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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.
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 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.
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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.
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)!
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!
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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.
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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 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