in my life. I use to live in Cary, NC. I did contract work at IBM for over 6 years in almost every building in the triangle area (and there are a fuckload of them). Not once did I experience any of the shit you mention. Honestly, it was one of the best places I ever worked. Many of the IBM programmers were extremely knowledgeable and I learned A TON from these guys. They were far more advanced than any of the companies I worked for afterwards. I strongly recommend people check them out for internships. It's incredibly hard for me to believe anything you've said about them.
Oh, and I interviewed at SAS Institute. I ended up calling them after my second interview to tell them I wasn't interested after talking to several people who worked there that mentioned that managers would watch the fucking parking lot to see who wasn't staying late. Their raises are based 50% on how much overtime you work (and that was straight from the mouth of their recruiter).
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
This summer I've been working in one of top software companies in my country as an intern.
I finished a course in C programming and thought I'd give it a try, see if I really can program in C.
But they wanted a Java programmer instead - which I could not do at that time. And I told them so.
Nonetheless, I got accepted as an intern.
The job that I do is programming dynamic web pages using Struts framework.
Downside of the internship is that they're not paying me -- but that was part of the agreement.
I'm interning with Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC) in Arden Hills, MN, working on their Windchill enterprise PDM application. PTC is known in the manufacturing world for their Pro/E CAD software as well, and is based in Needham, MA. I have learned an amazing amount of things in 3 months and been exposed to loads of enterprise apps and technologies. Luckily I have a good combination of management in that my Group Leader is a hardcore code monkey, and my Manager makes the less glamorous corporate side of software engineering (CMMI, etc.) interesting and useful. We are working on client development using an XML based framework for the next major version of the software, and they just asked me to stay on into the schoolyear. I would recommend PTC to other CSci/equiv. majors looking for a great internship at a commercial software company. Hit up my blog for a little more.
Previously I have interned at a Consultancy in Eastern Europe, and I can also say from experience that there too a lot of intersting work is being done. Its just that it doesnt come up that often in the news..
And as it has already been proven, [http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08 /08/208226&tid=215&tid=1&tid=137] India is not the place for just ousourced work, or call centers.
This sentence contradicts itself - no actually it doesn't.
Score one for Anonymous Cowards around the world!
...did you get to go to the Ball?
If I can't smoke and swear I'm fucked.
[Regarding intern work at MS]
'The nice thing is that your project isn't usually "port some code we don't care about from Platform X to Platform Y" '
Kind of impossible to get given this task at Microsoft, isn't it?
One thing i'm still not quite used to is the amount of Acronyms used, its like people are speaking in code! Luckily there is a glossary on the intranet!
.
How about CERN? I got my first internship ("summer student programme") in 1997 and it was just great! Lots of fancy hardware, including the 7000-ton, 40-meter long and 20-meter high ATLAS detector, which sports the technologies to the limits, the 27-kilometer long LHC accelerator, buried 100 m below the surface, which will be filled completely with super-liquid helium (at 1.9K), and - last but not least - the place where GRID is being worked on. Have a look: http://humanresources.web.cern.ch/HumanResources/e xternal/recruitment/students/students.asp
I interned at two local companies while I was attending college in Southern California. The first one was Pressplay (interestingly enough, their website now goes straight to napster.com) and they offered digital music subscriptions. It was interesting working for a startup; the atmosphere was pretty cool, but I didn't really care for the immediate group I dealt with on a day-to-day basis. I also felt that they didn't give me a lot of responsibility and ultimately they let all 3 interns go 2 weeks earlier than they had promised. While it was a learning experience in the business sense, I didn't learn much professionally. Their programming demands were minimal at best.
My next summer internship came at DirecTV. They paid me very, very well (which is the only reason I stayed on with them part-time for 6 months into the school year). The people there were cool, but because of the nature of the company, I found everything to be very rigid. Their programming group apparently didn't have a lot of work for me so I got to develop all their testing and regression suites using a really buggy program (how ironic). Because the program was so buggy, I usually couldn't do much and I'd spend most of the day waiting around for my boss so I could ask for additional work. This meant that I was staring off into space a lot and trying my best not to spend all my time browsing the web. The best part was that they loved me and wanted me to come work for them after I graduated. I nodded politely and never went back. While it may have had a great salary and minimal work requirements, that kind of place just rots your brain.
I work as a video game programmer now - the hours are long and brutal, but the work is challenging and rewarding. I consider that a fair trade, because I can at least feel passionate about the software I code. I suggest you try and find something similar if you are so inclined. In my case, those 2 internships were valuable in showing me what kinds of places I did NOT want to work in.
Macromedia: language design, a bit of compiler work, bug fixing. The other engineering interns had specific projects, my position is harder to explain and not really relevant here - but I'll say I liked it :)
I'm a Schemer - so ActionScript's shift away from a dynamic prototype based language is kind of interesting. It was cool to take a peak and see how a lot of the middle layer AS code actually used the prototype system instead of sticking to java-style object orientation. Furthermore, I was shocked to see functional reactive programming live and well in the real world (you guessed it: data binding). Also, it was nice to be able to type to Function (if not structured or substructered..).
SF is great, and my friend in the Newton (more compiler guys there) says the atmosphere is great, though I much prefer the Bay area to Waltham :)
Stab: I took this over MS :) MM is fun because it's big enough to consistently make an impact, but small enough so that you can as well.
Do something you like. I ended up working in mainframe systems while I wanted to work on UNIX. Took me about 5 years to be able to change careers after I got hired because I was branded a "mainframe person". Also, do not overlook the power of 2 month vacations. There are moments now I regret not taking some time off while in College (Well, I needed the money).
Vi havas e-poston.
I was one of 15 interns that was hired at Westfield Group, a small, regional insurnace carrier and financial company. I was hired in the infrastructure group last February as an intern, stayed on until the end of september, and came back this summer again. The IS group is basically the heart of everything. I have been doing Lotus Notes/Domino administration, asp.net programming, windows administration and some of the typical intern work. We've been treated great here: like golf for the interns, lots of lunchs with executives and the ability to work for a great company. I plan on coming back next year and can't wait! Meanwhile, it's back down to Columbus to start year 2 at The Ohio State University.
The Hartford Insurange Group has a wonderful internship program.
I would reccomend it to all those going through college, regardless of major/degree.
I'm an IT guy, working in a Business/IT department, which we'll come to in a moment, but the real joy of a mixed itnern program like this is talking with the Actuaries, MBAs, and the other undergraduate interns. Seeing those who are significantly older than you interning at the same place, kinda makes you feel good.
They pay competitively here, you won't walk away with tons of cash if you have to rent an Appartment near Hartford, but as far as major-related internships go, it's pretty good.
I'm working in the ClaimIT group, my fourth summer with these guys (Started between HS & College), and I couldn't be happier. It's the perfect place for a very technical person to intern. Claim IT exists as an abstraction layer between ISD (the infrastructure folks) and Claim (the business folks). If you know how to talk tech, and want to learn to talk business, it's the perfect melding of the two.
I'm not sure I'd want to stay in ClaimIT, even though the jobs as project managers and business analysts are plentiful, and pay well, but ClaimIT isn't always the most technical of places to be, and as I'm coming off the line with a BS in Applied Networking & Systems Administration from The Rochester Institute of Technology, I want to get my hands deep in the technology, or I won't keep my technical skillset up.
Still, if you're looking to get a good, enjoyable, challenging, and related-to-your-major-even-if-it's-not-IT-related internship, contact the college relations department of The Hartford Insurance Company. You won't regret it. : )
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
I spent 3 months working for a medium sized business (popular enough that I cant mention it). The company has several offices and about 500 employees, 300 employees that use computers on a day to day basis. The IT department consists of about 8 people. What did I learn? One of the poorest setups I have seen. I would say they are lucky the system runs on a day to day basis. I will give them some credit, they hired a new guy to run the department just before they hired me. He is making changes in the right direction. But im very suprised that a company like this would be so poorly setup. Like many other interns I did a lot of sitting around doing nothing. Played on the internet. But when I was needed I provided more value then they were expecting I think (should have paid me more!). Overall a good experience. I learned what not to do and def picked up a few things from the seasoned staff.
Can you believe those "institutions of higher learning" actually CHARGE people to do work, a lot if which will never even be used? Talk about exploitation!
Seriously though, what's odd is that the slashdot audience expects internships to be paid at all - in MOST sectors (advertising, politics, whatever), interns are not paid AT ALL, or only receive a small stipend.
Students pay a big chunk of change to get an ducation by performing meaningless tasks which are then evaluated by someone. Jobs pay you real money to do essential tasks that generally need to be done well. Internships are meant to tbe the bridge - whoever is providing the internship is still expected to provide you with education/training/experience, in exchange for some contribution to whatever their doing in lieu of tuition.
Fortunately for the slashdot crowd, even novice technical (programming/engineering) work is valuable, and it's thus worth paying for interns. But there are plenty of people who would kill for an unpaid internship at a major consulting firm or advertising firm or TV studio/station or senate office or the White House, even if all they do is deliver coffee - the whole point there is to get people who can hire you after school to have a clue who you are.
paintball
I had a few internships, and I highly recommend doing them. However, I'd advise you to ask beforehand if you can get a reference afterwards. It would never have occurred to me, if not for my experience: I worked for a large technology company one summer and it went great; I was doing pretty interesting stuff and my boss seemed really happy with what I was doing, etc. Later, I was updating my resume and asked my boss from there if I could put their name down as a reference. I was amazed to be told, "Our official policy is not to give references, so don't put me down as a reference. If you want to informally tell people to just call me, I'll say great things about you, though." Maybe this is common, I don't know. But to me one of the valuable things from doing an internship (although by no means the only one) is having a good reference. I'm not saying you shouldn't take an internship just on this basis, but you might want to know about it ahead of time instead of only finding out afterwards.
There are some great opportunities outside of tech. companies.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
I have an internship at Anheuser-Busch Fort Collins brewery and I couldn't of ask for anything better! The pay is amazing the experience is intense! I go home everyday mentally exhausted! I assist with everything from Dbase servers/Network Sys/Sys Analysis/Phon Sys/Hardware Repair/Production line/you name it I have had a chance to work with it. I would definatley recommend a internship at AB if you have the chance!
Ah, good old J'ville...I'm never sorry I left when I was six.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Oh, and I interviewed at SAS Institute. I ended up calling them after my second interview to tell them I wasn't interested after talking to several people who worked there that mentioned that managers would watch the fucking parking lot to see who wasn't staying late. Their raises are based 50% on how much overtime you work (and that was straight from the mouth of their recruiter).
You should probably check your facts before trying to troll. SAS has a strict policy (and always has for as long as I've known) that people are NOT allowed to work past, I believe it's 6:00PM. At SAS, I worked pretty much 8:30-5:00 every day, wore jeans and t-shirts, no shoes around the office, had access to unlimited snacks (as does every employee), and ate at the best corporate cafeteria I've ever seen, subsidized by SAS. IBM, on the other hand, just has those two overpriced grease pits that they call cafeterias.
As far as IBM, it's a big company. You may have worked in good parts. But I gave all of the info you need to check up on it. Ask anybody who worked in Aptiva support if you want. I'll stand behind what I said.
I don't respond to AC's.
"You should probably check your facts before trying to troll. SAS has a strict policy (and always has for as long as I've known) that people are NOT allowed to work past, I believe it's 6:00PM"
I'm not trolling. The fucking HR person told me how bonuses/raises were computed. That was NOT secondhand info. Now, this was about 12 years ago. It's possible they have changed but that's the way it was without any exaggeration on my part.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
In a company with 300,000+ people, I can imagine there are some bad parts, it does not by any means have a single identity.