Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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
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.
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
Perks include: