The Top Paying Tech Companies For Interns

theodp writes "For those students for whom it's all about the Benjamins, BusinessInsider's Alyson Shontell has compiled a nice list of 20 Tech Companies That Pay Interns Boatloads Of Money. 'If you intern for a high-profile tech company,' notes Shontell, 'you can make more money than the average US citizen. Facebook, for example, pays its average intern $6,056 per month. That ends up being a base salary of about $72,000 per year.' Sure beats making a 'measly' $5,808 per month at LinkedIn, where you might find yourself having to participate in embarrassing sing-a-longs and Flash Mobs!"

Comments

20 page clickbait crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the fluff, all on one page:

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-20-richest-interns-in-tech-2013-1?op=1

Theodp Is A Terrible Submitter

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't the editors do some actual editing of these submissions? The bit at the end is completely useless, adds nothing of value and only clutters and confuses the main point of the story.

I notice theodp's submittals always include many random asides, extraneous links, and otherwise useless info. Someone needs to edit this guy.

This is how it should be

[Anonymous Coward]

You can make more money than the average US citizen

Which makes sense. These interns are top students from top schools, generally more qualified than the average US citizen. Internships are a recruiting strategy, and undergraduate internships are essentially 3 month interviews.

Re:This is how it should be

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for a year as an intern for a major US tech company. Around half of the other interns were foreign nationals burning down their time in hopes of getting an H1-B. We all worked 40 hour weeks and were generally given the same work demands as the full-time salaried employees.

I'm sure some companies do use these programs to attract top talent, but don't think for a minute that some don't also use them to play games with the labor market.

Re:This is how it should be

[kangsterizer]

I've met many interns in IT companies and to be honest, many of them are _better_ than senior employees.
Younger, talented, they work non-stop (they work at night, during the day, etc. Not saying it's a good idea, but they almost all do that. Good luck beating it with a regular schedule and kids).
So yeah, they get shit done, in general, they get shit done very well too.

Thus, I'm not exactly surprised either that they get a good salary, close to what regular IT people get (or egal, sometimes)

Re:This is how it should be

[CodeBuster]

Except that the code they write is often of poor quality or doesn't follow company guidelines or isn't the best approach to the problem at hand. Some of this is to be expected, they're interns after all and many of them have little or no real project experience. However, to say that the average intern is better than your senior employees strains credulity. Just because somebody works "all of the time" to "get things done" doesn't mean that the work is of good quality. It's more likely that these interns produce work that's of the same quality that one might expect of an apprentice still learning the skills and tools of the trade. I remember getting paid about half that much when I was an intern, but that was over a decade ago now (makes one wonder about the value of a dollar anymore).

Re:This is how it should be

[Anonymous Coward]

What evidence you have to support that? Considering their strict recruiting process, I'm pretty sure they'd be able to check that.

Re:This is how it should be

[crazyjj]

Wait, I thought everyone was supposed to work for free on some hippie FOSS project.

[ducks]

Re:This is how it should be

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked with an intern once. Very bright guy with some fairly impressive qualifications.

He wasn't overly fond of the code he was given to work on. He kept on subtley pushing for re-design of the code. He asked why we didn't use design patterns and many C++ features that were avaiable to us instead of sticking to plain old C. I told him that we were working with a very resource limited setting.

He came back with some analysis to show how much resources we had left and he said that he could get his component working with the new required updates, make the code more readable and maintainable within the sprint. Since he was an intern, and he wasn't too heavily loaded so I told him to go for it.

He got it all done and the code was very well written. He had defintely spent a great deal of effort on it. However, as the project moved on, it became more evident that what he wrote became a resource hog. The particular component he was assigned was essentially a fancy/specialized PRNG. At one point, his component ran out of the allotted MIPS before being able to even complete half of the task. At another point, we ran out of memory when we had to add in a huge AES table. The intern's code was one of the first areas for memory reduction. In the end, his code wasn't a whole lot maintainable or readable that what was there before.

He finally agreed that perhaps running C++ on a DSP wasn't the best idea. He never said it out loud, but I noticed because he took the code that I wrote based on the original code and dropped that into the component.

So after 3 months, what we took away from the intern's initial code re-write was something that took me about a day to put in (granted because I knew the specs I was working with very well) and renaming and tidying up of some variable and function names.

Again, very bright guy, and probably knew the in-and-outs of C++ as well as I did. However, the lack of experience with the system he was working with and the refusal to take the advice of more experienced people (not always a bad thing!) made him have to go back and re-do already done work. And again, since he was an intern, he had that luxury.

So, all I have to say is:

You pay your senior engineers not for their ability to code, but for their knowledge and experience of systems that your company works with.

Re:This is how it should be

[darkwing_bmf]

In other words, you pay them not for what they do, but for the stupid stuff they could do but don't.

Re:This is how it should be

[Machtyn]

How is that any different from a new hire or, in some cases, an entrenched employee? Bad code happens and it can happen from anybody. The Daily WTF reminds of this.

Re:This is how it should be

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, most of these companies are in the Bay area, and the locations have a very high cost of living. Most locations in the West and South Bay area have a cost of living that is approximately double the national average. Comparing these numbers to "the average US Citizen" isn't comparing apples to apples. You'd have to compare it more with other places like New York city salaries, or use some math for approximate adjustments. Microsoft, Adobe, and Amazon probably have the best (real) wages out of those companies, because the Seattle area has a significantly lower cost of living but still high numbers for wages.

Re:This is how it should be

[CodeBuster]

What evidence you have to support that?

Nothing scientific, just my own personal experience.

Considering their strict recruiting process, I'm pretty sure they'd be able to check that.

This isn't usually immediately ascertainable. In fact, it often requires months of work and code reviews, hence the industry standard probationary period, to separate those who are learning but improving from those who just aren't going to work out. That's partly why companies will pay to retain good software developers because finding and recruiting them, to say nothing of replacing them, is both difficult and expensive.

Re:This is how it should be

[CodeBuster]

How is that any different from a new hire or, in some cases, an entrenched employee?

Internships are by definition temporary or at least seasonal so most interns are by definition new hires, albeit with nearly zero experience, hence the intern designation. The entrenched employee or bad new hire do occur, but general lack of experience makes poor code more likely amongst interns. That being said, it's also more tolerable in most cases because interns are expected to still be learning the basics and aren't usually given mission critical assignments in any case.

Bad code happens and it can happen from anybody.

We all have our bad days, that's for sure. However, the older and wiser developers amongst us recognize when we need to put something down for a while and come back to it later or at least how to stub out critical components for a better future implementation. Despite what the Silicon Valley hack-a-thon culture would have you believe, your best code is almost certainly not written after a 12 hour non-stop binge combined with too much caffeine, junk food snacks and little or no sleep.

Of course Tech degrees don't have required interns

[Anonymous Coward]

Many degrees (I know education) have required Internships. If you don't intern - you don't get a degree. Means that there is strong demand to get an internship, and no demand to provide one from the various institutions that use people with education degrees. Of course these become unpaid internships.

Companies need productive work out of interns - so they pay them to get the work done. I do not see how many of the random unpaid internships even work. I go in to work a full week unpaid - then have to pick up a second job that pays to pay rent, food and transportation. This seems like criminal exploitation to me

Re:Of course Tech degrees don't have required inte

[Anonymous Coward]

Exploitation is what made this country great! For some. Not for you or anyone you know, though.

It seems /.'d, so here's the text

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted here because it's sooo sloooow to load. Where's the Coral Cache when you need it?

Again, apologies for the blatant copyright violation and thanking my lucky stars the publisher isn't Co$. For the duration of the slow-load any reasonable person would call this reposting "fair use." The /. overlords are welcome to delete this when it is no longer needed, if they wish to do so. I wish Slashdot's overlords would come to some kind of caching agreement with newly-posted stories so the publishers can keep their ad revenue without being beaten into submission by traffic loads.

Anyhow, here we go....

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-20-richest-interns-in-tech-2013-1?op=1

00--snip--00

20 Tech Companies That Pay Interns Boatloads Of Money
Alyson Shontell
Feb. 2, 2013, 8:15 AM

If you intern for a high-profile tech company, you can make more money than the average US citizen.

Facebook, for example, pays its average intern $6,056 per month. That ends up being a base salary of about $72,000 per year.

But there's another tech company that pays its interns even more than Facebook.

Glassdoor, a career and company rating site, helped us compile a list of tech companies that pay their interns the most. Its salary data is based on anonymous salary reports voluntarily shared by current and recent employees, including interns.

The following list combines monthly average pay with hourly monthly pay to take into account a larger data sample among tech interns. Companies were only included if they had 20 or more salary reports within the past two years.

Here's who pays its lowest level people thousands of dollars every month.

20. Cisco Systems pays its interns an average of $3,930 per month

Annually, that would be: $47,160

"Great company, very knowledgeable peers from top universities, work is good, good compensation and you learn a lot. Flexibility and work/life balance is unmatched. Free movie tickets, tickets to amusement park, free frequent lunches, great gym, free train pass, lot of intern events with free food, pays for your tuition, San Jose a good place to live. College grads like me these days wants to work for more recent brands like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, twitter but companies like CISCO and others who have been there from decades are great places to start your career." -- Former Cisco Systems college intern (San Jose, CA)

19. IBM pays its interns an average of $3,942 per month

Annually, that would be: $47,304

"Tech giant with massive resources and really talented people. You work on products that are touched by millions in mission critical areas. For such a big company, it feels very nimble. You can easily reach any employee worldwide through Same time. It feels like a tight-knit environment, even thought you are 1 or hundreds of thousands. Every manager I have dealt with is awesome. Uber professionalism throughout." -- IBM software engineer intern (Austin, TX)

18. EMC pays its interns an average of $4,004 per month

Annually, that would be: $48,048

"EMC is a great company with great employees. Seniors are willing to help and easy about timelines. Its was a awesome experience as a starter and provided me a good learning experience. With that said, it has good salaries for the intern." -- EMC software engineer intern (Hopkinton, MA)

17. Hewlett-Packard pays its interns an average of $4,008 per month

Annually, that would be: $48,096

"Great place to start working, a lot of opportunities, resources in other departments, great pay for an internship, great company to start a career with." -- HP intern (San Diego, CA)

16. Dell pays its interns an average of $4,024 per month

Annually, that would be: $48,288

"Excellent community, with an open atmosphere. The company is reshaping itself, there is a lot of room for upward movement, and it is clear that Dell will

Re:It seems /.'d, so here's the text

[shutdown -p now]

Interns at large tech companies get paid well; news at 11.

I'm somewhat surprised that VMWare made the top, and that Adobe pays more than Google and Amazon, but aside from that, it's all kinda duh.

Re:It seems /.'d, so here's the text

[AuMatar]

I'm not. Google and Amazon are bigger industry names, look better on a resume. And are more likely places a young person would target, so they can pay less and still get quality choices.

Re:It seems /.'d, so here's the text

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure how I should feel about all this.

I started out earning $60k in the tech industry. A dozen years later, I work for the same company and my salary is $90k. With fifteen years experience, I'm only making about ten grand more than interns? And I know most of the other people doing my job make about the same I do (I work at one of the few biggest software companies on the planet) Last year, I earned over $150k -- but that included various bonuses and is not my actual base salary.

At this rate, I guess, twenty-something interns are soon going to be earning more than people in their 30s with two decades of professional experience. Meh.

Re:It seems /.'d, so here's the text

[MisterSquid]

I'm not sure how I should feel about all this.

I started out earning $60k in the tech industry. A dozen years later, I work for the same company and my salary is $90k. With fifteen years experience, I'm only making about ten grand more than interns? And I know most of the other people doing my job make about the same I do (I work at one of the few biggest software companies on the planet) Last year, I earned over $150k -- but that included various bonuses and is not my actual base salary.

At this rate, I guess, twenty-something interns are soon going to be earning more than people in their 30s with two decades of professional experience. Meh.

I wonder if these salaries are mostly for the Bay Area. Where, for example, does IBM hire interns? A few of the reports either mention Bay Area cities or mention companies based here.

Also, I'm wondering where you live. I have about two year's experience as a web developer, currently work for an ecommerce company (not tech), and my base salary is above yours.

Maybe it's true people are better compensated here in the Bay Area. I'll also add that the higher cost of living doesn't really show up for me. Since I left Ohio, I'm just plain much better compensated and there is a *shortage* of developers out here.

If you're not in the Bay Area (or a tech hub) you might consider coming out because, from everything I can tell, there's only massive upside for people who live out here and can wrangle code of any kind.

Re:It seems /.'d, so here's the text

[Anonymous Coward]

My salary is based on the Bay Area, but I moved away a long time ago to the midwest, retaining my salary scale. I guess I should probably clarify that I'm not a coder, though. I do advanced tech support (for example, I do not write code but I do review code to help diagnose problems and file bugs where necessary and so on so I'm not the guy you call because your printer isn't working), so I don't really know the true pay scale among my peers for that other than the actual individuals.

The primary reason I left the Bay Area was that $100k+ doesn't go nearly as far there and the high sales and income tax doesn't help. And the cost of a house is unreasonable unless you are willing to lower your quality of life by commuting a great distance. The house I was looking at outside of Santa Clara was about a million dollars. An older but comparable house (except larger) in the midwest cost me barely over $200k.

As to the topic at hand, I merely find it a shock that interns would pull the salary of a lot of full time *developers* that I know in the business working at respectable companies. I mean, unless these are actually interns for executive positions in the tech industry, in which case - sure. :)

Re:It seems /.'d, so here's the text

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure how I should feel about all this.

I started out earning $60k in the tech industry. A dozen years later, I work for the same company and my salary is $90k. With fifteen years experience, I'm only making about ten grand more than interns?

in the tech industry is a very board definition.
Some people have 3 years of technical highschool, 5 years theoretical university education, and 10 years of hobby coding experience... When enter the job market age 24.
Others got a 2 years learn-howto-write-java certificate after elementary school.

Now that's two extremes, but in tech industry people are usually compensated based on capabilities/productivity.
(I'm not say that 5 year university degrees are better, just that it's all about capabilities/productivity and ability to negotiate).

Also in an industry moving as fast as this one, coding experience beyond a 2-3 years usually isn't worth much.

Re:It seems /.'d, so here's the text

[hackula]

Experience beyond 2-3 years does not affect practically any career if you are not going for management or starting a business. For most dev jobs, the ability to build and maintain CRUD apps and write code that is somewhat maintainable is about all you need from a coding perspective. Now managing a team of people all building their own CRUD apps in coordination, that requires some time around the block.

Re:It seems /.'d, so here's the text

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense, but that's like working as a paralegal in a law firm and wondering why the first year Harvard graduates earn more than you do...

student loans

[deodiaus2]

The biggest draw is that it is a chance to pay back some of those student loans which you accumulated.

Missing a few....

[Anonymous Coward]

They missed Altera and Palentir, which both make it into this top 20. Palentir outpays the top company on this list, if I'm not mistaken.

Re:Missing a few....

[DKlineburg]

Maybe they were paid to post the ones that paid them?

Pay?

[Darinbob]

Didn't "intern" used to mean little to no pay at all, because you were getting school credit and were willing to sweep floors for it rather than take an elective?

Re:Pay?

[yathaid]

Maybe earlier. Now, they are the tryouts for a permanent job. If your smartest interns don't like the program, that means they are going to work for your competition.

Re:Pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you are being fucked.

Tech interns get real work (not fetching coffee as interns in other industries famously spend their time doing) so they get real pay.

Re:Pay?

[ahabswhale]

I've never seen an intern work on anything of any significance. Certainly nothing worth $6k a month. That said, I think interns should be paid...just not anywhere near this much. They aren't worth it.

Re:Pay?

[Darinbob]

Well, that's fine. The interns don't have any useful skills anyway, they're not even up to the level of entry-level fresh grad. And 99.9% of them think programming is all about social apps or other web sites. If they go somewhere else to get trained at someone else's expense then there's no problem. Interns are a major pain to hire, you have to hand hold them the entire time because they have little idea how a corporation works, how their computer works, how to work independently without bothering everyone else. Or you get an EE intern doing a job requiring some programming and you have to waste time telling them why their program doesn't compile.

And let's be fair, very often the intern at a full corporation who continues on full time at the same place of employment will always be looked at as the junior employee. You often do better by going to a different place, or at least a different department. The only times I've seen an intern do well later in the same job is when the company was a threadbare startup initially.

If they're paying $70,000 a year, stop calling it an internship and call it a temp job.

Re:Pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

6k/month isn't real money. Certainly not for a software developer. (Yea yea, some of you folks are in the midwest, go post in an article that is geographically relevant to you)

Re:Pay?

[russotto]

Well, that's fine. The interns don't have any useful skills anyway, they're not even up to the level of entry-level fresh grad.

Fortunately that first part's not true. The second part isn't either, if you compare interns to average new grads. And not all interns are undergrads either; some interns are MS and Ph.D. students.

And 99.9% of them think programming is all about social apps or other web sites.

Well I guess if they're interning for Facebook that's a good thing.

If they're paying $70,000 a year, stop calling it an internship and call it a temp job

Why would these be mutually exclusive? A paid internship is a temp job.

Re:Pay?

[docmordin]

Well, that's fine. The interns don't have any useful skills anyway, they're not even up to the level of entry-level fresh grad. And 99.9% of them think programming is all about social apps or other web sites. If they go somewhere else to get trained at someone else's expense then there's no problem. Interns are a major pain to hire, you have to hand hold them the entire time because they have little idea how a corporation works, how their computer works, how to work independently without bothering everyone else. Or you get an EE intern doing a job requiring some programming and you have to waste time telling them why their program doesn't compile.

I interned at a start-up while working toward my S.B. EE/dual Ph.D. and left a self-made millionaire before completing the latter due, in no small part, to all of the contributions I had made, ideas I handed out, and so forth; one of the other interns there, who was also from my alma mater and working toward her Ph.D., also left a millionaire for the same reasons. Suffice to say, your comment about interns being worthless and having no skills is utter nonsense. Moreover, I'm sure there are plenty of students from places like MIT, CMU, Cornell, UIUC, Princeton, GaTech, Stanford, and Berkeley who could corroborate this assertion.

Re:Pay?

[Darinbob]

Yes yes, yours is a typical story. Most interns become millionaires, and people are always rewarded for hard work and brains.

Re:Pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

We pay somewhere in the middle of that list and have had value out of some of out interns that comfortably justifies it. They're still only paid half of what their mentors are, after all. For the most part they are graduate level interns on those salaries. Having said that, my intern last summer was an undergraduate and I was very happy with the result of her work.

Re:Pay?

[antdude]

Sexually type? ;)

Re:Pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

A school does not a worthwhile intern make.

I skipped the whole intern BS process and went straight to work, 7 months into my associates degree.

no formal training on the subject, no handholding was necessary, i was self-reliant and willing to learn.

Today, I make a fair wage, am still quite young, and often am involved to correct mistakes made by those from MIR. GaTech, etc. etc.

Using their opinions to debunk a myth such as "interns are useless" is irrational.

In my experience, being the same age, or younger than most interns I've interacted with, they're given the grunt, BS jobs of cabling, labeling visios, and the like wherein people at my grade and above were validating those Visios, and fixing the mistakes the interns made while cabling.

Not to mention the few specific tasks they were given, it was required of me to know the utility and how to master the tasks with much less time than them.

Same age, even less 'experience' than a couple of them, yet there we were.

I will give you this, I was making 3x more than they were, but internship is not the only way, and it's frankly a shit way because you're a free resource whose not really pressured, nor do you really see what's going on in everything.

as with all things posted by an AC, take it as you will and believe or don't believe.

Goodnight.

Re:Pay?

[Seumas]

From what all the news articles have told me in the past two years, new graduates won't work for a pittance anymore. Young people expect and demand that they immediately be given the job of top executive and a six figure salary plus an iPhone and constant facebook and twitter access at work.

Re:Pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

I did a 6-month internship at one of the companies on this list, and am now working there full time. They absolutely had me doing real work. I would be surprised if others on this list are much different. Some of them probably coddle you a bit more, but that is about it I would wager.

Re:Pay?

[Shados]

Huh? Even in the blackhole of the dot com crash I was still getting paid enough while interning to pay for an ok-ish living. It wasn't luxury by any mean, but it was a full salary.

And the dot com crash is long behind us...so its not surprising.

Re:Pay?

[mcmonkey]

Well, that's fine. The interns don't have any useful skills anyway, they're not even up to the level of entry-level fresh grad. And 99.9% of them think programming is all about social apps or other web sites. If they go somewhere else to get trained at someone else's expense then there's no problem. Interns are a major pain to hire, you have to hand hold them the entire time because they have little idea how a corporation works, how their computer works, how to work independently without bothering everyone else. Or you get an EE intern doing a job requiring some programming and you have to waste time telling them why their program doesn't compile.

Maybe the problem is not the intern. I've had some great experiences with interns, and have some great work to show for it. Part of that is luck--getting the right person to work with. But a lot of that is understanding the situation and handing out appropriate work. Yes, you're dealing with entry-level skills, so put the intern on an entry-level problem. Yes, they typically don't know about corporations and office politics and government regulations and all the other practical considerations that we deal with in the real world. So you put them on a problem that's part of a larger project, or have them work on a utility that will be used internally by your group, and so won't face corporate or regulatory review.

You typically have an intern for a short period of time (mine were 2 months over the summer) so it's up to you to provide a problem or project that is realistic for that time frame. You don't give them a project that interacts with a legacy system so they spend half the internship just trying to understand an obsolete platform they'll never see again.

You give them a problem they can understand and start researching immediately. Then in parallel you have them read up on things like regulations or corporate coding and testing standards. They start at maybe 80% background reading/researching and 20% work, but by halfway through the internship they're at 90% work and maybe 10% background. If you don't get that type of progress, maybe you have a bad intern. If that's your experience every time, the problem is not the interns, but the types and scopes of the problems you are giving them.

And let's be fair, very often the intern at a full corporation who continues on full time at the same place of employment will always be looked at as the junior employee. You often do better by going to a different place, or at least a different department. The only times I've seen an intern do well later in the same job is when the company was a threadbare startup initially.

That's so generically true as to be useless. Anywhere you go, at any level, you'll often always be perceived as in that role where people first met you. It's true whether you're always the intern, always the tech geek, always the executive.

However, I've seen many business where just the opposite is true of interns. Your mid-level employee with 5 to 10 years experience is always seen as mid-level, while interns are seen as "up and comers" on a fast track. There are places where those mid-level employees end up with the same title as or working for the interns they once supervised. Rather than threadbare start-ups, these are lumbering corporate behemoths, fat with layers of management, who can't figure out why those mid-level employees are unhappy.

Re:Pay?

[mu51c10rd]

and often am involved to correct mistakes made by those from MIR. GaTech, etc. etc.

To be fair, Radiology graduates may not make the best IT employees....YMMV.

Re:Pay?

[Bigby]

It is being used as a way for the company to try out an employee without hiring them full time. Then they don't need to deal with benefits or the repercussions of laying them off. Basically the same as contractors...

I think it is stupid too. Just call them contractors.

Re:Pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're assuming all interns are freshman, many are actually in graduate school and are usually smarter / cheaper than regular full time employees.

How supervised is your internship???

[davidwr]

In Education, medicine, and some other fields, your internship will be a lot more supervised than your first-year post-training job. Some fields, like medicine, even require a post-degree form of "internship" (e.g. residency, post-doc, etc.) for certain career paths.

That's not necessarily true in all technical fields, particularly if the job you are doing literally could be done anyone who knew how to code as well as a typical about-20-year-old Computer Science sophomore or junior.

When I did the equivalent of a technical-field internship as an undergrad, I had basically the same job description, supervision, and pay as if I had dropped out of school the previous semester. The only difference is the employer would treat my drop-out co-worker as a new entry-level employee who would NOT be completing his 4-year degree, and I was treated as a POTENTIAL RECRUIT who WOULD have a 4-year degree in a year or two.

Averages brought down by non-engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep in mind that these averages are for all interns, not just engineers. I'm lucky enough to have interned at Google and the average intern salary for an engineer is over $6500 a month.

Re:Averages brought down by non-engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, yes, the 'Golden Phalus Bonus'. We have that in Bulgaria, too.

Depends

[davidwr]

I was a "summer intern" at a job that had no connection with my schooling.

Basically, I was a temporary employee and they called me an intern for HR purposes.

As far as pay went I got paid what any other temporary employee with my skills and education would've gotten.

By the way, I was a "real" employee, not an employee of a temporary-employee-outsourcing firm.

Re:Depends

[Darinbob]

Things change I guess. We used to call those summer jobs or temp jobs. Intern means you can legally pay below minimum wage because it's educational.

Not only that, but Interns talk

[davidwr]

Word gets around campus fast that so-and-so company or such-and-such department is THE internship to go for and AVOID even applying at such-and-such employer, and heaven help you if you get stuck in this-or-that department.

At least it did when I was doing that sort of thing.

It's what you learn, not earn.

[cait56]

I wouldn't want an intern who focused on their pay as an intern.

What you should be focused on is how much you will learn. In a good intern position the company is investing in training a prospect. If you were paid your real net present value you would be lucky to get minimum wage.

IMHO, a company paying more than that is looking to hire a temporary grunt who has learned some syntax -- not someone they want to train.

Re:It's what you learn, not earn.

[waltmarkers]

That's not true at all. The top students at the top 10% of schools are worth far more than min wage even has freshmen summer interns. One, common sense is present or not at this stage. Two, many of these kids come from upper-middle or better backgrounds and know how to conduct themselves in business settings. Many have leadership experience from shift leads in high school jobs, clubs, sports, and even directing household help like the maid.

Upbringing isn't just education, much of our practical knowledge is set from our upbringing.

Re:It's what you learn, not earn.

[Opportunist]

Then you'll get what's left at the bottom of the barrel, the ones that no company actually paying interns money scoops up before. It may surprise you, but especially in IT a lot of what's coming as "interns" needs less training than some old farts who refuse to even consider learning any new tricks.

IT moves fast. And choosing between an intern that knows the latest tricks of the trade and some old, high priced programmer who considers anything but Cobol a fad that will fizzle is kinda easy for companies like Facebook.

Re:It's what you learn, not earn.

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM at least (and I suspect this is typical for larger tech companies) operates on a "recruit once, hire twice" approach - most of your corporate culture or knowledge base literacy teaching would be the same whether you hire someone as an intern or regular employee. Once taught that as an intern, they can skip over that part when you become a new hire. If you show that you are a good worker, then it makes sense for them to bring you back for future summers and/or as a full employee at graduation. Internships also give the company an out if you don't work out - you are a lower risk hire as an intern than as a full time employee.

Re:It's what you learn, not earn.

[Alex Belits]

Why anyone in the world would want an intern with "leadership experience" ( == unproductive manipulative asshole obsessed with controlling people)?

Re:It's what you learn, not earn.

[Fred Ferrigno]

Did you look at the list? They're the same top companies from every list of tech companies: Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. They're not looking for mindless grunts. They're all very aggressive about recruiting top talent, which often leads to them competing against each other. The wages reflect that.

Sing-a-longs huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonder why no outsider takes software developers seriously? Imagine telling a mining engineer that they have to participate in sing-a-longs. Or telling any highly skilled professional that they can have free pizza and ping pong in place of pay reflecting their hours. It's still fucking amateur hour, and it hurts us all in the long term.

Re:Sing-a-longs huh?

[Opportunist]

So we should squeeze into bad fitting three piece suits and talk in inane buzzphrases, i.e. turn into a middle management idiot? Sorry, but then I couldn't take myself serious anymore.

Re:Sing-a-longs huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you bitter you work in some old school enterprise dev house? Don't worry, you'll earn your BlackBerry one day!

Re:Sing-a-longs huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Better than singing like a retard and working overtime without pay.

Re:Sing-a-longs huh?

[TapeCutter]

Wonder why no outsider takes software developers seriously?

Wonder why the global software industry is worth trillions of dollars?

Re:Sing-a-longs huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, so is the global textile industry. What's your point?

Re:Sing-a-longs huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

WalMart has pre-opening pep rallies, but definitely lack the pizza and ping pong. That said, the Google* or SAS model where lots of services are high quality and available on-site (cafeteria, day care, doctors, rec facilities) makes a lot of sense - saving employees as much time as possible in transit and on errands is a great way to keep them fresh and focused at the office and enhance the work/life balance without giving up productivity.

*I'm more familiar with SAS, but have seen articles praising Google for similar stuff.

Re:Sing-a-longs huh?

[alendit]

Wow, I am not surprised someone tryies to troll devs on /., I am surprised there were 5 butthurt people with mod points to make him visible for everyone. Lighten up, guys, work doesn't have to make you feel like killing yourself!

(@AC save the snarky remark :)

Re:Sing-a-longs huh?

[DirtyLiar]

WalMart has pre-opening pep rallies,

Oh yes, and Wallmart employees have the respect and envy of the world.

Premium jobs those are.

Re:Sing-a-longs huh?

[MTEK]

Professionalism aside, for any type-As reading, introverts are not broken extroverts. For many of us who are not social butterflies, these "team building" exercises are NOT particularly helpful, but rather demeaning.

Re:Sing-a-longs huh?

[dasunt]

So we should squeeze into bad fitting three piece suits and talk in inane buzzphrases, i.e. turn into a middle management idiot? Sorry, but then I couldn't take myself serious anymore.

Well, you could squeeze into good fitting three piece suits. Since we're all geeks who should be able to adeptly use the Internet and learn new things, one would imagine, in theory, that we should be able to learn enough fashion to pick a good suit. In theory. In practice, for a group of people who seem to be quick to deride anyone who can't administer computers or code, we sure aren't doing well in other areas.

Buzz-phrases are optional. ;) So is being an idiot.

Re:Sing-a-longs huh?

[YttriumOxide]

Wonder why no outsider takes software developers seriously? Imagine telling a mining engineer that they have to participate in sing-a-longs. Or telling any highly skilled professional that they can have free pizza and ping pong in place of pay reflecting their hours. It's still fucking amateur hour, and it hurts us all in the long term.

I'll skip the sing-a-longs; but pizza and ping pong sound good to me. Of course, I'll take it in ADDITION to pay reflecting my hours thankyouverymuch. It doesn't have to be one or the other you know.

Where I work, the pay is pretty good (not great, but pretty good - somewhat above average); overtime is either paid out or given in lieu (preferred to be given in lieu whereever possible); we get 30 days paid annual leave per year plus public holidays; no fixed start or finish time (just a certain "number of hours per week" that we use to calculate our overtime from); and network gaming in the office is expressly allowed as long as you're not counting it as "work time".

I've been thinking about instituting a company paid pizza day (perhaps every second Friday) in my team, but I'm still waiting for the right time to have that discussion with my boss (who is responsible for the budget of our whole department, so I can't make team decisions without his approval unfortunately)

Re:Sing-a-longs huh?

[pclminion]

That's correct. The only two possibilities in the universe are sing-a-longs or badly fitting three piece suits. You see, the universe is actually quite simple.

Just FYI...

[jcr]

If you're a student looking for an internship, find out all you can about what they'd have you doing. At Apple, interns are writing code that ships. At other companies, you might end up getting treated like a data-entry temp.

-jcr

Re:Just FYI...

[Alex Belits]

At Apple, interns are writing code that ships.

Oh. That explains everything.

At other companies, you might end up getting treated like a data-entry temp.

I have seen code written by an intern in a company other than Apple, however before it was included into anything that shipped, it was checked and heavily modified by a real engineer.

Re:Just FYI...

[Anonymous Coward]

Programmers aren't real Engineers. Programmers are not held criminally liable for bad code and they don't need a license. An intern that can barely handle an include statement is just as much an engineer as you are.

Re:Just FYI...

[Alex Belits]

Programmers ARE engineers. They are not "Professional Engineers", a title that has nothing to do with Engineering, everything with legal systems of some states in US, and is not recognized anywhere else.

Re:Just FYI...

[jcr]

Gosh, with condescension like that, you must be all kinds of awesome. Please, regale us with tales of your achievements.

FYI, the interns' code goes through review just like anyone else's does.

-jcr

Re:Just FYI...

[Anonymous Coward]

No one gives "hardware engineers" a hard time, even though most of what they do is write code (in a hardware description language) and few of them have a Professional Engineering license.

Re:Just FYI...

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm..."Professional Engineers" is a title *more common* outside the US, not less.

Re:Of course Tech degrees don't have required inte

[ShanghaiBill]

This seems like criminal exploitation to me

At least in the USA, it is. Unpaid internships are illegal in the USA unless they meet all of the following criteria:

• the internship is similar to training in an educational environment
• is for the benefit of the intern
• does not displace regular employees
• is closely supervised
• does not provide the employer with an immediate advantage
• promises neither a job following the internship nor wages in exchange for the intern’s time.

If your unpaid internship violates any of these rules, it is illegal.

Re:Of course Tech degrees don't have required inte

[Kittenman]

This seems like criminal exploitation to me

At least in the USA, it is. Unpaid internships are illegal in the USA ....

So is speeding, of course, and multiple other things that people do on a daily basis. No offence intended - it's just that because something is illegal, doesn't mean it's not done.

On paper...

[happyhamster]

Of course, these laws are rarely if ever enforced, just like many other labor laws, such as age discrimination. Companies politely urinate on these laws and keep on going exploiting desperate young people for corporate gains. There have been many reports about this, for example:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html?pagewanted=all

Laws mean nothing without enforcement. Corporations are bribing government not to enforce the laws. Until we put a stop on the abuse, corporations will keep exploiting workers like sheep.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

Internships are un-payed by the company, and are payed by the university.

What the 'article' actually alludes to is 'who is the most payed non-degreed employee?'

A Prostitute For The CEO !

Therefore, if only money is the measure, forget a high school diploma, forget a BS in anything, forget a MS in anything, and
forget a Ph.D. in anything.

Just work out at the local YMCA for free and sell you body to the CEO !

Oldest business on planet Earth.

Re:No

[russotto]

A Prostitute For The CEO !

Not so. Even the executive hookers need at least a bachelor's degree nowadays, in addition to the usual qualifications. The job market is TOUGH.

Re:No

[DirtyLiar]

It's not enough to talk dirty anymore. They've gotta talk hostile takeover and bringing the world economy to it's knees!

Kinky!

slideshow-like article

[manu0601]

Am I the only one to find annoying these multiple-page, sliedshow-like article?

Re:slideshow-like article

[belthize]

I suspect some bright intern invented it.

Re:slideshow-like article

[casab1anca]

At least this one didn't reload the entire page for each slide.

70k/yr in 2013?

[zenyu]

That is less than I was paid as an intern at a tech company in 2001, when you could still buy a coffee for 50 cents! I was a higher paid intern at the time since I already had some degrees, but not by a whole lot.

I thought most tech companies paid interns about the same as an employee with a roughtly equivalent background... I guess not.

Re:70k/yr in 2013?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article's figures are for undergraduate interns, i.e., people WITHOUT degrees. You were either a graduate student or a temp worker with the title of intern.

I don't think it's credible that in 2001 (after the collapse of the dot-com bubble), undergrad interns were earning an average of 70k+/year for engineering/software development positions.

Re:70k/yr in 2013?

[kangsterizer]

Specially given that many IT positions are paying about 80k/y right now, in top companies anyways. It's not like if everyone was making 200k/y+ in IT.

Re:70k/yr in 2013?

[CodeBuster]

It's not like if everyone was making 200k/y+ in IT.

Indeed they aren't, but people often lie when discussing relative salaries because few want to admit publicly that they aren't one of the ones making six figures.

Well hey

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash mobs and embarrasing sing a longs are nothing to be embarrased about. What's embarrasing is working at walmart no matter your level of education and having to sing the walmart song and in some stores even jumping around physically like a moron to it.

Re:Of course Tech degrees don't have required inte

[ShanghaiBill]

So is speeding, of course, and multiple other things that people do on a daily basis.

This is not a comparable situation. I cannot sue you for speeding. Only the police can enforce it. But if I spend a summer working for you in an unpaid internship, I can demand to be paid after-the-fact, and sue you if you fail to compensate me. If there is a group of interns that were not paid, I am sure they can find a lawyer that would be happy to help them out for a reasonable contingency.

should be apprenticeships not tied to being in sch

[Joe_Dragon]

should be apprenticeships not tied to being in school and being in a tech / trades / Community College should not lock you out. And if they are full time jobs then forcing some one to be in school with the college time tables does not really work.

Re:Of course Tech degrees don't have required inte

[_8bitwide]

On another topic, this is part of whats wrong with this country. Not only is everything on that list highly subjective. But it's just down right stupid. Try getting an Engineering Job without an Engineering degree. Next, try getting one without any experience. I, even if you have the degree In these situations, the Interns are adults, capable of make rational decisions, and are getting much more out of the internship than the company. Why can't we infuse a little common since into the law.

Re:Of course Tech degrees don't have required inte

[Anonymous Coward]

And they could probably look forward to some interesting explanations of that at their next interview - suing a former employer is a great way to make oneself toxic to future employers.

Paid Interns!!?

[Anonymous Coward]

In my time, way back in the 60s, if interns received anything, it was a sustenance stipend. Interns were like indentured servants, working to gain knowledge and perhaps to meet mentors to guide them into a career.

Getting the same amount from other companies

[thenextstevejobs]

Don't forget that you can get the same amount from other companies as well.

About 4 years ago I was an intern at another large company, and received an internship offer from Microsoft. I was making about half of what Microsoft was offering. I didn't realize at the time that interns could make such a high rate. I talked to my supervisor at the time and told him about the Microsoft offer, and he offered to match Microsoft's offer if I was willing to stay, as well as some other perks.

This could apply to your full time job as well--if you're eyeing another company because of their pay rates, try getting a job offer and using that to leverage yourself into working where you want, for the amount of money you want to get paid and the benefits you want.

It's a good time to be a programmer, that is for sure.

Re:Getting the same amount from other companies

[YttriumOxide]

This could apply to your full time job as well--if you're eyeing another company because of their pay rates, try getting a job offer and using that to leverage yourself into working where you want, for the amount of money you want to get paid and the benefits you want.

Parent really needs to be modded up.

Far too often, I see people complaining about their pay and jumping around different jobs. I've been with the same company for 11 years now (in two locations), and believe it or not, there are companies that do still care about company loyalty. If you're good to them, they'll be good to you.

Many times in my career so far, I've been offered positions elsewhere for significantly more pay. Twice, it was a very tempting offer (good company and good environment in addition to good pay) and both times I've discussed it with my manager and our HR; who in both cases were able to come to an arrangement to increase my salary and/or other benefits sufficiently to make me want to stay (in one case, up to the offer I had elsewhere, and in the other case only slightly below).

Not saying I wouldn't leave here if I was made the right kind of offer and my employer couldn't or wouldn't come to the table over it; but thus far they've earned my loyalty and it'd take something pretty tempting to make me want to leave at this stage.

Re:Of course Tech degrees don't have required inte

[ShanghaiBill]

Why can't we infuse a little common since into the law.

Because the political party that agrees with you gets less than 1% of the vote. That is not much of a mandate.

And internship should be about quality EXPERIENCE

[Anonymous Coward]

It should not be about how much money you can make. The experience has a lot of more value than the salary level.

Its not all about what you can make

[Osgeld]

for an intern its about how much you learn, but aside from that, you can make 120,000 in new york and live just as well as someone making 30,000 in Atlanta, location has a big impact

I live in the southeast, and got offered 40k to move to California. 40K a yea where I live gets you a decent sized house with a good sized chunk of property and a couple decent cars. In LA that gets you a next to crackhouse apartment and a an 83 civic.

Re:Its not all about what you can make

[kangsterizer]

That usually makes me want to move, because, yes, that's true. :P

Re:Its not all about what you can make

[Anonymous Coward]

a 40k pay raise to move to California? I'm unclear what kind of job asks for relocation with such a salary. I think the last of many times I've been asked to move to California the offer was ~210k/year. A young Java or Rails developer with a gig under their belt is making 140k in SF easily, a lead is 180, managers well over 200.

What are you guys doing with your lives...

Re:Its not all about what you can make

[Anonymous Coward]

40K a yea where I live gets you a decent sized house with a good sized chunk of property and a couple decent cars. In LA that gets you a next to crackhouse apartment and a an 83 civic.

Obviously with you on the relative housing costs, but how does location have any (big) impact on the price of vehicles? Sincerely curious.

Re:Its not all about what you can make

[Bigby]

I didn't see software developer anywhere in the GP post. But that said, you can easily make $120k in Columbus, OH for the $200k job in SF. In Columbus, you can buy 3800 sqft houses for $250k. How about SF?

For the record, I am now in NYC. There are other advantages and disadvantages to a big city vs not-as-big city vs country. It is up the individual. However, the location is VERY relevant in the salaries discussed in the summary.

Re:Its not all about what you can make

[Anonymous Coward]

cause your not pissing all your money away buying a million dollar home that is only worth 200K somewhere else you can afford nice things

Re:Of course Tech degrees don't have required inte

[Anonymous Coward]

and as long as we help the man enforce this silliness, the
man wins.

Say What?

[Tablizer]

Intern? Pay? Bwwwaaaaaa ha ha haaaaa ha haa ha!

In Mexico

[axelnissim]

In Mexico, that is the salary of a top notch, international software programme manager with more than 10 years experience in management... The type of guy that would run a national software government project... or an SAP project... nevermind. Typical salary for a bright web programmer in Mexico, just out of college: USD 1.2 K dollars per month...

Intern pay is inversely proportional products

[Anonymous Coward]

This would explain why the products I deal with daily from these companies sucks: Cisco - Company on the decline, mediocre/buggy products compared to others (i.e ACE, GSS). IBM - Products that are irrelevant today and ancient (i.e WebSphere) EMC - Garbage/bug laden software (i.e Adaptive Authentication) HP - Server hardware unreliable (all our servers are HP ProLiant), thank god for redundancy Intuit - Garbage software written in VB/crashy and severely bloated (i.e ProFile) Adobe - Should I bother? I think everyone knows all the security issues they have with Acrobat and Flash Other I guess they are good at weeding out the good interns and making sure they don't work on any bigger products.

Re:should be apprenticeships not tied to being in

[Fred Ferrigno]

should be apprenticeships not tied to being in school and being in a tech / trades / Community College should not lock you out.

The standards for interns are lower because they're not done with school yet. If you're not in school, you'd be expected to apply as a regular employee and already have skills comparable to someone with a degree. Theoretically, you can do this without a degree from a top university, but in practice recruiters use the university as a first line filter, particularly if you have no experience.

And if they are full time jobs then forcing some one to be in school with the college time tables does not really work.

Internships are usually in the summer when students wouldn't be in school anyway. There are some longer co-op programs where you take time off from classes but still remain enrolled and even get credit for working. Considering tech internships tend to pay better than a summer job and greatly improve your chances of getting hired after graduation, you'd be stupid not to do it if you can.

Re:should be apprenticeships not tied to being in

[solidraven]

Yay for those of us in the EU... Due to strict regulations the chances of finding a well paid internship are near 0 without some borderline legal construction. Like having the student work his last day as student job and paying him his full salary in that single day. It just doesn't pay off to get an internship over here for most students.

Re:slideshow-like article (NOSCRIPT = NO SITE)

[nyckidd]

What's more, with script blocking enable (via noscript) the site has no content below their header / drop-down menus. So much for graceful degradation...

Glad I checked the comments here before even bothering to temp allow their scripts, as stepping into such a multi-page steaming pile would have surely irritated me greatly.

Rent in the bay area=high salary

[ProfBooty]

Buddy of mine worked as an intern for SGI in the late 90's out in the Bay area. I believe his hourly rate worked out to $75,000 a year, but he made very little money because most of it actually went to rent.

Re:Rent in the bay area=high salary

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're intent on saving money and not preparing for your future, maybe you'd consider a room mate...

I worked at SGI until '96, pretty much every member of my team was driving a Porsche, and this was before the day of the poor-mans Porsches. Most folks had decent sized homes in all the suburbs surrounding Mountain View. (They were at worst, low 7-figures back then, quite glad I'm not looking for a home nowadays) I'm glad I left for greener pastures before it tanked. RIP SGI.

Re:Rent in the bay area=high salary

[Anonymous Coward]

Buddy of mine worked as an intern for SGI in the late 90's out in the Bay area. I believe his hourly rate worked out to $75,000 a year, but he made very little money because most of it actually went to rent.

That hasn't changed in the bay area.

Flas mobs?

[DirtyLiar]

Haven't they outlawed them yet?

Re:Flas mobs?

[SeaFox]

Haven't they outlawed them yet?

No, I think there's something that prevents that -- a "right to assemble" or other such nonsense.
Have you checked the Bill of Rights lately?

Re:Flas mobs?

[DirtyLiar]

Was supposed to be a joke.
Lighten up.

PE recognized outside US?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, PE is a title that is recognized outside the U.S. (Chartered Engineer is a synonym)..

However, I'm pretty sure that as a California PE, I can't "practice" as a PE in, say, Germany. Heck, I can't practice in most other states without jumping through a lot of hoops. But that's no different than attorneys, who have to be admitted to the bar in the state in which they practice.

There are also somewhat different standards for PE among the 50 states.

Re:Of course Tech degrees don't have required inte

[hackula]

hardy har har. People think you are nuts when you inform them of this. Part of the problem is that college kids are some of the worst negotiators on the planet, so they have put themselves in a permanent bottomed out price war with each other. "Would you like to like envelopes and file invoices all week while occasionally getting shit on by a vindictive boss... for free?" "Sure!"

Re:Of course Tech degrees don't have required inte

[Compaqt]

If an internship were to satisfy *all* of those conditions, why oh why would a company even take on an intern in the first place?

A company would be well advised to simply pass on the whole idea of internship.

Lucky kids

[Dynedain]

My cousin just landed a summer internship at NVidia for $25/hour

Re:slideshow-like article (NOSCRIPT = NO SITE)

[manu0601]

And I suspect there are at least 21 pages (I threw the towel on page 2)

Re:Of course Tech degrees don't have required inte

[Anonymous Coward]

why does that have to come up?

if you sued them because they broke the law, you have every legal right to get the money you should have got in the first place.

Kind of getting tired of this stockholm syndrome stuff that comes up in american labor relations. We seem to be doing everything in our power to go back to the bad old days.