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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.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
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.
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?
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
And that's a crapton of open source software.
Chris
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
I believe you mean you don't want to inter there...
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
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
No, those would be law school interns, not CS or EE typ interns...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
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.
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.
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.
So they have started providing airfare to India for summer internships? Wow...
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
"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."
The purpose of internships is for the interns to learn something working in a real world environment. They may only have the few skills they learned while in college and certainly aren't worth being paid much (as a rule of thumb). So, in a sense, almost all internships are exploitation by your definition.
Oh, and there are many many college students that have no interest whatsoever in working at Microsoft (because they have a conscience). Finally, IBM hires about twice as many interns per year as Microsoft (and they are actually paid pretty decently). So stick that up your micrsmurf pipe and smoke it.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
If its between lifeguarding and taking a crappy job in your field, I'd take the crappy job in your field.
I think that this is the biggest problem with how students select a summer internship.
The greatest aspect of a summer internship is that it's temporary. For three months you get great exposure to a field, with absolutely no strings attached. And so why not do something different from what you do day-in-and-day-out at school?
You don't need to do something as extreme as becoming a life guard. But if you're studying electrical engineering, see if you can get a position focusing on computer science. Maybe try out a consulting company. Focus on something that will enrich you -- not because it makes your resume stronger, but because it exposes you to what you typically don't see in class.
If you like it, fantastic. You've found something new that interests you, and if you choose, you can guide yourself towards that field. If you hate it, who cares? In three months it's over. At least you tried something new.
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.
Oh, and there are many many college students that have no interest whatsoever in working at Microsoft (because they have a conscience).
You forgot to mention the fact that they're also naive as hell, too. There are few grown-ups in this day & age that would turn down a Microsoft job. Times are tough, and only the wealthy (in both time and money) can afford to have a conscience.
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.
I don't respond to AC's.
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.
My first internship in my field paid $6/hour. Halfway through the summer the funding ran out under the internship account (Was for 250 hours only) and they kept me on. At $10/hour (nice pay raise for 2.5 months work). The next year I was graduating and I was getting ready to call them and find out if I could do it again since I wasn't having any luck finding a job. They called me first. Money ran out in 2.5 months again. They kept me on at $12.50/hour. A few months later I was highered as a full time employee with benefits and all.
Low paying internships can turn into full time jobs. So yes, definitely take any internship in your field. Even if it only pays minimum wage (or even nothing at all in some cases).
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
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
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).
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
Last summer I did my internship in a major defense contractor as programmer, at the end of my internship the manager told me that I could start working on monday, but instead of starting I told them I had another semester to graduate, I'll come after I graduate and I went there as soon as I graduated. Unfortunately they did not need me anymore. I couldn't risk it being a part time student at that time and it cost me a wonderful job, not to mention I couldn't find a decent job by now. So my advice, if get an offer like that just take it , being a part time student is not a bad thing, your work experience is more valuable than your degree.
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.
Most probably you're trying to be funny. But I do highly recommend a Microsoft internship. An intern there does pretty much the same kind of work as a full-timer, the work you do has real impact on the products they ship, and you get to work with very smart people.
If you're interested you can find more about it here
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.
Then why did IBM tell me there weren't really any internship slots open, only co-ops, while I got an internship at Microsoft? And you can't possibly be implying that Microsoft doesn't pay decently.
Give me a break.
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.
Usually, the real-world lessons you learn include: identify who will take advantage of you; identify people you can trust for assistance; discover that you misjudged your boss' penchant for sadism; salaries sometimes seem to have precious little to do with who does the real work; everything costs even more than in school; HR is going to screw up your paperwork; etc. You'll learn all of them equally well whether you intern for Google, Microsoft, or Septic-Kleen.
John
If I'm being exploited, then damn, being exploited is kind of nice. I'm being paid to work on a project for an organization that I want to see succeed. I get to work whatever hours I want instead of being forced into a 9 to 5 schedule. This allows me to take classes and do my Summer of Code project at the same time. I also get to do something that's meaningful to me, instead of IT gruntwork or whatever an normal company would have me doing. I use open source software myself, and I've been looking to get involved. Now I have my foot in the door. My project will be used by (at least) hundreds of thousands of people come October when the next Ubuntu release goes out. I think that's pretty nifty. To top it all off, I get paid to do this. The money Google is giving is more than many of the internships I looked at, so I don't know why you're saying it's very little money.
I know that saying bad things about Google is the in thing these days to make yourself look like a free-thinker, but there's absolutely no way you can twist their Summer of Code program into a bad thing.
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.
...did you get to go to the Ball?
If I can't smoke and swear I'm fucked.
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!