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Job and Internship Salary Comparisons?
spydabyte writes "I'm a current undergraduate at the Georgia Institute of Technology and have been getting offers for internships next summer. I was wondering if there is a source of information on intern markets or how a market's competitive salaries are. How do you know if you're getting a decent offer or you deserve more when you're entering a (personally) new market? Is there a definite source? Do you have your favorite? I know that many factors matter, as in location, previous experience, etc., but I think there's more to find out besides asking for my friends' current offers. If not internships, how about full time or careers? Any ideas?"
glassdoor.com gives pretty transparent information. You do have to read between the lines (i.e. suckage at one campus/group is not necessarily a problem at another, poor statistics gamed by shills) but it is useful information. But networking with people is much much more useful.
http://www.glassdoor.com/ I don't know about internships.
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then take it and be happy. I'm in a paying internship myself at roughly 12.50/hour for web application development. I have a lot of friends who are also in internships required for their major and earn zip, zilch, nada. I'm not aware of any listing of standard pay rates, but anything over $10 an hour should be more than you would make jockeying a register at Radioshack and you will be earning valuable work experience which is worth much, much more than any monetary compensation. When you go for that first job interview that work experience will shine through. I'm sure any employer would want someone with experience over someone without any day of the week.
for an internship i'd say forget which pays you better. if you have multiple offers, get the one that you think will be better in the long run. IE they often hire interns full time, or they offer great networking capabilities, or which would be more challenging/fun/interesting.
accepting or not accepting an internship based on compensation... sounds really dumb. pick an internship based on what you're going to learn and how it's going to prep you for the future, as well as if it's going to make you more competitive when getting your first 'real' job. as an intern, you're probably not going to be able to negotiate that offer, but you're that's not the case with the first job.
For internships it is not about how much but what you will pick up. You can get paid say $15 with a big company but you just may be serving coffee. Or you can get $10 an hour as a smaller company and you are actually getting real work experience. Which may be the difference later on a starting real job out of college of $35,000 a year vs. $45,000 a year (depending on location and cost of living) Also check to see if the company is willing to hire you as a full paid employee after you graduate (with say preferential treatment) or you will have just the same opportunity as the rest.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Money is nice and I can appreciate that a broke college student would want to maximize that, but that's short-term thinking. I would focus on:
1) What sort of industry relationships can I foster. If there is one lesson I've learned, it's that the most critical factor in success is who you know. Both in finding future employment and mentoring relationships.
2) What skills can I learn *that will look on a resume*. New grads always complain about, "They want experience, but how can I get experience when they won't hire me???" Well, this is how. You want as much experience doing real work as possible.
Honestly, working for free is worth it if you can get really great situation that fulfills #1 and #2. Be patient. The paychecks will come. Take advantage of your opportunities first.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Cost of Living comparison sites are good. That'll give you an idea of the comparison between two jobs in different places...One may be offering 50% more, but that 50% more may actually be a net loss depending on the cost of living.
Demographic information can give you average salaries, but you MUST weigh that in terms of the cost of living. Don't take a job for the national average salary in a city where the cost of living is twice the national average. You can get lots of salary information on Google.
I'd say there is no definite source. You're going to have to weigh and consider what you need, and what the job is worth to you. Don't be afraid to take less for a job that has great experience/training opportunities, and don't be afraid to ask for more if the job looks like hell on earth.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"Don't trade your time for money. Trade your time for experience. Then trade the experience for more money!" -Me.
Don't look only at dollars. Don't even look to who is going to value you most as an employee/intern. Look to fill that experience gap that you and everyone else has coming out of school.
Money should not be a huge consideration for internships. You will probably get paid poorly and that is fine. It's something you can put on your resume and more importantly you can learn real world skills rather than the crap they teach in college. Please don't decide on an internship based on money. To be honest, with just a degree and no experience, you are "worth" very little.
I am currently interning at GE, so I can say with authority that it is worth it for the real world skills alone.
But I would worry less about what you'll get paid as an intern and more about what kind of experience you'll be getting and networking/employment opportunities after the internship is over. Whatever you would make as an intern would be a pittance anyway, so don't pass over long-term prospects just to make a couple hundred dollars extra.
For fulltime jobs, check salary.com and glassdoor.com for good salary information. For salary.com, you can enter in a job title (e.g. software engineer II) and zip code; the salary range results are pretty accurate. When you move to take a fulltime job, be sure to check the cost-of-living adjustment calculator there too.
If you are looking for an internship, then I recommend you not be so concerned with money. The goal of an internship is get real-world experience and do a good enough job so the manager will remember you well enough to write a letter of recommendation when you need it later. You will have the rest of your life to worry about making money. I would also recommend you get as many summer internships before you graduate as possible with a mix of big-name and small companies (where presumably you'll have more responsibilities at the smaller companies).
I went to college a few years back, in the nineties, and I didn't get paid for an intern job. Neither did any of my classmates. Is that something companies do now?
Anyway, you are at the beginning of your career, so I wouldn't worry about the money for an intern. Intern with the most interesting job at the most interesting company, even if you have to do it for free. Then you will be off to a good start and learn something interesting.
As far as salaries, you can look at Dice.com, ComputerJobs.com, Monster.com, realrates.com etc and look to see "around" what people are paying.
But these are just ballpark figures. Its all in the negotiation and the what the company your working for is willing to pay ( and how bad they need your skills ). I've seen poor saps making less than 50K coding C++ with years of experience. And I've seen complete idiots pulling in 100 dollars an hour or more.
When you do look for that first job, negotiate good, interview a lot, be professional, and get as many offers as you can. Then you can pick and choose and have more leverage.
As an intern, the experience you get matters WAY more than the pay you might receive. Ignore compensation, go for the interesting jobs or the well-respected companies regardless of pay.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
As a Software Engineer, when I was working as an intern 4 years ago, I was offered $14.50 an hour.
After six months, I was promoted to full time status at $46,000 per year. My salary has since increased to $70,000 per year.
Note that this is in the Midwest, where the cost of living is quite low.
Bureau of Labor Statistics has the information you seek. http://www.bls.gov/
Your an intern. Expect to be treated like my little brother after having lost a bet. I will make you do the most menial of tasks that I don't want to do and give you table scraps and you will be thankful for the experience of being able to write it on your resume that you were my personal slave for 6 months and this company because it actually looks like experience when it was nothing but humiliation and torture. Welcome the day you get your first intern with a guilty pleasure.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Georgia Tech's "Career Services" was very useful when I was there. In contrast, the co-op office was horrible. I'd definitely make an appointment with career services and talk to them about this.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
What really matters with the internship is the professional experience you get. Get as much of it as you can while still getting your degree. My wife did four summers of internships and when she graduated, she was rated as having 2-3 years of professional work experience by her employer. The result was that they actually took her application pretty seriously and offered her good pay since she wasn't, strictly speaking, "entry level" anymore.
I got paid $7.50/hour starting out and ended up making $10/hour after a few months at my internship, which lasted 2 years through my university. That internship is what actually got me my first job; my employer just ignored my low GPA and focused on the fact that I had been interning as a software developer for 2 years for my university on a research project.
Bottom line is, be their bitch, as much as you can tolerate it. Let them task you with all sorts of technical work, even if it's making you work long, unpaid hours because when you graduate, it'll give you more leverage with a serious employer to demand more pay out of college.
Now I'm the boss, and whenever I go into a hiring discussion I always have two figures in my head -- what I'll offer, and what I'm willing settle on. Don't be the fool who jumps at the first offer. Not only will you make less, but your boss will think less of you for it.
As a current undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University, I should be able to give you some insight which you can relate to.
That said, it has been my experience that some companies believe that compensation is great in it of itself and others believe that they should pay you and keep you happy now so you will stick with them later.
A good example of this is an interview I once had where the interviewer kept pushing that "this is a paid internship, so it's very competitive". I sat there thinking that every company I've talked to is offering a paid internship. What's the big deal? Well, what set this company apart was its size. They were a 30 person company with a name in their field, but nothing special. Larger companies like Microsoft, IBM, Google, Oracle, AOL, etc. tend to offer significant compensation (>20/hr, or even >30 depending on class standing).
I've personally gotten offers from two of the above and accepted one of them this past summer. I felt as if I would be doing rewarding work for them which I could learn from. Luckily for me, it turned out I was right.
I implore you to keep in mind that the learning and experience gained is far more important that any monetary compensation gained (unless the money is necessary to maintain your enrollment and general wellbeing). With that in mind, I have been pursuing jobs from larger companies and interviewing with them. The interview is a two way channel where the company learns more about me and I them. If the results are satisfactory for both parties, then we move forward. To be explicit, use the interview as an opportunity to gauge how rewarding the job opportunity may be. That, combined with the monetary compensation should be the basis for your decision.
Good luck (and don't be greedy)!
Generally speaking, the bigger companies (IBM, Microsoft, Google, Motorola) pay quite a bit better for co-ops. Back when I was in college (comp sci & eng), people who worked at the big places made close to twice what I was getting at a smaller place. Those numbers were pretty consistent across our whole class.
I don't know what the quality of work is like at big places compares to the smaller. I liked the variety and importance of the stuff I got to do in an IT department of 4 people, and a better co-op experience is far more valuable in the long run. Basically, do what you think you'll like the most and aligns best with what you're planning for your future, instead of just trying to squeeze as much money as you out of a co-op. It won't seem that significant once you get a real position.
Back in 94 I worked a co-op for a major IT company's unix tech support call center. I think I started out at around $15 hour but I was up to $17/hour by the end of my second co-op there.
I'd had other internships/co-ops before that, which didn't pay as well but both were with smaller companies.
I got great (and varied) experiences from all of them.
Don't just look at the $$$ also consider what you'll be learning in the process. The combined work experience I had when I graduated made it easy to find a job. (I graduated in May of 06 but I already had my job by Oct 05 and not with the company I'd co-op'ed for. I'm still with that employer today.)
I suspect a lot of companies are starting to tighten their belts and reduce or freeze hiring, etc. If the economy gets much worse, it might be you will lucky to have a single offer, instead of having multiple offers and being able to pick and choose. So before you start trying to negotiate a higher salary, better perks, more interesting job, etc. figure out if you have a good bargaining position.
I see a lot of posts above that basically state that internships are more about what you can learn than they are about how much you get paid. I agree with this to a certain extent, but I gotta say that getting paid is an absolute must for me. I realize that companies are under no obligation to take on interns (much less paid interns), especially with the way the economy is, but on the other hand interns can be a cheap source of labor, and if companies are willing to pay your interns a decent amount (that is, below what an actual developer makes but well above minimum wage) then everyone involved can benefit, especially if the internship turns into a full-time position.
That said I find the idea of a non-paying internship to be ridiculous. My time is just as valuable as anyone else's and if a company doesn't respect me enough to pay me for the time I spend working for them then I wouldn't have anything to do with them. It is simply condescending to argue that a company is providing hands-on experience so they don't need to provide monetary compensation as well. It is to the company's (and the industry's) benefit that they hire interns and actually pay them a wage as it provides an incentive and a means for new entrants to earn the experience that companies demand entry-level worker to have.
I'd also like to point out that it is much more common now for students to be "non-traditional," meaning that they don't live on campus, work their way through college at full or part-time jobs and are either starting families or already have them. I'm one of these students (my daughter is two months old as of Monday), and the idea of taking a non-paid position (even with hands-on experience) is simply unthinkable. Companies should understand how the student population is evolving and should take these facts into account when considering whether or not to pay their interns.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The only salary consideration I'd call relevant was whether it was enough to live on. The actual salary and the time you'll be there aren't going to add up to much.
The main reason for choosing an internship should be how it looks on your resume/vita. Consider your future employment offers if you have an entry that says JPL as compared to that entry saying Showa-Denko Heavy Motor Works. You'd do better to take the first with no pay as opposed to the latter with a "big" though short-lived salary.
Also consider what you'd be likely to gain in terms of experience in what you want to do. The latter may in fact be more to your interest.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I had an internship as a graduate student that paid me a salary almost 10k/yr higher than what I am making at my current job. Of course, I graduated with my Masters earlier this year, and finding ANY job is a pain. Unfortunately I could not get a job with the company I interned with (Intel) as they are not doing much hiring in my area.
contacts.
Which company is more likely to ahve contacts for your career goal?
Forget the intern salary numbers. Keep your eye on your end game.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
why 'should' it be Zero?
There are paid internship programs.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Software Engineer Interns at Google gets paid $5500-5800 monthly salary. Closer to $5000 if you are a Software Engineer in Test Intern (QA). At least that's what they were paying us the last 2 summers.
Like me...
Alumni outside the school will tell you the way it really is, not necessarily just what you want to hear.
Drop me a line if you want some input...
When I was in college (2002-2007), I was working nearly full time to pay for things my parents couldn't (books, supplies, etc).
I was offered three IT internships while I was in school:
A wireless telecommunications company paid me over 17.00 an hour.
A cosmetic company offered to pay me 12.00 an hour.
A shipping company paid me 20.00 an hour.
The shipping company offered to take me on full time as an employee, but didn't pay me much more than what I was earning as an intern, plus I really didn't like the direction I was headed there.
After that I managed to find employment that offered me a better career path, and better compensation. So another piece of "advice", don't always take your first offer, unless you have to.
the point of internships are to stuff your resume. You've already got one big name on your resume (GT), add another and you'll be golden. Besides... if you went through the professional practice office then the wages are negotiated by the school and can't be changed.
I was paid at very close to the starting wage for newly-hired engineers.
In fact, my last summer I was paid the same hourly rate as when I graduated a year later.
I think the work of students is about equal to a new-hire engineer so the pay should be comparable.
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
http://www.indeed.com/salary
I go to Georgia Tech too! :)
What major/year?
I'm looking for internships too...shooting long for Google (hah)
I recently graduated from college with a BS in computer engineering. My second year, I cooped with a company as a firmware engineer getting paid $19.75/hour. I went back to the same company upon graduation, and my starting salary was over $60,000 year. My advice to you is the same that everyone else has given you: Don't pick solely based on compensation. I had to turn down 3 other offers in order to coop where I did, with one of the other positions paying more. I picked it because it was an awesome position at an awesome company, and I don't regret it one bit. That's just my binary dime
As an intern, you cannot expect to be paid going market wage. Expect to be abused for your limited, real-world, skill set. Choose something that you are interested in and that excites your intellect and challenges your knowledge, otherwise you will be hating your time there. Since you are still in school, look at what you get in monetary compensation during your two month stint as beer money for the Fall semester.
Sig this!
I was an intern for the company I work for full-time now back in 2005 and made $18/hour, in Minnesota. I was doing some interesting web design, Perl, and Business Objects. Stuff I hadn't really done in school (Java, C++, etc.). They actually kept me on during my senior year while I finished school and I worked remotely from my house on campus. That was pretty awesome. Worked like 12 hours a week and made the equivalent of like 30 hours doing regular college work.
Like I said, I still work there, that was probably the best part of it all. Though not counting benefits, etc., it almost feels like I'm taking home less...
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
As someone finishing his college career, and has had two internships, I can safely say that money is the last thing you should be focusing on.
The first job was doing IT work at a small, non-profit. I made $15, partially through work-study credit, and was told up front I'd never get a raise. I had about 130 PCs and 150 people I served in three locations; I was half of the IT department (the lesser). It was easy, the people were great, and I was apparently loved by all (the young, wacky college intern in a business of mostly 40-somethings). However, my degree was CompSci; I didn't feel that generic IT (where I had no special projects or stuff that challenged me), so I left for another internship.
That one wound me up in a Fortune-100 (50?) company where I did web application design and programming at a very, very low level. It was the work I wanted, but I had absolutely no proper leadership; no one in the department was a proper programmer or another CompSci (or even SoftEng), they had never had one (so far as I could tell), and the whole setup was very bootstrap-ish. The whole corporate setup was very dreary, and I hated it.
Everything I learned I did so because I taught myself. Even asking for basic advice brought up blank stares from everyone (once I asked another programmer whether I should use int or tinyint for a table column; he never really gave me an answer). I did get more experience, but I could have gotten about the same at my old place, and been much happier for it. I made $2 more/hour, but I would gladly have traded that away to get my old job back if I could have.
In short: Find a place that's not huge, that fits in well with your major and life goals, and that seems to have competent staff that will be guiding you. If those things are equal, then go for money. But an internship is more about you getting the experience, real world education, and networking than it is about the money.
In this economy, just be happy if they don't rescind the offer.
In my company we are being told 'forget raises, just be glad you still have a job you worthless sods'
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
I've seen plenty of such questions on /. over the years, with plenty of commentators offering nuggets of job advice. Very rarely do I see particularly good and non-obvious advice come out of such discussions. So, for the first time, I'm going to jump in with what I have learned.
I strongly suggest you consider my advice very carefully...
When looking for good-paying jobs, your resume is incredibly important. And job experience is easily the single most important part.
If your resume lists NO experience in the industry, you'll have a hell of a time getting ANY job, college degree or no.
Interviewers will very rarely ask what you got paid at a job. They will never INSIST on knowing what you were paid if you opt to omit such information.
Interviewers practically never ask about your exact job title... ie. They don't care you were "Junior Intern Monkey" versus "Senior Super Dude", as long as you were in the field, and kept your position for a reasonable length of time.
If there are significant gaps in your work experience (several months when you weren't working), practically all recruiters ARE going to ask why, and "Nobody would pay me enough money" is the worst answer you could possibly give.
The moral of the story is, take whatever entry-level job you can get, and be happy that you're getting enough money to survive on. And when it's over, get a new job (reasonably quickly) that pays at least a bit more than the previous. Playing "hard ball" over salary is a good way to keep yourself from getting ANY salary for a long, long time, and will seriously set you back in your career.
Follow that advice... put together a solid work history, and craft it into good and professional-looking resume, and you'll at least get to the interview stage pretty easily.
PS. Menial jobs like "Fast Food Restaurant Manager" look TERRIBLE in the middle of your work experience (between career-related jobs) as it looks like you aren't good enough to get a job in your chosen profession... But if you don't have a long work history yet, it can be quite valuable at the beginning of your work history, showing that you are reliable enough to hold down a stable job.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
As long as you have enough to live on, look at them for the experience and industry connections they will give you, not for the money you will make.
check monstertrack.com
First-time (summer after freshman year) CS tends to run at $15/hour. Students further along in their studies can get $20-$25/hour.
I have hired many interns into our company for technical positions as web developers. Those out of their first or second year are typically pretty decent at picking things up and making contributions, but they don't have much experience and it's clearly much more about getting them to come back and giving them a solid foundation. Typically, we are in the $12-15 range for this. After your 3rd or 4th year (GT students will know that they're often looking at a 5th year of school), if you have had some previous experience, you can expect $17-22 easily; this of course is based on how much you can contribute. If you have to have a more experienced dev setup your IDE, and a DBA do all your scripting etc, you are looking at making a lot less. There are some candidates, and we do a lot of hiring out of GT, who will get 25-30/hour, even before they graduate, but the difference between their skillset and a graduate is nil (and sometimes they are better than graduates).
Development is one of those strange fields where formal education often takes a backseat to experience, smarts, and a desire to experiment. If you feel you have a proficiency in a language or area, and you can contribute close to or as much as a full time post-grad hire, negotiate accordingly!
I just graduated from the University of Waterloo's CS Program with co-op. I did 5 co-op terms of 4 months each, starting at 12$/hour up to 22$/hour for my last one (Canadian dollars). Since our program is well established, our school has gathered statistics on average salaries and most companies will look at the pay chart and pay on par with that give or take. I don't know if Gatech has similar resources, you should try to find out from your school.
But like everyone else is saying, think about the future, not just making money in the short term. Obviously, if you are relocating for your job you're going to have to be compensated. But, definitely go into something you are interested in and would like to see yourself doing after graduation.
I didn't know that it was Georgia Institute of Technology. I thought it was the Georgia Tech University?
(if anyone went to GT, check out my handle and then you should get the joke)
Your school's career center / job placement office should have info on past internships. Either formal statistics or informal info.
New startup.. looks promising.
I started as an intern during my senior year, and eventually was promoted to FTE, but was given so much work I had to give up school. At this point I'm being paid the same as a graduate due to my 1 1/2 yrs experience, so a diploma for me would be pointless. grind it out for a year or so and you'll be able to double your meager intern salary easily.
Last summer i was earning around $20 a hour the summer before that around $17 and now as a graduate student im expecting around $30 an hour (my schools average intern wage is $30 an hour for grad students in my department). Im a EE but around here the CS students make around as much as us EEs. Worth noting, a lot of major defense contractors are up around here. So not only do we get paid well but if your lucky like I was you can end up a sweet security clearance at the age of 20. In general your school's career development center should have statistics
Well, he *might* eventually get all those rights *if* he becomes a citizen; OTOH he may not become a citizen; he does NOT have any of those rights *now*.
Plus, we can vote, he can't (don't know about you, but I really appreciate that one), I *could* get unemployment benefits, medicaid etc (hope never need to), which he can't. Also, I know that my rights are *permanent* and not conditional; the state department could kick him out anytime for no reason; they can't take my citizenship away from me.
I can't see the original message, so I do not now what was originally said, but to say that foreigners have the same rights as citizens in the USA is idiotic.
I had a student of mine bring me internship papers a couple of years ago for an internship in information security. Compensation is supposed to be one of the things listed and for this one, which was with a major New York investment firm, the pay--for an INTERNSHIP--was $5,000 a month. That's $60,000 a year! I guess they think they got their moneys' worth because they ended up sponsoring the student for an H-1B visa. So this revealed two things: 1) there really are some well-paid internships out there and 2) not all H-1B jobs are given out just to avoid paying a U.S. citizen more, because these folks clearly were paying alright.