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

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

[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).

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

[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.

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.

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?

[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.

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.

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.

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: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: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.

slideshow-like article

[manu0601]

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

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.

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: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.