Slashdot Mirror
What Can I Expect As an IT Intern?
p3np8p3r writes "I'm in college and working towards my Bachelors in Computer Science. Last year I passed both my CompTIA A+ and Network+ certifications and now have been offered (via a staffing company) a full-time Internship at a wireless lab of a major laptop manufacturer. The pay is going to be around $8 an hour full-time but that is not my primary motivator. I'm considering this significant decrease in pay from my previous (non-IT) job to be counterbalanced by what valuable knowledge I may gain both in the technical aspects and industry insight while I finish school. This field is all new to me and I don't personally know anyone who has worked in it before who will give me their honest opinions on it. Although I know circumstances differ greatly, in general, what can I expect as an IT Intern? What have been your experiences?"
I developed some software on my own when I was in school which allowed to get known. I then did my internship at full salary (20$ an hour back then) for a small company. A "major laptop manufacturer" might seem a little cheap at 8$ an hour even for an internship.
Have you looked for company to do your internship by yourself? It could be important to do your internship in a place that will fit to your career plan, ask questions and talk to the company representatives. In short, don't view your internship as just another academical formality in order to get your bachelor degree. Don't go work there as a governmental clerk just doing another day ;-))
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
And have worked here about 2.5 years now, including my year as an intern. It was alot of fun, and I learned an immense amount.
Plain and simple, kiss your bosses ass. If your lucky enough to be liked, you may end up getting a job offer when your hired, and in this economy, you'd be considered lucky.
Expect to be doing alot of grunt work. Your coworkers are going to use you as a "gopher". Don't take it personally, but also be insistant on wanting to learn their jobs, not just get their coffee. Alot of people are going to be afraid to give you an indepth look at what they do, their afraid if someone else knows their job, they'll be fired. This not much you can really do about it, besides just pick up what you can from the sidelines.
Be outgoing, and don't slack. If that means working through lunch everyday, it'll be worth it in the end when you come away with a better knowledge of whats going on.
Try to ask intelligent questions. You'll catch people off guard and look alot more intelligent by asking "How could I use cat and grep in order to do..." instead of "Whats grep?"
Why would anyone go IT? In the nearby future there will be little improvement in the situation of the many IT-workers. You are still young, why not do something else? I would only do IT if it was my passion. And even then I might consider another carreer if they would want to have me. Marketing, communication, anything just to get out of that god-forsaken-hellhole called IT.
The reason why payment is important for IT people is because your pay is proportional to how interesting your job is. Academia excepted. If you are only paid $8/hour, expect to keep doing $8/hour tasks. Like brewing coffee, boring testing work and stuff like that. On the other hand if you were paid $80/hour, you wouldn't have to do any of that because your time would be way to expensive to be wasted on such menial tasks.
Football Odds
You made the right choice. What can you expect? Fun And Games, Every Day.
Expect to be told to stop all that substituting letters for numbers crap.
P.S. What is pateper?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Dude,
read Dilbert to get more insight into the Industry then you ever wanted.
Also you may want do have a look at Userfriendly, Hackles and early Reallifecomics.
Maybe all this wisdom can help you picture, where you are going.
For your Internship, be ready to be the *** of the Company.
Do not stop looking for more internship opportunities.
Ask about retired engineers at the company. Look them up and ask about who to avoid. A negative relationship can poison an otherwise ideal place of work. Try to look at all available procedures including hazmat warning sheets. Fire drills should also be a part of the workplace.
I did two co-ops during college, one for a small not-for-profit called the Devereux Foundation, doing first level helpdesk type stuff, the second with Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, doing second and third tier Windows Server support and server engineering.
The first paid me about $14.50/hr in 2002/2003, and was a lot of menial, grunt type stuff; moving workstations, PC repair, cleaning out computer cases, handling helpdesk calls, swapping out monitors, etc. All our computers were extremely old, even for that time, so we did a fair amount of searching for decent parts. I did, however, get to work with the network and infrastructure guys when we moved to a new facility, running network patches, installing switches and servers, etc. Perhaps the best experience I had while there was managing their upgrade from Windows 95 to Windows XP, and devising a plan to test every app known to be used.
Working at Wyeth was a complete change. The computers were brand new, the servers were brand new, the server room was immaculate (and MASSIVE), and there was plenty of money to buy test equipment/software. I was responsible for much more at this position, though the people I worked with didn't give up tasks easily. For the first few months, I had to hustle constantly to prove to them that I could do the work. After that, I was usually given decent assignments, but I felt like I never really found a niche there. That one paid better, though...roughly $19/hr.
For you, at $8/hr, you're going to be doing the really shit stuff...getting coffee, cleaning keyboards that have had coffee spilled in them, schlepping workstations from building to building in the rain/snow, etc. As long as there are good people working there, you'll get a good experience, if only seeing how an IT shop works. Since you're completely new to the industry, you'll probably have high expectations of how things will operate, but you'll probably be let down (sorry)...most IT shops are on shoestring budgets, and IT people are, in many cases, jackasses. If you get a bunch of young men/women with small egos, you'll be in good shape, just make sure you're always pounding the ground, looking for more work, and proving to them that you can do the job.
May the force be with you...
...is that typical? Here in Oz the federally mandated minimum hourly rate for any worker is roughly $12.50US/hr.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
That's what happened to me. I eventually quit and went into health care; still do IT work on a volunteer basis. I now make good money but seeing misery all the time is beginning to have an effect on me.
Folks, you never know there is tons of suffering till you are working in a hospital. At that point you praise God for what you have.
I've had friends who interned at a lot of different companies. I know someone who interned at IBM and got treated like a clerical temp, despite being two years into his masters. I know a couple of people who interned at Apple and said they learned more in six months than they had in four years of college.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I really have to wonder about the pay level. I can still remember what my first intership paid: $7.37 an hour -- in 1986.
Enjoy getting coffee and moving heavy equipment.
...and you're tied to that post in the middle of the office with everyone baying for blood about their lack of access to youtube or joke emails and you're about to receive the cat 'o nine tails, make sure you take up the offer of hard leather or wood to bite down on.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Minimum pay here is €8.65 (=$10-$12) per hour. It's a bit like a football apprentice. Hundreds start, but few make the top team. Use whatever chances you get to shine, and learn stuff. Some come through, most go away. Learn to lick ass. Try not to have the breakdown before you're 30. Keep your eye on job ads.
I had an internship at one of the National Labs (think Los Alamos/Laurance Livermoor). I was exposed to more in my first week on the job than I had been with two years of schooling. If you work in a data center, your main job will be running cables. That is just how it is going to be. When you aren't running cables, talk to people, find out if there is anything you can help with. Make informed comments, google what your peers are talking about, and if you can find papers that they've written....READ THEM. Soak up as much as you can, that is why you personally are there is to learn. On their end, yes you are are the lowest paid member of their staff and will be doing the dirty jobs.
You will start with resetting tripped fuses. If you are lucky they will permit you to refill paper trays in printers.... 5 years after... you will switch from OSPF configuration to BGP, you will have a cubicle that is closer to younger generation of engineers, who are members of your preferred opposite gender... another five years after that... you will switch to marketing or sales, probably under the pretense of a technical advisor, than it would stuck....
my suggestions:
1) read some a.s.r. (unfortunately google does not explain what the a.s.r. is, thus please search for alt.sysadmin.recovery)
2) start looking for ways of converting your degree to a soft skill, business management, social anthropology etc.
3) Do not let anybody and/or yourself to place more than one computer and/or monitor on your desk.
In-n-Out (California burger place) pays more than that for entry level restaurant staff!
There better be some spectacular benefits in what you get to work on, opposite sex (whichever that is) opportunities, something ... at your place.
$8/hr !?!!?!
Have things really gotten THAT BAD in the US??? Wow...
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Sorry, but $8 an hour is way too high for an intern in a third-world country. That was like a mid-level salary a couple of years ago in an IT Department from a third-world country. (Thanks to the dis/advantageous currency exchange.)
The way I see it, if your time is worth no more than $8 an hour, then knock yourself out. Just another reason I'm getting out of this field, there's just too many people in it who do not value their own time.
What country are YOU in? Furthermore, what state/province? Minimum wage varies a whole fucking lot based on location and country. The cost of living varies from place to place and therefore so does the minimum wage. $8/hr sounds reasonable for an hourly entry-level shit-job worker where I'm located, which is pretty much what he's doing.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
R - U - N
In Belgium all Bachelor IT studies have an intership in the last half year or year before graduating.
They're unpaid, though included in your schooling so no harm done there. In most of the cases the interns are hired as full employees. For companies this just is common sense. They shorten the official trial period a new employee has to go through by the duration of the intership.
The company where I work now I was able to get promoted a year before schedule, and since I worked here 3 interns were hired as employees, 2 more interns will start in Q1/2010 and those will likely be hired when they finish their internship (assuming they don't screw up ;))
I don't know about the US of course, but taxes on employees is ridiculously high in Belgium, so a 3 or 6 months free employee is a great way to start their training and put them on new projects where the technology still has to be discovered. This then gives the intern a step up on other people as they spent their internship exploring and working with the new technology, without being bothered by a full planning with regular work on clients.
Life is great! (as told by Lady Susan)
Well, at minimum you can expect to learn how to make a damn good cup of tea or coffee.
Personnel will offer up interns with the objective of locking in people who will eventually become important contributors. Most of the time they are not used well. It is hard for a working department all involved with their day to day challenges to get people trained and involved. But, they will look at how you respond and interact with other professionals and perhaps give you a leg up when it comes time to apply for a permanent job. You could also get some real work that is interesting and challenging. It is sort of the "luck of the draw".
I'd say offering you 8 bucks an hour is an insult. I am betting that they have some really crappy work that they need done. They aren't interested in attracting anyone long term with that kind of investment. You will be telling them that they can continue to abuse you when you graduate. But, my bet is that this is just an example of folk wanting a temp and not wanting to pay them full value.
Ok, the subject is cheesy, but if my point were not to be assimilated, would that be fair?
Anyway, it's not really my point. I had my question published a few weeks ago under a "Leaving the IT field" and there were more responses in that post than in the week preceding it...
I've been doing some thinking that maybe a huge chunk of us unhappy IT workers are in need of a drastic lifestyle overhaul or at the very least some anti-anxiety or anti-depressant prescription.
Poster: figure out what you want out of IT first. Bury yourself in computers? Solve puzzles? Get away from people?
I had a sucky sig.
You should try to get your college to give you academic credit for the internship. They'll probably want you to forfeit the $8/hr. but I think six or nine hours worth of academic credit would well make up for that.
- Doing your boss' daily quests on WoW
- Leveling his/her level 80 characters
- Pre-raid time prep (getting required pots, enchants, et)c
- Tanking his/her wife/husband while he/she is raiding
As a CS student I think you should focus on product development, not IT. You absolutely should intern at a technology company whose main focus is products - and whose _customers_ may include IT departments. You won't be paid a whole lot, but the tasks you get will also be very simple, relatively speaking, and while they may be important, once taken care of you'll have plenty of time to poke around with whatever interests you. You may be asked to say add an option to a compiler, tweak a kernel build, or add data gathering and instrumentation - things that the other developers would like to have but don't find time to do themselves. If in the process you find something you think might make an interesting project by all means suggest it, chances are you'll get to go do it, unless it seems overly ambitious to the extreme.
Though I worked throughout college, my sole internship was very well paid. I made approximately $30/hour plus housing stipend. This was working in technology at a financial firm. Companies who value technology are willing to pay for it. Never forget that.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
Sys Admin jobs in banks are very boring. But you earn more than most IT people.
Research jobs are very interesting (I was tangentially involved in some in my early years) but you are paid peanuts.
At the end you have to use common sense, be realistic about what you want and be willing to compromise in some aspects in order to achieve what you want (if you want money don't whine about a well paid albeit boring job).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
At my work (3M - number 7 on here: http://www.ratemyplacement.co.uk/), we get our IT interns to generally come in and do support / content management related activities to begin with, but with the expectation that they'll move beyond that after 2-3 months and then spend 20-40% of their time doing project work equivalent to what a new graduate / any other employee would do. In recent years we've had interns working on developing website translation software that they proposed themselves (saving us several hundred thousand dollars per year), software license management / reduction and loads of other things.
Find out from the company at the start whether they're expecting you to have an open-ended project activity or whether you really are just the tea boy / doing incident management / desktop support. Emphasise to them that the internship you're looking for is a key part of your education and also your decision as to whether you would consider a graduate position with them. Companies spend a fortune on recruiting grads, so if we can just hire the interns we've had once they've graduated, it saves us time, money and potentially the disaster of hiring an unknown who turns out to be useless.
--- Band: Joey Ultra
I'm not writing this just to take a contrary position.
I've been around and while, and around the IT scene a while. (understatements)
Internship is just a way to get some loser for peanuts, while not being bound by any of the regular employment Law.
If you work for 8 bucks and hour then 8 bucks an hour is all you are worth.
Go to Burger King, the money is better, and you will at least have some hope of persuading a future employer that...
a/ you have some self respect.
b/ you will work hard for money, you will not eat shit for money.
Back in my day, there was no such thing as interns, because frankly nobody in Personnel had the balls to try and sell it, and nobody who was a worker would consider it for an instant as anything less than a total insult.
Why not just rent your ass out? and ask /. what we think about that as a career idea?
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
...to shut up and get me my coffee.
No, probably not in Canada either, except for maybe BC. Even then, I'm a current CS undergrad (in eastern Canada), and I wouldn't be caught dead with an $8.00/hr job. On my second work term, I was offer $20/hr+ and I didn't look outside of the downtown core of where I live. Moving to Toronto / Ottawa / Montreal / Vancouver, I probably would have got $30 or more.
try { Signature mysig = new CleverAttempt(); } catch(NonCleverSignatureException e) { postanyway(); }
the most valuable learning experiences i had starting out were when someone took me under their wing. my first job was a contract for a major sporting goods company. a hired gun who also contracted but had his project delayed said, "we are going to take every case in the problem queue and work them together." this was not his job - he was happy to teach me, and boy did i learn.
at my next job, a guru who seemed to know everything from midrange to programming, netware, microsoft and telephony taught me occasional tidbits like binding a protocol to an interface in netware 3.1
if you keep your eyes open and demeanor positive and helpful, you are more likely to spot the willing to educate you. ask questions without being pushy. watch to see when they don't want to be bothered and offer to help.
"...You'll do shitwork, scan, crack copyrights..."
Sorry, this post screamed for a bad quote from a bad movie.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
"I'm in college and working towards my Bachelors in Computer Science. Last year I passed both my CompTIA A+ and Network+ certifications and now have been offered (via a staffing company) a full-time Internship at a wireless lab of a major laptop manufacturer. The pay is going to be around $8 an hour full-time but that is not my primary motivator. I'm considering this significant decrease in pay from my previous (non-IT) job to be counterbalanced by what valuable knowledge I may gain both in the technical aspects and industry insight while I finish school. This field is all new to me and I don't personally know anyone who has worked in it before who will give me their honest opinions on it. Although I know circumstances differ greatly, in general, what can I expect as an IT Intern? What have been your experiences?"
$8/hr is still kinda low, even for an intern doing IT work, but still. Learn as much as you can, even if it means devoting more hours to learning after your daily work is done. Having said that, this is all assuming that there is a chance to learn the nitty gritty details of Unix/Windows administration, laying out networks, troubleshooting production problems (and if you are lucky, learning shell/perl/powershell programming and setting up cron/database jobs, schedule remote user/software updates, setting up security shit, and things like that.
And this is the thing, if all you get to do is install software for users and answering phone calls from customers (being the human router who creates a ticket for them and assign them to the actual person who will do the grunt work), then fuck it, you will not learn anything.
There are three levels of IT support (usually): tier I (what I just described), tier II and tier III (the later being the one where you get your hands dirty into the servers, the network, the latrine, whatever pile of shit needs to be stirred to get things back up and running.) Tier III is where you want to be if you want to maximize your learning experience. Tier II might or might not (depending on the company), but tier I, you'll bore yourself to death and you won't learn squat.
I've worked on Tier III support and I believe it helped me become a better software developer - that experienced helped me understand really well what it takes to get things running beyond my IDE and my compiler - routers, firewalls, caching and ssl devices, database listeners, job schedulers. You learn the things that will have a direct effect on your software (things that architect astronauts usually like to gloss over as they do their pretty UML modeling because they have no fucking clue how to model them or take them into account.)
I did that for a couple of years, longer than what I was planning. It was not by choice. Once you get into IT, you are stuck in it while the software development industry moves on. You can get yourself obsolete as a computer scientist and developer really quickly in a matter of 3-4 years.
But that takes me to my question - you are about to graduate from Computer Science, but you are getting CompTIA A+ and Network+ certifications and are currently looking into doing IT-related internships. Why? Not that there is anything wrong if that's the type of job you want to do, but a MIS degree (with a good focus on programming) would have served you better.
I don't know, but at least for me, Computer Science trained me for software development, software engineering, and well, computer science. It is an overkill degree to do IT work (where the business/management/people skills you get in a MIS degree combined with CompTia A+ and Network+ certs will suit better.)
Unless you get to do Tier III support during your internship, that will be a waste of the investment you have made in your Computer Science studies.
In any case, good luck!
...or you're just not looking hard enough for an internship. As a comparison, I was earning $12-14USD (adjusted for exchange rate) 2-3 years ago as an engineering intern. Also, internships should pay more than your previous. If you'd be taking a pay cut to work at this place, then you're probably not going to learn anything. If you received your certificates since your last internship, that's even more reason to pay you more. Expect to be treated as a junior member of the staff. Yes that can mean go-fer and make-work projects, but they'll be tasks related to your job, not getting coffee for the more senior members of your team. In return, you should be treating this job like it's a permanent one. That entails you to certain rights, like the same dress code as everyone else, the same breaks and lunches, and an appropriate office space. You're better off looking for another job.
I don't know anyone who's had an internship lately for under $15/hr in the computer science field. Most internships are looking for long-term hires and they shell out more money than you're really worth to get you interested in them. 8/hr sounds like those slave labor campus painting jobs were they call it an internship so naive chumps will work them.
How much have you looked around? I've never (in the past 3 years) had trouble finding an internship and see plenty of job prospects. I'm sure you could find something more interesting that pays more if you look.
Ze Atomic Device! It iz Ztolen!
I'm with the others that $8/hr is a slap in the face. My first internship paid >$18/hr and probably provided more valuable experience... Dunno what else to add to what everyone else said.
Go to Burger King, the money is better, and you will at least have some hope of persuading a future employer that...
a/ you have some self respect.
b/ you will work hard for money, you will not eat shit for money.
As someone who hires professional people, seeing Burger King (or practically any fast food experience) on a resume gets put in the circular file for anything but the most special cases. Working as an intern for a recognizable name in business is far more valuable. I don't know about you, but I rarely see salaries/wages listed on resumes, and any summer job before you graduate is going to be some kind of internship. People who look at resumes know this, whether it's listed as "intern" or not. I sure as hell am not going to hire somebody who chose an $11/hr fast food position over an $8 internship in his or her field. The last thing I need is somebody asking me for a raise every six months. Make my company money, and I'll reward your efforts. Wait for people to wander by and ask you to make them a double Whopper, and you'll be sorely disappointed in your financial and responsibility advancement. My junior engineer will make about 20% on top of his base salary for work he's brought in this year. I let a senior engineer go last year because - after six months on the job - he'd brought in a grand total of $2000 in new business.
This guy needs to learn his desired craft, not understand the proportions of mayo to ketchup. In this economy, he should be willing to work for free and consider it an investment. It's sure as hell cheaper than when he's in school, and he may (I say may) learn more per hour if he's a good study. I'm NOT saying he's not valuable, just that experience has its own value. Learning how the working world runs - the ins and outs of a field - early is one of the best ways to get a jump start on a career.
(That said, if he can find an internship for more money - go for it. $8/hr sucks.)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
... for things to do. Do them well and ask for more things to do. As for the whole "getting people their coffee" business, you have to be careful, because the second you let people use you as an intern, they'll keep using you as an intern. However, there is a difference between being asked to go get coffee, or being asked to bring a cup now that your cubicle-mate sees you going for a cup yourself anyway. That just means you get to return the favor next time he's heading out. But if you're told to get coffee, tell whoever told you to fuck off and get his own coffee, because he's the kind of person you won't get anything out of associating with anyway.
I think $8 per hour puts you in the category of "working poor", and I expect that you can do better. I was making > $13 as an intern doing Windows Client->Server setups in 1996-1997. We basically created a "test" network with some data and application servers and a few clients. Then, when everything was working, we created a production environment and went around standardizing the software and settings on all of the clients. At the time I had no credentials or certifications other than good grades. If you're in the United States, I'd recommend that you look around for other work. Get something that pays better, or if you're only going to be earning $8 per hour, look for something where you know for sure that there will be a lot of learning opportunities.
Good luck.
We have non-certified help desk technicians making twice that. My god have things gotten that bad?
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Frankly Ive had a lot of interns work for me, or I have mentored them at some point, and Ill tell you the ones I liked the best are the ones that focused on the politics, and relationship side of the work. It is assumed you have the technical skill from school, self taught etc. to even get in the door; however, its understood that you don't understand the dynamics of working with a corporation, and the politics that come with it.(Took me years to get that) Bottom line.. use the time to learn what you CANT get at a school.
Am I lying when I tell you that im telling the truth? Or am I telling the truth when I say that Im lying?
I am a Computer Engineering student and for the past few years I have been interning at a Fortune 500.
Don't act like an Intern. If you act like an Intern, you will always be looked at as an Intern. Remember, the goal of your internship is to possibly land a job at that company, or at least to have them recommend you to a new employer. You don't want everyone always telling you to do their odd jobs and shit, so show that you are more valuable than that. For the first few months or so, find someone that likes to teach, and become their student. Learn as much about corporate life as you do about technology. Then, start taking on projects of your own. Show that given a assignment, you can complete it and compile a report to present to your boss. Once they see that you are independent, you will be a valuable asset even though your technical skills may still need to develop. And 8$/hr, wtf? I made more than that stocking cans at the local grocery store. Sorry to be such a dick but you are worth more than that. Are you working in China or India by any chance?
When I interned I wasn't even paid and that was in 2000.
What you need to ask the company is for a job description listing the tasks that they will make you perform. Once you have that you can decide whether or not to work for them.
Once you actually start working, if your daily tasks don't jive with the initial job description then you can see your supervisor about it.
~Syberz
Actually, thanks to the recession, you have thousands of young people paying search firms to get into internship programs that pay $0 an hour (for instance, this story).
As I wrote in to a magazine recently, the interesting thing about the recession is that it started for young people long before the housing crash in 2008. Wages were dropping like a rock for our parents too, but they could keep afloat with home equity loans until the entire system unravelled. 20-somethings, on the other hand, almost never have a home of their own and thus no home equity. The best the new BA grads could manage was to use grad school as a way to delay entering the real world, and a strikingly high percentage of them have done just that, running up massive student loans in the process.
I am officially gone from
Here in Venezuela you're lucky to get around 60% of minimun wage as an intern. Be enthusiast, and don't slack off. Thing's will get better.
Oblivion Awaits
Maybe a dough nut, or .... pick up my dry-cleaning... ;)
--E--
I did three IT internships at the turn of the century; one for a family member's business in the Midwest, and two in Silicon Valley - the first for a big red-logo'd company, and the second for a Big Blue one. Admittedly, the most valuable parts of the experiences were the knowledge learned, and the networking connections I was able to make (the third internship was a direct result of a contact made at the previous one, and was originally offered as a full-time position). That being said, I must echo the general surprise and commentary that your pay rate seems remarkably low considering your certification status and that you will be at a "major" laptop manufacturer. Is the staffing company taking a portion of your pay for their "service"?
In my experience, the advice I'm about to give is applicable not only to IT, but to most professions:
Firstly, know what you are worth and expect as much. That's not to say that you should be arrogant and make salary demands, but do you honestly feel that the work you'll be doing is worth $8 /hr? If not, perhaps you should look into the college credit option mentioned by Stuckey above, or look elsewhere for an opportunity that will pay you not only in experience, but in dollars (or your local currency). Your college/university should have a Career Office or somesuch that will have leads and contacts to help you find an internship without having to go through a staffing company.
Secondly, never stop learning. Read books. Build relationships with those who know more than you, and ask questions. Don't be afraid to spend some (but not all) of your free time furthering your knowledge about something you love.
But most of all, just make it count. Ensure that whatever you get paid, and whatever projects/tasks you work on will help you take the next steps on your career path. The whole point of an internship is that it should benefit YOU the most - not so that ABC Company can get cheap labor.
Day 1 you'll likely have to spend several hours scrubbing an executive's PDA to ensure that his wife doesn't find out he's banging two fo the gals in accounting and marketing. He'll then berate you on how slow and useless you are.
Day 2 you'll likely spend 4 hours in a vendor meeting listening to your boss and the sales rep talk about where they want to go golfing and setting up a "tech demo" in that city. He'll promptly buy whatever nonsense the sales rep is hawking with a wink and a "Happy Ending" to the deal.
Day 3 you'll sit in a meeting with senior management bitching about costs and how worthless the IT\MIS department is and how they need to outsource to cut costs.
Day 4 You'll either start drinking or smoking to cope with the sheer amount of bullshit.
Day 5 if your smart you quit, if you are an idiot you'll spend 10 years doing IT work then finally quit.
Day 6 You've joined the dumb-ass catagory and decided to stick with it. You'll be asked to set up a Squid proxy solution so a smarmy ass-hat of a manager can try and find reasons to fire the three people that actually work so her neice can get one of the three now vacant jobs. You'll spend hours pouring through log files after hours trying to find a single inapporpriate web site so they can fire some people.
Day 7 You'll notice there isn't a mention of a weekend. That is because you will be stuck in a telco-closet tone testing wires and labeling thousands of connections because the wiring contractors never labeled anything because it is one of the executives cousins business that got the job so at Christmas Mr. Exec get 1/2 the profits from the job in his stocking...
Only an idiot or someone into S&M gets into IT anymore. Go work at Burger King, the co-workers are nicer, the manager are at least honest when it comes to treating you like cattle, and there is better career advancement.
Otherwise get ready to be treated like a fucking pesant, at least that's the general feel here in MN.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
The only smart thing you said is that pay is not your primary motivator for an internship. I made very little as an intern, but if it were not for my wife and my son, I would gladly go back to the same pay for the work I was doing.
Though before you think about acting on that, you should know that it sounds like you're getting a really raw deal. At my position, I started at $10/hour in 2004 ($12 in 2005), and I got to do some really fun projects. The entire time I was there, I would work about 3 hours a day on reverse-engineering obscure file compression formats and write emulators (all work related). The rest of the day was spent playing video games. And I took paid lunches. It might sound like I was a bad employee, but they were glad to have me because I saved the company $200k/year in perpetuity. I probably got a raw deal on the pay, but I didn't mind because I was doing interesting projects.
Anyway, the point is, don't sacrifice a good normal job for a bad IT job. You don't even want an IT job if you're a CS major -- it's a permenant brand on your reputation. Look for a development job instead.
By me, that is.
All the interns under my command have been treated extraordinarily well. If you are a nerd/geek and are willing to pitch in and have an open ear to my/our advice you'll have the time of your life working on the crew. Our current intern is just across the hall right now sitting with our two server programmers and enjoys treatment as an equal by all. Up to the point that the team requested he join in on the Sprint Retrospective, which I, Scrum Master, actually didn't think necessary. It wasn't but he was along with us anyway. Aside from that I actually side with him on certain arguments - he's a FOSS/Linux guy like me, some of the others are MS-fanboyz. Nice to have a Padavan from the light side once in a while.
Since I usually handpick my interns - or, like now - am working with one that was handpicked by a fellow geek, they all are avantgarde with their skills. What they lack is experience but I can usually compensate for that on related issues in a few 1on1 sessions. All my interns either where on the light side of the force (FOSS/MS-Adobe sceptics) or have switched under my influence and all of them enjoy good positions and jobs now, also due to my and my colleagues advice on which technologies to aim for, how and what to study and what to watch out for when joining the fray in order to earn a salary.
IT is relatively hermetic and if you've earned your spurs by allready programming as a teenager, like the rest of us, your part of the family allready. We all can relate to your exposed position as the geek/nerd amoung your generations peers and we take pride into showing you that your skills and interests are honored. As far as I'm concerned anyway.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
You're getting a bachelor's in CS, so why in the world would you want to work IT? There is a huge difference between programming and IT work. IT guys administer servers, troubleshoot workstations, fix network issues, replace busted hardware, and so on. Programmers create the software that the company sells to make money. Think about that and what it implies for a second. You're not going to use your CS degree in an IT job. Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on IT; both IT guys and programmers are invaluable to a company... I just don't understand why you would waste a CS degree doing what amounts to grunt work for nothing. Given that you've invested the time, money, and mental effort to get a CS degree, I think you'll find something with the words "software", "programmer", "coder", and/or "architect" in the job title/description to be much more rewarding for you financially, professionally, and creatively.
Get used to not being addressed with that kind of defference. Get used to being taken advantadge of. The unfortunate reality is not very many shops (relative to the number out there) put best practice into effect because it is not cost effective to change and the employees or administration or some combination thereof are unwilling to change. Also, be prepared to get used to administration to not placing a high value on your skills, hence eight dollars per hour. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of excellent places out there. If you find the experience and knowledge gained is not worth it DO NOT waste your time. Take the advice of the commenters and look for a better internship.
lol when I started there were no interns. If you knew how to load a driver with config.sys and connect DOS/Win 3.11 to a network, you had a full time job. If you didn't you got someone to show you how. That being said, I was earning 32k at my first "IT" job and my salary went up drastically every year and I didn't know squat. However, I knew more than most others they could find. My previous job before my IT job, as a OS/2-powered controls tech, paid 24k, which is ~$12 an hour and I walked in knowing Commodore 64. That was in 1993 and my very first "real" job. I was 21. It was all OJT. The demand for IT people hasn't gone down since then. Apply a supply and demand curve, as well as inflation to decide if that internship pays enough. I'm also in the mid-atlantic region (Balt/Washington) which pays better than most of the country so factor that in.
If you don't have bills, and parents are helping you, and you can't find anything else, take the job. It's better than working at Best Buy or fast food, though you should be able to do a lot better as a computer science student, depending on market conditions in your area. If it's depressed and the job landscape looks like the Sahara desert, take what you can get.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Look I'm going to be frank here...lots of places put CS people on helpdesk, or on tickets - which is just the programmers helpdesk ;-).
If you want to impress me, come up with an idea that will improve something in a noticeable way. i.e. A script that avoids one of the more time consuming problems we have. Write a proof of concept on your own time. Then show it to me. On my team this would easily earn you a written recommendation and I would certainly give preference to you on subsequent work-terms. If I had an entry-level position - you'd also be a first round candidate. Even if your boss *does* none of those things - at least you have something with tangible results that you've done for a IT firm which you can put on your resume.
Your making 8$ and hour, but I wouldn't be surprised if the staffing company was charging 20$ for you.
Like anything, the money is made by the middle man - avoid them at all costs.. (or become one)
IT is filled with people who have massive egos and issues, and interns can be on the receiving end of any number of things. I used to head up the intern program at an ISP and while the intern positions were not paid, they were fairly short and I made damn sure that the interns actually learned something, had some fun, and I really took the time to fill out all of their paperwork and help them craft a real resume instead of the carbon copy the school had them make.
The best thing you could do is do your internship for a large company, probably like the one you mention. The pay is ancillary and should not even enter into the equation. $0, $8, $12, etc. the pay will be low because you bring very little to the table. There are thousands of actual qualified people out of work right now who would happily work for $8/hr. *and* have some skill and experience. Don't kiss ass, don't be anything but yourself and make an effort to learn everything you can and do some research and further learning as you go on your own outside of the internship to show you have initiative and a willingness to succeed. I'd much rather see that over a brown-noser which is easy to spot and would not become a hire for me.
I'm sadly an exception, though, and not filled with ego and fear as many are driven by. They are interested in keeping their job and doing the bare minimum to get by and have to carefully watch out and cut off any threats. When you have a solid mastery of your discipline you don't have to be on the defensive, again, sadly there's not a lot of that in IT. Just like yourself, a lot of people came because of dollar signs in their eyes or a perception of an "easy" non-laborious job. If that is the motivation you will just become one of the scared, defensive, ego-driven masses.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
...you won't be gaining any valuable insights. Keep your higher-paying day job, keep your grades up, and don't sell yourself out to the lowest bidder. In this economy, internships are no longer a guarantee of continued employment after graduation.
I started my comp sci degree in the fall of 2005. I took almost no computer classes for the first two semesters. With the experience of one java class I got on as an intern (as many hours as I could work (around 30)) for $15/hr doing software testing and using java to write automated test cases. Even the people with that weren't comp sci majors were 'manual testers' and made $13/hr. This was the best move I could have ever made. I still work there now, December 11th will be my three year anniversary. Obviously, I am no longer in the same position (I'm now a software developer), but the experience I gain there was worth working for free, but the pay was good too!
tl;dr you can have your cake and eat it too. Get a good paying internship at the place you want to end up working in.
p.s. maybe i was just lucky and you should take what you can get... but that's what a anon coward say!
1. Follow the chain of command- Especially in a smaller office, people are going to ask you tons of questions about Why you are doing various things, or Why this or that crashed. Unless it is basic, get use to referring them to your supervisor for the answer. In my office (we are a small IT department) that means the director. Sometimes people don't need to know why your exchange server went down, or why you are now mandating that all files be saved to a different location. It's not your job as an intern to be the PR man of the department.
2. Learn to smile - I do a lot of tech support. When you are helping someone out at their workstation, be friendly and informative about what's going on. People remember that. It comes in handy down the line, they are less likely to take their frustrations out on you. It will help your attitude too.
3. Be willing to try new things- the whole point of an internship is to learn. Be honest if you aren't sure what to do when assigned a task, but then learn how to do it and tackle the job you were assigned. This is what is expected of an intern.
4. Own up to your mistakes- responsibility is important. People will know if you screwed up- don't make it worse by trying to blame other people.
5. Avoid office politics- trying to keep up in a back and forth of backstabbing is exhausting.
6. Document everything- Every department is going to have its protocols for documentation. Follow them.
7. Keep a list of accomplishments- small and large. I try and email my boss my weekly or bi-weekly accomplishments. If you end up with a micro-manager boss, this will help keep him off your back. It also keeps you fresh in their mind and they know you are getting things done. You can also use these accomplishments later when building your resume if you are looking to move on.
8. Ask lots of questions - you can learn a lot of cool stuff, both inside and outside of your department. The more knowledgeable you are, the more employable you are. Good Luck!
My suggestions, other than seek another industry, is to read, read, read, shoulder surf your leads and build your own test box(es) to play with.
I've been in IT nearly 26 years. I started as "the computer guy" at an optometry in my home town. It consisted of one PC and three dumb terminals running off that. I then sold electronics at Sears while I was in college (not for IT degree) and played with computers on the side. I then worked at a computer rental shop where we simply loaded OSes and wiped computers as they came and went. Finally I landed a desktop support job, tailed/helped the server guys in my spare time and then had enough experience to become a server administrator. Now I've specialized in Windows and VMware. I like where I work, but I hate the lack of satisfaction of my job. I came into IT for the technical work, the challenge of figuring out problems and to not deal with people. Now my job is 90% administrative - planning changes, talking with 12 different teams/managers to get approvals, documentation so managers understand what is happening - about 2 weeks' of clerical work, all so I can do 1hour of actual work late at night or on the weekend as I miss time with my family.
Point is you are starting down a long road. If you are willing to take on extra work constantly, continually read current and new technology, constantly study and test for certifications, you might be in a comfortable position in 5-7 years.
If you have any family or social life, add 5 years to this as IT is designed for single people with no lives. It helps if you can pack light and depart for travel quickly. It also helps if you can survive on 2 hours of sleep a day.
If I had it to do all over again, I'd go into carpentry, cooking or health care. Anything but IT.
Here are all my notes and since you just graduated write all these procedures that I have been avoiding like the plague to write for the past 5 years.
You can expect the following... 1.) To begin to gain knowledge that will help you remain jaded and complacent throughout your miserable career in this terrible, terrible profession. Maybe if you are lucky you will even start to get a taste of the disrespect upper management (and finance) has for all IT workers. 2.) To find out why you should avoid staffing agencies. The job will likely be flipping burgers in the cafeteria at the company because the staffing agency is lying to you. I was incredulous too...how can you have your profession be staffing and yet actually, seriously, literally trick people in to accepting jobs which they have no interest in and may not even be qualified for? It's surprising, but true. 3.) It's lucky that the job will be in the cafeteria, because it sounds like that's about what they're going to be paying you for. $8 at a paid internship? Sounds like you're getting ready to learn about the reaming you'll take on salary in this industry...although even I did better than $8/hr and that was...jesus...10 years or more ago now? IT is an absolutely miserable, horrible, terrible profession and I really urge anyone considering it as a career to strongly reevaluate their direction. I would say that a good 90% of IT workers are contributing, indirectly or directly, to making the world a much worse place for them and their progeny. This industry is a shithole of mismanagement and bullshit and bad technology and worthless wrongheaded regulations. I wish I could go back to the moment in college, when i was leaving CS and considering either IT or Photography, and tell myself to choose photography and avoid this life of drugery that I have accepted. Sure, I'd be broke as a photographer (even though I am really good), but there's certainly no way I could be any more miserable.
The wage $8/hr. sounds acceptable if you're in Asia or Bentonville. So my starting assumption is that you're geographically challenged and you love solving problems with computers. The next assumption is that your other job doesn't pay twice as much. So, if this internship is the only experience you can find, it's a good thing. But be aware that office politics will be similar to those of a disfunctional band of mean silver-back gorillas. Keep your personality, problems, and passions to yourself. In the low-end environment you're going into, you'll run into people who hate their job, since it's barely related to IT. Take the job, and try to get out of there. Afterthought: Have you scoured the institution you're in for jobs? When I was in a similar situation (back when wooly mammoths roamed the earth), the clinical psych department needed someone to design and build human physiological data acquistion systems. Although the pay was abysmal, it was more interesting than any of the corporate internships, and there was a surplus of intelligent interesting women who were also at the bottom of the primate hierarchy.
Just the washing instructions on life's rich tapestry
Black, Double Cupped
Back when I was in university, the engineering department used to offer their students(and some of the CS students as well) the ability to take a semester at 1 credit and still maintain full time status(so you didn't lose health insurance or start having to pay back student loans). I think they were called co-ops or something like that. Essentially you'd work a summer and one semester for a company. That meant you weren't buggering off by the time you actually learned how to do the job and so you got paid fairly reasonably and actually learned something. They were actually a graduation requirement for the engineering students. I didn't do any personally, but I know a lot of people who did and found a lot of value in it.
There are some fairly decent internships, but you've got to be fairly careful. Companies generally won't get any real value out of an intern(which is why interns in most disciplines work for free), and so only a company which is really serious about investing in students will give you anything worthwhile to do(since it'll cost them money and productivity).
Add to that the fact that A+, Network+ and CompTIA are basically meaningless certs that a monkey could pass(no offfense), and you've probably just landed yourself an underpaid stint on the help desk. Maybe you've been lucky, but an internship will only help your future if you do something interesting and real with it, or if you can make some contacts for post graduation. If it's not going to do either of those things, enjoy your summer or work at a job which will actually pay you.
They employ toddlers there?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Your main tasks will be:
Seriously dude, if you're going to be making $8/hour, go work for a grocery store or something. At least there you'll get experience with the public and learn some communication and people skills (which a lot of IT people lack).
Abuse?
Long hours doing the impossible for the unappreciative?
A view of corporate life from the bottom?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
...in your next resume update. Just mark it 'internship' and let them ask. Otherwise the hiring manager will get the idea they can start you at $16 instead of the customary $25 or so, for example. They will likely get disappointed if you pass at it because it should be a good wage, from that point of view. It can really be a mess.
And if you're wondering why this would be so, just remember that IT is still a young field. There are many with talent that deserve and get good pay, and there are many that bluffed their way in and are overpaid. Hiring managers have few tools to tell them apart until after the hiring process is complete. They tend to look at what your last boss paid as a measure of your worth and therefore ability. Even in corps with rigid pay structures, they will use the information to determine you aren't qualified.
It depends. Will you be working for Letterman?
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
"I'm in college and working towards my Bachelors in Computer Science. Last year I passed both my CompTIA A+ and Network+ certifications and now have been offered (via a staffing company) a full-time Internship at a wireless lab of a major laptop manufacturer. [...] This field is all new to me and I don't personally know anyone who has worked in it before who will give me their honest opinions on it. Although I know circumstances differ greatly, in general, what can I expect as an IT Intern? What have been your experiences?"
Here is some simple advice I would give:
At $8/hour, you aren't going to be doing anything really cool or interesting. This isn't really a bad thing, but just set your expectations appropriately. You said your job will be "at a wireless lab of a major laptop manufacturer" but at $8 I don't think you'll be doing anything very cool or specifically related to wireless or lab work. Don't walk in and expect to work on the next Big Thing for the company. Instead, you'll probably be fixing dead PCs, helping staff with their wifi access, fetching equipment, that sort of thing.
Aside from that, remember the generational differences as you meet the people you'll work with. The people who will be your immediate bosses will likely be in their late 30's and early 40's. Despite appearances, we're actually kind of conservative - speaking from a business perspective. Be careful about going to your boss to propose some dramatic change, thinking that "if it works for me, it will work for you." Likely your 30's/40's boss will say no.
As someone who deals with new co-ops (like interns) every quarter, the advice I can give you is to always ask if you want more work, and to listen to the office chit chat about work. A few smart co-ops have spent time listening to us talk about a problem we were having but didn't have time to tackle. They went off and researched and came back with ideas and suggestions which we ultimately gave to them to implement. It got them noticed, and ultimately a job (maybe not just for that, but you know what I mean). Whatever you do, don't sit there quietly and intimidated/too afraid to ask questions. Those people never* get job offers.
$8/hr probably means you'll be doing a lot of grunt work ... that's the boring stuff you do so that you get to sit in meetings with the senior staff as they talk about new initiatives, plan out new projects, talk about architecture, etc ... the stuff that is actually useful. It's there that you can start putting up your hand and saying "oh, hey, I can take care of that for you..."
I know around here that co-ops aren't allowed in production, which limits their access to the some of the coolest stuff. however, they do get to spend a lot of time working in labs, testing things (new tech) that some of the more senior people would love to have the time to do. Take your time, be thorough, and take calculated risks.
Remember that pretty much anyone in a senior position has gone through the shit work to get to where they are, and they will take some pleasure in giving you some too. It's hard when you know you want to do cool stuff, but in a few years you'll be able to look back and be thankful for the time you spent doing the shit work, because ultimately the shit work is the foundation of most companies.
Enjoy!
* very rarely
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
Have you been outsourced? In 1982, during my coop (same as an intern) with Xerox, I was being paid 10 an hour.. But in the meantime, find the fine balance between your "new" creativity in your field, and listening to the old hats who have been around and have a good understanding of the business. It's easy to be a hot shot and mouth off about how we should do things, but no one wants that attitude. On the other hand, they will look for some "stepping out" that shows you are using your brain and trying to do a good job.. Don't be afraid of asking advice of your boss, even HR if you need too when dealing with situations or if you are simply curious about how you are doing.. feedback is a positive thing and allows you to alter your performance (or decide everyone else is nuts :)
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Its a pretty miserably, and the idea of an intern is a quaint pastime that's only remaining use is for suckers.
A) The type of IT work you have studied for sucks. Be sure you love it. No respect, grunt work, and it never gets better.
B) Since they are suckering you into being an intern, your income will suck. Forget intern, find a 'Jr' position and at least make some money. 8 buck is basically min. wage. Did you study to make min. wage? Your intern wage will basically impact how much you will get when you gt out of interning. the less you make whe you first enter the industry will effectively dictate your salary for years.
C) Don't buy into the the 'climb the ladder' mentality. get as much money you can get and talk your way into the highest position you can get. If you can find someplace willing to give you a mid title in exchange for being the cheapest Mid level they have is a good deal long term. after 2 year you will leave and go someplace else to be the highest paid mid at the new company. Possible a low paid Sr.
D) The most important thing you can know is this: Well dressed and being able to make contacts will get you farther then anything else. Many people here will rail against this, but it's the truth.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'll start off by echoing everyone else: $8/hr is very low for an IT intern at such a place. I'm currently in an internship at a non-profit and getting $10.
Anyways, what you should be doing is whatever they ask you to, and quickly. But in your spare time, finding ways to save the company money is always very helpful. Be sure to talk to people all the time. Talk with your main bosses once a month atleast, even if its just BSing....
Let's face it, even if you were making double or triple that for the duration of your internship (which is what, 3, 6 months, at most?), it's probably not going to make a really big financial impact on your life either way in the long run. However, make sure that the experience you're getting there is making up for the shitty pay, otherwise you're really getting the short end of the stick. Getting some good experience at a high profile company will be good for you and your resume, even if the pay is not so great. When I was in college, I started doing IT work for a small machine shop in Rockland County, NY - those guys started paying me $14/hr, that was 8 years ago. The "professional" that I replaced was an imbecile and had the company accountant physically unplugging the hub and plugging her machine directly to broadband router in order to get Quickbooks updates. He also didn't have any of the machines patched or up to date with virus definitions, and all the machines there were on the verge of hardware failure they were so old. Those guys relied on me a lot, because they were too small to hire anyone else to rely on, so my experience there was great and I learned a bunch of things while bringing their shop up to modern standards. All industries are different, but IT interns have in my experience, at least in the NJ/NY area, made decent money. A friend of mine made $8/hr working for Six Flags when we were in high school (12 years ago). If you have the opportunity to, shop around and see what other offers are out there. You're goal as an intern should be to absorb knowledge/expertise like a sponge, don't worry too much about how much you're making per hour. Still, $8/hr seems really really strange.
IT is the worst field to work in. No one understands what you do or how much work it takes. Anything that goes wrong with anything electronic is now your fault and needs to be fixed yesterday. Enjoy your AIDS.
IMO Its better for your career (in the long run) and sanity to work in some hypothetical burger joint on $6/hr for a GOOD boss than somewhere on $60,000 for an asshole...
I'm not sure if you are still living in your parent's basement, or have had the permanent backing of the Bank of Mom and Dad to fund your whimsical career path, but that's horrible advice.
The first TWO questions in career building: what was your last job description/title? How much were you paid?
You wouldn't even get past HR's buzzword-compliance monitor with your last job being retail wage slave.
Most employers hire on the 'trading up' principal. That is, they seek employees from larger companies to do the same job they did at the larger company. There are exceptions, but this is the general rule.
A great boss at the burger shack won't get you a l33t IT job.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
In this harsh economy, getting a CS degree and IT certifications
without having an internship or job already lined up is foolish.
It is not practical to invest in learning a set of skills ahead of time.
Find an opening, get a job and try to get the employer to pay for your education / certifications / training.
If they really need a skill set, they will pay for you to learn it.
Try not to think of your career as a step-by-step process.
i.e.
Step one: Invest in training
Step two: Find an internship
Step three: Turn internship into full-time job
There is too much that can go wrong in step-by-step thinking.
If you don't find an internship, or your internship does not turn
into a full time job, what then?
Instead, start with the goal in mind:
Get a job that pays well, is interesting and where you'll learn
things that you can use to get an even better, more interesting job
or that you can use to open a business.
If you take $8/hr, you are not valuing your time.
Think about your investment:
You've completed some of your course load for a Batchelor's in CS.
You've gotten some certifications.
You've invested time and money in training yourself.
Don't sell yourself short.
Try to find a better paid internship or a job.
... on or around Patch Tuesdays.
Have gnu, will travel.
If the company falls in line with your career goals go for it. Otherwise, look around at other intern options. I am bullish on the economy so I feel $8 is low, but I live in Norther California. The wages are skewed significantly. Cheers.
The $8/hr intern position is BS, it sounds like a semi-skilled desktop support role.
Ditch both the A+ and Network+ items from your resume. You really don't want to be giving people the impression that you're a desktop support guy, as opposed to a software engineer guy.
A Java or Microsoft Developer certs will be a lot more useful.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Your expectations of what you will get out of your intern will be directly proportional to what you receive. If you go in with the expectation you will be fetching coffee, others will see that and will ask you to fetch coffee. If you expect to be given projects, and show that you are eager and able to perform them, they will give you projects. My college required 3 co-ops for my degree. My first was with a small start up working with really interesting technology (Virtual Reality) that essentially went bankrupt before the end of the co-op. The second was at a fortune 500 company and I was able to parlay that into the third co-op in the IT department of the same company. I was able to parlay that co-op into a part time internship when classes resumed, and that in turn to a full time job while I was in school. IT is in many ways unlike most jobs as your are assigned tasks based on your aptitude and eagerness rather than your seniority or title. Go in with the attitude that you are a valuable asset, and it is only a matter of time before you prove that to everyone. If you do that the Intern will be the most important thing you have done in your educational process.
I found in my internships (all 4 or 5 of them) that it varied quite wildly. In some cases I was way down on the chain; in others I was the software developer for everything and determined how much was billed to customers. It all depends on the organization and what they need. For instance, in one I replaced a senior developer - they needed someone, I fit close enough and was cheap enough; but they were also viewing it as a road to hiring me at a lot higher pay (my pay would have more than tripled) after graduation. In others, I was just another body to do the work that everyone did. In all cases, put forth your best effort with all your integrity, ethics, and morals.
But, as others have said, 8 USD/hour is not enough. Learn to push for what you can get. I was typically able to get 15 USD/hour; though I had a few I took where I knew the organization had a policy of minimum wage for all interns (they didn't want to bias on department over another in their internship program). Determine what you need to get (e.g. how much do need to live on, pay for school, etc), do the math (add 33-40% for taxes just to be safe), and divide it out by hour (figure a 40 hour work week and zero overtime).
Why pay attention to the taxes? It'll greatly determine you take-home pay. I had a couple positions where I had almost nothing taken out, and others where I had a couple hundred dollars taken out each pay check. Tax withholdings are based on your pay-check when it is issued, not the cumulative pay. You may get it back in April/May; but you might not (depends how much you earn over the year); and even if you do - it may be later than you need it.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I think you are getting first hand experience with being mistreated by a placement agency. An invaluable asset in terms of that knowledge. Going forward many companies have direct ads for interns or visit major campuses. I normally dislike FOAF anecdotes, but one friend of mine was at a small school near a major PAC 10 school. He learned when a placement "fair" for interns was going to take place with several companies he fancied at the larger school. He showed up with the CV and other materials in hand, a few recommendations from his profs and landed a nice internship. Clever counts. The staffing firm, if they are the ones paying you, may be taking 10 or more dollars US per hour off the top to cover their expenses and commissions. Their direct costs have not been reduced a whole lot by this downturn. So their overhead minimums are likely not too far away from what they were before. And the bigger the staffing firm, the bigger that overhead is. Early in my consulting career I had coworkers at $25 an hour where the job-shop made $25 on top of that so the employer paid $50. And in theory no one was supposed to talk about the amount they were paid as a contractual obligation. If you're not paid by the staffing company they took a healthy finders fee. While this is all fine for a high paid position as it is an expected expense, and the percentages drop on the hourly side (depending on the job-shop) and on the perm placement side it is overhead the company pays to get good talent they expect to have for a long time, not just the summer quarter. For internships you might consider directly contacting the HR departments (showing that initiative and personal interest in what that company does) and seeing about getting a better position as an intern and better pay.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Basically if you want to enjoy being an IT worker (especially as an intern or a new employee, for a few 3-5 years), leave your dreams of high pay and recognition for your efforts behind. Nobody needs IT when things work, and the only reason things break is because IT was touching them. You-know-what always flows downhill, so just do your best at ignoring it and just enjoy doing what you like doing best. I suggest finding time to work on some proccess or system improvement in your idle time (implement a Nagios monitoring system or a splunk syslog server) - to have something work related and personally rewarding to turn to in times when "the web server is down" situation gets you down again.
Bow before me, for I am root.
It's amazing how much better you feel once you've given up hope.
--You're BOTH right. It's a floor wax AND a desert topping!
And very often you get what you pay for. But here's my two cents worth anyway.
Two things. The first is always be friendly. I don't know what you will be doing in your internship, but IT usually only gets called when something is not working. That means you're dealing with people who can't get their work done (and consequently are usually high stress). If you are a friendly person who has a personality that can lower bp by a few points with a smile and a joke, you'll make those people (and your encounters with them) happier. This also gives you some credit when things get rough - if you are normally a fairly easy going guy but today the bosses laptop crapped out and the Exchange server is on the fritz, when you tell them to (please) sit and be patient because their inability to watch youtube videos is low on the priority list, they'll usually let it slide.
The second is to remember your work has value. This is hard, because very often in IT you will be called in to work long hours or late hours or both. But sometimes you've got to say "no". I'm not suggesting you ignore a crisis to play Xbox but if there's something non-critical hurting and you have something important (and where you draw theses lines is up to you to gauge) be willing to say "it'll wait". The worst thing you can do is always be there when something goes wrong. It gets people to assume you have no life other than your job, and then they'll expect you to be there the one time you can't make it. Your work, and your time, has value. I'm not saying you ask for overtime, I'm saying you let them know every now and again.
Cheers!
Unfortunately, with work experience becoming an essential part of your portfolio for entry level positions, competition for internships is driving down pay. There are places in the UK that only offer unpaid internships via agencies that have to be paid fees to take your application.
[FUCK BETA]
Since you opened with a list of worthless certifications... You can expect a lot of things you aren't prepared for.
Computer science degrees look a lot better in IT applications than Information Systems degrees. At least there is somewhat of a standard for Computer Science... I've seen Information Systems classes that teach you Microsoft Word.
Camping on quad since 1996.
$8/hour is grunt work. Even telephone help desks start at $13 and there isn't that much difference between the U.S. and Canada.
I suspect you won't learn much. I would certainly go and look very carefully at both the working conditions and at the job requirements before starting in.
Intern positions here in technical fields get 2-3 times minimum wage. Engineering interns make enough during the semester to pay for their next two semesters education.
My advice: Keep looking.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.