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Interns at Facebook, Google Out-Earn the Average American (axios.com)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

Alayna Treene, writing for Axios: Long gone are the days of unpaid internships, at least at these 25 companies who are paying interns more than what the average American earns. Tech and finance interns in particular -- including at Google, Bloomberg, BlackRock, and Facebook -- earn more per month than the average American, according to data released by Glassdoor Tuesday.

137 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. They make the *median* income of SV by garcia · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are plenty of fields where employees, interns or otherwise, outpace the salaries of the vast majority of Americans; however, put into context, interns at companies based in Silicon Valley are making just about the median income for the area and about 1/3 above the Californian median.

    I am not sure what this is supposed to tell us, honestly. Companies wanting to attract top talent need to pay decent wages. Clearly the marketplace is competitive, even pre-graduation, especially for those coming out of top-tier schools with advanced degrees.

    I mean, it's very nice that everyone wants to have income equality; however, let's dispel with the notion it's going to happen anytime soon and move along.

    1. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      I am not sure what this is supposed to tell us, honestly.

      It tells us that at least half of all people in Silicon Valley don't work as software engineers or management. :-D

      --

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    2. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It tells us that at least half of all people in Silicon Valley don't work as software engineers or management. :-D

      That's a popular misconception about Silicon Valley. Not everyone here is a newly minted millionaire, billionaire or zillionaire. You got minimum wage people taking out the trash, virtual ditch diggers like myself cleaning up the messes, and everyone else who isn't management or engineering.

    3. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      virtual ditch diggers

      Is that a new class in World of Warcraft?

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    4. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by garcia · · Score: 2

      I worked for a company based in Santa Monica and I never felt like it was all that nice in the majority of the town there. There were plenty of townhouses, run down homes, and homeless people wandering around. Comparing SM to Beverly Hills there's a noticeable gap in wealth but SM looks like any other suburb to me.

      That said, when they were looking to relocate me to their SM office, even at a six-figure salary, I was going to have to live 45 minutes away (90-160 minute commute time) in Huntington Beach to get into what I considered affordable.

    5. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Same with San Jose -- you can just -feel- how much money is floating around.

      I lived in San Jose all my life and never experience that. The one-time I did experience that was when my brother's in-laws bought a five-bedroom, $1M home in Gilroy (30 miles south of San Jose). The kitchen was larger than my 475-sqft studio apartment. The wet bar was bigger than my kitchen. What made it even more obscene is that the in-laws had five bedrooms of furniture that been in the family for decades.

      I highly doubt a fast food worker would endure, say, a 2 hour commute from Stockton or similar.

      That's because most fast food workers live locally.

    6. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      I think that's Minecraft

    7. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by Sherman+Peabody · · Score: 1

      That engineers make a lot of money shouldn't surprise anyone. Making $8,000 in Menlo Park is like being broke since rent can easily cost $3,500. The cost of living there doesn't compare to living in Kansas City. It doesn't mention that, or anything, for that matter.

      This type of clickbait article only serves the purpose of inflaming anger at 'elites' in the population at large.

    8. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by garcia · · Score: 1

      When I worked for the company based in Santa Monica, my boss lived in Huntington Beach. His house cost around $750MM. It was 2000 sq ft and had a 'yard' a bit larger than a vegetable garden anywhere else in the country.

      I mean, a $1MM home honestly doesn't bring that much in the LA area; however, I don't know how it differs from SJ.

    9. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Sure, but knowing the costs it takes to live in those areas one has to ask themselves why bother?

      It's something that most people don't take into consideration. In my case, I was born and raised in Silicon Valley before it became Silicon Valley. Back then orchards and canneries outnumbered tech companies and a three-bedroom home cost $32K (which 30 years later would sell for $1M).

    10. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 1

      Um, are you sure his home was three quarters of a Billion dollars for 2,000 square feet?

      I am in between Santa Monica and Huntington Beach, and am yet to see a home sell for $3,000/square foot... although some ass thinks his 2,700 square feet of dirt are worth over $10 million...

    11. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      The question I've always had is where the "service class" lives.

      Gilroy.

    12. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      I lived in San Jose all my life and never experience that.

      Maybe you don't notice the bubble because you were born in it. I grew up in Appalachia (eastern Tennessee) and now live in San Jose. To me, it is like two different planets.

    13. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think it just brings attention to how insane and dysfunctional California is.

      Median income in California is well above the national level. Rising housing prices are actually a benefit if you already own your house, as most people do.

      It also begs the question ...

      No it doesn't. It raises the question. Begging the question means something completely different.

      ... why the hell would anyone want to live like that.

      1. High salaries that more than offset the high housing cost.
      2. Making even more money as your house appreciates.
      3. The best public schools in the country are in Silicon Valley
      4. Lots of very interesting work

    14. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Maybe you don't notice the bubble because you were born in it.

      Or maybe I see more of the underbelly because I take public transit. At $50K+ per year, I make more money than the people who clean toilets and the homeless who ride the bus.

      I grew up in Appalachia (eastern Tennessee) and now live in San Jose. To me, it is like two different planets.

      That's how I feel when I visit my extended family in Idaho. Never seen a place so full of white people. If you want to see a Chinese person, you go to the laundry matt or takeout place. If you want to see a Mexican person, go to the Mexican restaurant. If you want to see a black person tell an off-color joke to a white five-year-old boy, go to the rodeo. My relatives are terrified of Silicon Valley, where half the homes with children speak a language other than English.

    15. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by garcia · · Score: 1

      Sorry. $750K :-)

    16. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Gilroy.

      I would say East San Jose. The Walmart in Gilroy is where you can find all the white trailer trash.

    17. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 1

      Incomeequality is quite a pointless metric because it doesn't tell you jack shit. Instead you should be focused on consumption equality. I guarantee you that I'm living much better off than people in silicon valley on less that half of the income.

    18. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by sound+vision · · Score: 2

      That's because most fast food workers live locally.

      The GP's point was that they wouldn't be able to live locally, due to the rent. What might be happening is that these jobs are being filled by youngsters - students and other people who don't have to pay rent. In most of the country, those people are simply getting pushed out of the job market; the workforce participation rate is dropping among young people faster than any other age group. The middle-aged uneducated guys who take the fast food jobs in the rest of the country have been pushed out. Kids with rich parents haven't.

      Maybe there's simply less of that type of job, too. Perhaps Silicon Valley types rather spend their money at a full-service restaurant, where proportionally higher tips would make housing more in reach. Maybe some of the cities in question have raised the minimum wage within their borders, to accomplish the same thing without praying to the Invisible Hand.

      I can think of a bunch of scenarios, but seeing some hard data on any of these points would be even more interesting.

    19. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      The GP's point was that they wouldn't be able to live locally, due to the rent. What might be happening is that these jobs are being filled by youngsters [...]

      That entire premise is wrong. I'm seeing more and more senior citizens and fewer young people taking minimum wage jobs in my area of San Jose. I know people love to bitch and moan about how expensive Silicon Valley is, always ASSUMING that anyone making $100K or less must commute two hours each way from Stockton. I live in my own apartment in San Jose, I make $50K+ per year and I commute to Palo Alto on the Express Bus one-hour each way.

      Perhaps Silicon Valley types rather spend their money at a full-service restaurant, where proportionally higher tips would make housing more in reach.

      You're joking, right?

      http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/01/24/whats-behind-the-spate-of-recent-bay-area-restaurant-closures/

    20. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by Lodragandraoidh · · Score: 1

      To expand on what you're saying creimer, here is something to consider: when I was born - somewhere just North of 50 years ago - the concept of the suburbs was a relatively recent thing. Before that time, people either lived in the city - which was an area about 5 or 10 miles in diameter (for large cities at the time), or you were living in the country - the boondocks.

      In 1946 there were 300 people living in the countryside that would become the culdesac and ranch house filled abomination of a subdivided township that I grew up in. This place was, and is still, less than 5 miles from the center of a major city on the East coast.

      When I arrived in 1968 (at a very young age - but old enough to ride a bike) the place had swollen to 10,000 people and the place was mostly filled with suburban homes and new schools for all the children like myself.

      When I left in 1983, there 15,000 people living there and still growing.

      Today there are 35,000 people living in this space, and more roads, and multilevel housing units, and crowding than I would have ever imagined as a kid. To me the place is almost indistinguishable from the 'city center' they were designed to avoid. It is just part of a massive megalopolis of urban sprawl stretching from Washington D.C. to New York City and bankrupting people who can barely make enough to live there, much less save and grow. I can't even live there today - even though I make somewhat above the equivalent income of my father in 1980 (when you adjust for inflation over the years e.g. his $35,000 from 1980 = $101,000 in today's dollars).

      Ultimately this is a problem that is bigger than just Silicon Valley, and cuts to the core of what society should do to not only manage urban and suburban growth, but also rethink how and where we work and where and how we live. I think it is something people are already starting to address themselves, even as governments pull away. Living smaller is a key component. Do we really need tract homes? Should we be paying banks thousands of our hard earned dollars for a mortgage we can't afford? Why are we commuting when we can effectively work just about anywhere with modern technology today? More importantly why aren't more companies making it easier to do that in an economy that is dominated by software and service companies?

      --

      Lodragan Draoidh
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    21. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      We have substituted proper pensions for appreciating property that can be downsized at retirement. This is bad for everyone.

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    22. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by MooseMiester · · Score: 1

      1. High salaries that more than offset the high housing cost. 2. Making even more money as your house appreciates. 3. The best public schools in the country are in Silicon Valley 4. Lots of very interesting work

      This is what they said about LA areospace in the eighties, and when the bottom fell out of the over valued housing market everyone lost their a******

      --
      Murphy was an optimist
    23. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      If you really want white, try Boulder, CO.

      I don't like a snow.

    24. Re:They make the *median* income of SV by cthulhu11 · · Score: 1

      https://datausa.io/profile/geo... "56.1% of the housing units in Santa Clara County, CA are occupied by their owner. This is lower than the national average of 63%" I'm amazed that it's that high. I strongly suspect that if the numbers were broken down one would see that people who own have owned for some time, and that there is a considerable barrier to first time buyers. One routinely sees that salaries do NOT offset the housing cost, part of why home sizes in the silly valley tend small.

  2. and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very hi by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    and the cost of living in the bay area is very high out there 60K is crap.

    Other places 50-60K is good!

  3. Seriously... by mongothesecond · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And some of these interns have masters degrees or better.

  4. outcome vs opportunity by magarity · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The article's main point seems to be complaining about income inequality in general which is a complaint of equality of outcomes. Focusing on outcomes never seems to work. The war on poverty has killed too many poor people. More focus on opportunity and let people work out their own outcomes.

    1. Re:outcome vs opportunity by DogDude · · Score: 1

      The war on poverty has killed too many poor people.

      Huh?

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    2. Re:outcome vs opportunity by mongothesecond · · Score: 1

      Is your point that the wrong people are getting into STEM programs at Stanford, where google hires a number of candidates? Is your point that some people cant move to the Bay area and climb the job ladder? More coherent detail, please.

    3. Re:outcome vs opportunity by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Insightful


      The war on poverty has killed too many poor people.

      Huh?

      GP is right - being poor is strongly correlated with poor health outcomes. Diabetes, etc. lead to death very prematurely, especially without management. Availability of healthcare isn't the primary factor; people who are in poverty tend to seek care less often and are less compliant on average, regardless of healthcare availability.

      The "Great Society" programs in the US have locked people into cycles of poverty. Look at the data for Eastern Kentucky, for instance: before the "Great Society" the net outflow of population was much higher. In prospective studies/experiments children who left with their families (subsidized to do so) at an early age did far better than their peers who stayed, and their life outcomes were much improved. But that's not how these programs work.

      Before the "Great Society" if an area was overpopulated for its industries, the lack of work would cause people to leave. With these so-called "War on Poverty" programs, they are incentivized to stay put and collect welfare checks instead of seeking opportunity. There are multi-generational families in Appalachia who have never known a typical work environment.

      Since the Green Revolution nobody is going to starve in a first-world country (obesity is our problem now). But the current Welfare State system definitively locks people into poverty and that turns out to be deadly.

      --
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    4. Re:outcome vs opportunity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      One of the main "outcomes" that people want is equal "opportunity" for their children.

      I don't know if it's just because most Americans are profoundly ignorant of the world outside their own country or what. But I find the amount of hopelessness and defeatism in the USA to be striking.

      Looking around the world, there are countries like Denmark where poverty is basically a solved problem - essentially no one is trapped in desperate poverty. But then there are other countries (the Philippines, Bangladesh, etc.) where most of the population is trapped in desperate poverty. And it's not purely a matter of race, religion, ethnicity, etc. - just look at the difference between North Korea and South Korea.

      And then one of the most wonderful things to happen in our modern era has been the rise of a significant fraction of the population of China up out of desperate poverty into a lower middle class. Is Deng Xiaoping, who didn't care whether the cat was black or white as long as it caught mice, one of the few truly great leaders in the history of the planet? Arguably he deserves credit for lifting hundreds of millions of people out of desperate poverty. Food for thought.

      Anyway, clearly (good) government is hugely important. So one might imagine that Americans would be looking around the world full of curiosity. What can we learn? What are some countries doing right and what are other countries doing wrong? But instead there's this weird dogmatic insistence that unless the USA stays on a very narrow path of spending ever more money on its military while keeping taxes on the ultra-rich very low - then everything will turn into some sort of zombie apocalypse horror movie future.

    5. Re:outcome vs opportunity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Where do you see that people are staying where there are no jobs? On welfare, one cannot enjoy trips, vacations, etc. More importantly, welfare stops for about a year... a year or two after the first claim.

    6. Re:outcome vs opportunity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      "There are multi-generational families in Appalachia who have never known a typical work environment."

      Citation needed -- you can't collect welfare for more than 5 years of your entire life. About the only benefit you can get that's not time limited is disability or food stamps.

    7. Re:outcome vs opportunity by gfxguy · · Score: 2

      As you already pointed out (with food stamps) there's more than one "welfare" system people are using. Subsidized housing, free day care programs, school breakfast and lunch programs... all take the sting out of not having a steady (or having low) income. There's also the EITC every year - perhaps the most direct income redistribution program we have (in the U.S.).

      --
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    8. Re:outcome vs opportunity by gfxguy · · Score: 1

      One of the main "outcomes" that people want is equal "opportunity" for their children.

      I don't know if it's just because most Americans are profoundly ignorant of the world outside their own country or what. But I find the amount of hopelessness and defeatism in the USA to be striking.

      Absolutely - I think people here have a distinct lack of perspective. Lord Tytler explained the eight stages of democracy: bondage to spiritual faith; spiritual faith to great courage; courage to liberty; liberty to abundance; abundance to complacency; complacency to apathy; apathy to dependence, and dependence back to bondage. Which stage is the U.S.? I'd say we're in the middle of the final stage. People are not really all that happy, but as bad as anybody in the U.S. may have it, we're far better off than the majority of the rest of the world.

      --
      Stupid sexy Flanders.
    9. Re:outcome vs opportunity by psmoot · · Score: 1

      I agree. In the "Why it matters" paragraph, the point is there is income inequality. I think it matters much more that there are good, high-paying jobs available in new, growing industries. That's fabulous news. And the jobs aren't all in the Bay Area, they're scattered around the country. So if you're stuck in a low-paying dead end job, get some software training and get an internship. That's a really plausible way to advance.

      OK, if you're a 55-year-old machinist in Detroit and the plant just closed, that isn't a plausible plan. But for your kids, this is a great opportunity for them. IMHO, that's the real problem we're facing now. Jobs and industries are changing really fast, much faster than they used to. It used to be the economy changed slow enough you could move from job to job to job and adjust to the changes during your lifetime. Now your industry can collapse and you have to make a really big change to get in on the new opportunities. Once you get past your mid-fourties, you just don't have enough time or energy to begin retraining from the beginning. Generationally thing will work out. Your kids will get jobs in the new fields. But you may be left behind and that's hard.

    10. Re:outcome vs opportunity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The "Great Society" programs in the US have locked people into cycles of poverty.

      My test for "locked in poverty" is whether a person of ordinary ability who is willing to work an honest 9-5 can find good meaningful work that pays enough to support a small family simply but comfortably (i.e. no one in the family is going to bed hungry, everyone on the family has basic medical care, the children in the family have access to decent schools, etc.).

      The question of whether the government is providing such generous welfare that it's preferable to not work and simply collect welfare even though good jobs are available is somewhat orthogonal.

      But clearly not everyone in the USA is working in good jobs. So the one explanation is that such jobs exist but people choose welfare instead. The other explanation is that such jobs don't exist - well at least not enough for everyone. This second explanation is problematic because it indicates that some fraction of the population must necessarily be trapped in poverty.

      Myself, I'm sufficiently cynical that I can totally believe that in most countries in the world (including the USA but possibly include a small number of countries like Denmark), some fraction of the population is locked in poverty. But if you can't face the truth then live your fantasy of a perfect world where the only people who are poor are those who truly deserve to be poor.

    11. Re:outcome vs opportunity by SirSlud · · Score: 1

      Availability of healthcare isn't the primary factor; people who are in poverty tend to seek care less often

      uhhhh ....

      --
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    12. Re:outcome vs opportunity by swillden · · Score: 4, Interesting

      So the one explanation is that such jobs exist but people choose welfare instead. The other explanation is that such jobs don't exist - well at least not enough for everyone.

      A third explanation is the one the GP alluded to: such jobs exist, but not locally. Because welfare is (barely) good enough and moving seems like such a risky endeavor, people stay put and get by on welfare.

      --
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    13. Re:outcome vs opportunity by stinerman · · Score: 1

      So as a married man with no kids, if I move to eastern Kentucky how much welfare can I expect to get? Assuming I simply choose to not work.

    14. Re:outcome vs opportunity by dj245 · · Score: 2

      The war on poverty has killed too many poor people.

      Huh?

      GP is right - being poor is strongly correlated with poor health outcomes. Diabetes, etc. lead to death very prematurely, especially without management. Availability of healthcare isn't the primary factor; people who are in poverty tend to seek care less often and are less compliant on average, regardless of healthcare availability.

      The "Great Society" programs in the US have locked people into cycles of poverty. Look at the data for Eastern Kentucky, for instance: before the "Great Society" the net outflow of population was much higher. In prospective studies/experiments children who left with their families (subsidized to do so) at an early age did far better than their peers who stayed, and their life outcomes were much improved. But that's not how these programs work.

      Before the "Great Society" if an area was overpopulated for its industries, the lack of work would cause people to leave. With these so-called "War on Poverty" programs, they are incentivized to stay put and collect welfare checks instead of seeking opportunity. There are multi-generational families in Appalachia who have never known a typical work environment.

      Since the Green Revolution nobody is going to starve in a first-world country (obesity is our problem now). But the current Welfare State system definitively locks people into poverty and that turns out to be deadly.

      You're missing a huge factor- quality education. Somehow we have managed to tie the quality of primary education completely to where one lives. The good schools are in areas with a good tax base, and the poorer areas get schools that reflect the reduced tax base. Just a quick look around Beattyville, KY (poorest white town in the USA) shows a lot of schools with GreatSchool ratings under 5/10. Multiple schools rated 2/10. The rating system may have some flaws but that is an indication that these schools have problems. Unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to determine if a school is bad because of the management, the funding, the teachers, or the parents. Nevertheless, without a decent education, those kids have little hope of doing better than their parents.

      --
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    15. Re:outcome vs opportunity by computational+super · · Score: 1

      They'd rather have a B- student from Harvard than an A+ student from state

      Or literally any random person on an H1B visa, almost regardless of educational background.

      --
      Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
    16. Re:outcome vs opportunity by jittles · · Score: 1

      Once you get past your mid-fourties, you just don't have enough time or energy to begin retraining from the beginning. Generationally thing will work out. Your kids will get jobs in the new fields. But you may be left behind and that's hard.

      I'm sorry to hear that you plan to remain stagnant for half of your life. I'd like to hope that I will continue to learn and improve until the day I die.

    17. Re:outcome vs opportunity by swillden · · Score: 1

      So as a married man with no kids, if I move to eastern Kentucky how much welfare can I expect to get? Assuming I simply choose to not work.

      How would I know?

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    18. Re:outcome vs opportunity by swillden · · Score: 2

      Because welfare is (barely) good enough and moving seems like such a risky endeavor, people stay put and get by on welfare.

      Moving isn't easy but it's not that hard. Either your argument is that poor people are trapped in ignorance (like someone blinded by smoke in a burning building who can't see the open door to safety)

      It doesn't have to be ignorance. It can also be apathy, or fear of the unknown, or any of a dozen other reasons. Note that I'm not actually claiming that any of this is the case, just that it's possible and the possibility shouldn't be ignored when trying to understand why people stay in bad situations.

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    19. Re:outcome vs opportunity by virtig01 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      if I move to eastern Kentucky how much welfare can I expect to get?

      That depends on what you're eligible for, and how efficient you are at converting non-monetary entitlements into cash:

      https://theweek.com/articles/452321/appalachia-big-white-ghetto

    20. Re:outcome vs opportunity by psmoot · · Score: 1

      Who said I plan to remain stagnant? I just don't think I'm likely to start a new career as, oh I don't know, a musician or doctor at this point.

    21. Re:outcome vs opportunity by slew · · Score: 1

      Once you get past your mid-fourties, you just don't have enough time or energy to begin retraining from the beginning. Generationally thing will work out. Your kids will get jobs in the new fields. But you may be left behind and that's hard.

      I'm sorry to hear that you plan to remain stagnant for half of your life. I'd like to hope that I will continue to learn and improve until the day I die.

      Regardless if you are stagnant or not, the unfortunate fact is that opportunities shrink when after you pass your mid-forties... Of course companies don't simply go Carrousel [sic] on their employees, but age discrimination is rampant in most industries (esp high-tech). The expected rate of return from retraining is certainly going to be much lower than someone who is younger (and of course the actual net return will be lower as you will have fewer years to accumulate whatever return you get).

  5. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

    I make $50K+ per year doing IT Support in Silicon Valley by living a modest lifestyle. If you want to live the American Dream of having it all (big house, big cars, big wife and big kids), living here gets expensive in a hurry.

  6. How the dollars fly over time... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

    When I did my six month software testing internship at Fujitsu, I got paid $10 per hour on a six-contract because they didn't have enough money in the budget for a full-time staffer.

    1. Re:How the dollars fly over time... by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      When I did my 3 month internship I got 90% of the graduate wage. "Didn't have enough money" is no excuse for slavery.

    2. Re:How the dollars fly over time... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      "Didn't have enough money" is no excuse for slavery.

      Slavery, what slavery? I was tasked to regress 600+ bugs in six months, got it done in two months. Wrote a 300-page technical manual. Found a crash bug on the test server that my supervisor ignored, approved for the production server, and the company lost $250K in revenues as the engineers took the production server off line for three days to fix the problem. Of course, I didn't get hired on permanently and one-third of the department got laid off a month after I left to make up for the lost revenues. That started the death spiral for division.

    3. Re:How the dollars fly over time... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      What is "being on a six-contract"? Asking honestly as I do not understand what that means. Six months?

      My bad. A six-month contract.

    4. Re:How the dollars fly over time... by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Slavery, what slavery?

      I should have asked when you did your internship. $10 for an internship is slavery by any modern or semi modern standards. Hell I got paid $25 as an unskilled factory hand while at uni spending my nights studying and my daytime working with people who struggled to spell their own names but did have the technical capability of dragging a palette around. And even that was 10+ years ago.

    5. Re:How the dollars fly over time... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Or something like that, HehHeh

      Work at a Fortune 500 company with stock options for the employees. "On, no! Stock down thirty-cents after lunch!! The bank is going to repossess my second Tesla!!!"

      I couldn't take fart at Cisco without someone checking the stock price on their cellphone.

    6. Re:How the dollars fly over time... by slew · · Score: 1

      Slavery, what slavery?

      I should have asked when you did your internship. $10 for an internship is slavery by any modern or semi modern standards. Hell I got paid $25 as an unskilled factory hand while at uni spending my nights studying and my daytime working with people who struggled to spell their own names but did have the technical capability of dragging a palette around. And even that was 10+ years ago.

      Don't know about when the original poster did their internship, but I made $8.08/hour back in the early '80s (30+ years ago) working on an internship with a high-tech company... I thought that was great vs my other job waiting tables at minimum wage ($3.35/hour).

  7. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    and the cost of living in the bay area is very high out there 60K is crap.

    My company in San Jose rents a five bedroom house for the summer, within walking distance of our offices. Interns bunk two to a room. This free housing makes it much easier to recruit interns from outside the Bay Area, because they save more of their pay and they don't have to look for housing (which is a major time-wasting hassle in SV).

  8. and employees from these companies by kangsterizer · · Score: 1

    interns there, when you take other things into consideration such as free housing, free food, free laptop, etc. actually get more than many employees of these companies - and I'm saying engineers.

    interning there is a great, great deal.

  9. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by kangsterizer · · Score: 2

    100k usd in SF was considered low incoming recently (thats a little over 8k/mo), according to another slashdot linked article. and it's probably true.
    4500usd/mo housing for a small 1 bed room
    35%+ taxes
    8.75% tax on purchases

    so.. 100k-54k = 46k.. - 35% (and thats a low estimate) = 30k left over of utilities, food, car, insurance, etc.

  10. JavaScript by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

    Ah, that helps explain why so many Big Tech websites are slow as molasses on a two-year-old phone. I bet none of the interns is running a $40 SoC Android device from Walmart.

    n.b.: lots of your potential customers* are buying those devices right now.

    * you may know 'customers' by the more familiar term 'eyeballs' /s

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  11. Same goes for law firm summer associates by ErichTheRed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    These are arguably in the top 5 of companies at the center of a massive Second Dotcom Bubble. Of course they're going to pay their interns a lot:
    - Cost of living in SV, even temporarily, is more than just about anywhere else in the country
    - Google and Facebook do most of their hiring from Stanford and other top 10 private-school computer science and engineering departments. People who can afford to go there on their own will expect at least what an investment bank or management consultancy is willing to pay them for an internship. People who are smart enough to get into a private school on an academic scholarship are also probably worth paying that kind of money for.

    Two other industries, law and investment banking, are famous for internships that pay handsomely.
    - Big law firms will recruit interns from the top of the class of only the Top 14 law schools in the country. They put them up in New York City, pay them a comparatively large salary, and basically spend the summer shuttling them between parties and events while giving them some token work to do. And if they find they like you, starting salary is $180K nowadays. Too bad you have to be at the top of your class at Harvard, Yale or Stanford to get "drafted" like this.
    - Investment banks take on "associates" either while they're getting their MBA or just after. Again, only the top business school grads need apply. The difference is that they work their associates 100-hour weeks doing menial processing tasks for years. If you work out you're in the "cannot fail" club for life, but the route there is quite different from the law firm crowd.

    So, I wouldn't get too bent out of shape over this. Plum internships at hot companies aren't the norm. Media and publishing interns often get _nothing_ for a huge amount of very menial work.

  12. Re:This is why they need H1b by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Internships are really extended multi-month job interviews. That is how my company sees them, and that is how interns should see them. We never offer an internship to someone that we would not want to hire as a permanent employee. After graduation, we offer jobs to about 60% of our former interns, and most of them accept. We make NO job offers to any other graduates.

    So the competition for the best interns is really a competition for the best future employees. The competition is fierce, and the best students usually have multiple internship offers.

    Students that don't intern, and expect to just magically find a job after they graduate, are idiots.

  13. 76% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    Google it. Which feels iconic in this context.

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  14. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Not sure how many people want a big wife

  15. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by FictionPimp · · Score: 1

    Exactly, I've looked at job offers in big cities and when I do a cost of living comparison I'm better off staying where I am. 95K a year in a town where 1k a month can get you a 3000sq foot home on a half acre of land, or 110k a year in a city where 2k a month gets you a small apartment....

  16. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Not sure how many people want a big wife

    You can't have big kids without a big wife. There are always exceptions to the rule. My parents were skinny as can be when they had me as a ten-pound bowling ball and brought me home in a bowling bag.

  17. Required Internship == Low Pay by MerlynEmrys67 · · Score: 1

    Many degrees require an internship -> Look at education majors. This makes internships very competitive, if you don't get one you don't graduate. That means the employer has all the power in the transaction, oh you want to make minimum wage - we have another applicant that will take the job for free, you want to work for free, we have an applicant that will pay us to train them.

    Many degrees require an internship -> Look at education majors. This makes internships very competitive, if you don't get one you don't graduate. That means the employer has all the power in the transaction, oh you want to make minimum wage - we have another applicant that will take the job for free, you want to work for free, we have an applicant that will pay us to train them.

    In many other environments, who you have worked for in the past matters more than current skills. Oh you didn't carry coffee for a top magazine, politician, judge... why should we let you work for us? These also tend to be unpaid.

    Now really what you want to see out of an internship is the company provides value to them (You interned at Google, cool) and you provide value to the company (Wow, look at the code you produced in 3 months for our project). This leads to an environment that is paid and provides a valid working experience rather than how many unpaid people do you have around to take up empty office space.

    Many industries need to look at their intern programs, re-evaluate them and begin to pay at a minimum Minimum Wage. In many other environments, who you have worked for in the past matters more than current skills. Oh you didn't carry coffee for a top magazine, politician, judge... why should we let you work for us? These also tend to be unpaid.

    Now really what you want to see out of an internship is the company provides value to them (You interned at Google, cool) and you provide value to the company (Wow, look at the code you produced in 3 months for our project). This leads to an environment that is paid and provides a valid working experience rather than how many unpaid people do you have around to take up empty office space.

    Many industries need to look at their intern programs, re-evaluate them and begin to pay at a minimum Minimum Wage.

    --
    I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
  18. Re:This is why they need H1b by xanthines-R-yummy · · Score: 1

    If I had mod points, I'd mod your post up. Instead, I'll reply!

    Yes, I came here to say exactly this. Also, this story is going to blow up or go viral or whatever, and for no good reason, IMHO. Sure, $8k/mo is pretty good money, but this is an internship. How long do they work? 3-4 months at the most? Keep in mind, that cost of living for those internship months are going to be pretty high, being in San Francisco (-ish).

  19. Re:This is why they need H1b by Serge_Tomiko · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Students that don't intern, and expect to just magically find a job after they graduate, are idiots.

    I wouldn't call them idiots necessarily. Depending upon the circumstances, some students just don't know. I'm old enough to have been from the age when college was still seen as a place for learning rather than a trade school. I had to work crap jobs during college, and was only vaguely aware that well-paying internships even existed. Or at least, they were for kids with better grades than myself.

    All that said, I know some college students who are doing much better these days. The pressure seems positively enormous. I really feel for these kids today.

  20. Oiks by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    paying interns more than what the average American earns.

    Do people actually talk like that?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    1. Re:Oiks by computational+super · · Score: 1

      My uncle Fred in Tuscaloosa does.

      --
      Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
  21. Re:This is why they need H1b by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    college was still seen as a place for learning rather than a trade school.

    It should be both. Should you study history and literature in college? Sure. Should you MAJOR in history or English literature? Not unless you have rich parents.

    When I was in college, I took a (mandatory) class called "Great Books of Western Literature". It was a good class with a great professor, and I enjoyed it very much. I also took classes in sociology, history, and art. But my major was engineering. So I left college with a broad general education, specific useful skills, and a well paying job.

  22. Re:This is why they need H1b by psmoot · · Score: 1

    That's how law has worked for years. The biggest stress point was where you'd intern while in law school because that largely determined where you'd get a job. Once you have an offer for an internship, you were on easy street. High tech is just now catching up.

  23. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

    Middle-aged, living by yourself and spending half your income to rent a studio apartment is not "a modest lifestyle".

    Compared to a lot of other folks in Silicon Valley, this is a modest lifestyle. I know of few people in similar circumstances who still have money left over at the end of each month to save.

    It's pretty much rock-bottom.

    Rock-bottom is paying half your income on rent for a room in a house and living with roommates. For an extra $200 per month, I could get an extra wall to have a one-bedroom apartment.

  24. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by pr0fessor · · Score: 1

    I've seen the same thing I make good pay for where I live, I could get better pay if I moved but the difference in the cost of living doesn't make it worth it.

  25. Cost of Living by Joe_NoOne · · Score: 1

    This doesn't take into account the differences in cost-of-living based on location, so it's a bit skewed.

    1. Re:cost of living by djinn6 · · Score: 1

      tax brackets and AMT and benefit qualifications do not take cost of living in to account.

      No matter how much you earn, if you only work for 3 months out of the year, that puts you below the poverty level. At most you'll be paying maybe $100 in taxes.

  26. Re:This is why they need H1b by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Students that don't intern, and expect to just magically find a job after they graduate, are idiots.

    And during the great recession the sources of interships dried up so bad that a lot of fellow engineering students (including myself) took months if not a year to find their first job in their chose field after leaving college. Some never did get into their field as they were out of school for too long and seen as "untouchable." Of course some of us got blamed by professors for being "lazy" but the truth was that there simply were not enough internships and co-ops to go around for all of us during those years as companies were buckling down so much that they didn't want to hire much of anyone, even interns.

  27. Re:This is why they need H1b by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    > High tech is just now catching up.

    Microsoft has had its internship program for more than 20 years for this exact reason.

  28. Re:This is why they need H1b by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

    If they have to pay their interns this kind of money to get talent, it speaks volumes to why expanding the H1B program is an absolute necessity going forward to supply this companies with the kind of people they need.

    Or they can just share profit appropriately or sink as they should to make way for more agile companies.

  29. You know what's nice about that by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    you get out of paying unemployment insurance, and my tax dollars make up the difference. Everybody wins (except me and the Intern that doesn't really have unemployment insurance).

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  30. ACA says you're wrong by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    when poor people had access to health care due to the medicaid expansion they used it.

    That "Cycle of Poverty" bullshit you're spouting comes from right wing "Think Tanks" set up to justify abandoning the poor. If you track back who's telling you that and look at who belongs to those tanks you'll find industry lobbyists all the way down.

    People moving around out of desperation isn't how you end poverty. It's how you shuffle the poor around. And you have no idea how bad things were before the Great Society. Or you're actively choosing to ignore it. Or those "Think Tanks" are doing it for you. The outcomes the same.

    Poverty ends first with food. Women need food while their kids are gestating so those kids don't have mental problems. It goes on to clean, lead free air & water. Again, prevent mental problems. Next is education. Lots of it. All the way to college. That won't stop poverty, since we're running out of work (Automation & productivity increases for the win) but it will create a population smart enough to solve those problems. All that takes money, and if you think the 1% is going to pay for it by choice you haven't been paying attention to the last 1000 years of human civiliazion.

    People aren't starving because of food stamps and other welfare programs. Those programs are mostly allowed to exists because agribusiness lobbies for them. But even they've been losing to the "Cut my Taxes" lobby.

    At the end of the day everything you wrote is something you're telling yourself to feel better about cutting your taxes while abandoning the poor. I sincerely hope you're better than that, will realize what you're doing and stop it. Keep in mind, when the 1%ers are done with the poor, you're next.

    --
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    1. Re:ACA says you're wrong by zawarski · · Score: 1

      Huzzah!

    2. Re:ACA says you're wrong by sheph · · Score: 1

      I hate to break it to you but it isn't just the right wing. The left wing is very good at pretending to help the poor. And those think tanks aren't entirely wrong. Look how much we pay in taxes now. The poor are still poor. Kids still live in poverty and are homeless. Even if you taxed everyone 100% these problems wouldn't go away. There is a segment of society who will be poor no matter what you do. They choose to get high and let their kids starve. Or make other bad life choices that no amount of money will mitigate. At some point personal responsibility has to kick in.

      --
      I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
    3. Re:ACA says you're wrong by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      At the end of the day everything you wrote is something you're telling yourself to feel better about cutting your taxes while abandoning the poor.

      It's jerks like you that condemn people to perpetual poverty by being tools for politicians who view welfare dependence and poverty as convenient vote getters.

    4. Re:ACA says you're wrong by MooseMiester · · Score: 1

      All great intellectual talking points so please explain how it can be that BEFORE the "Great Society" the % of people living in poverty was about the same as it is now, and all the poor people didn't starve, die off, etc? Hint: That was a period of several thousand years .vs. the last fifty.

      --
      Murphy was an optimist
  31. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    you walk 3mph during your workouts - super athlete.

    https://twitter.com/cdreimer/status/858405712317210624

    a guy making the same as an intro-level college graduate after 20 years of experience in an industry.

    I don't have a high school diploma and I don't have university degree. I do have two associate degrees (A.A. in General Education and A.S. in Computer Programming) and no student loans. I deliberately went into IT Support because I enjoy the work. It's not fair to compare me to a recent college graduate with $100K in student loans and no expectations to pay them off in this lifetime.

    rock bottom is having to plow through a bowl of prozac just to get through the day without jumping off the overpass because of your shitty life.

    As I explained in a previous post, I've never taken anti-depressants. I don't need them because I don't let shitheads like you tear me down.

    don't ever leave that prescription at home. you might kill someone driving.

    I pay $140 per month to take the express bus to work. Traffic in Palo Alto is insane on the best of days.

    good thing this is not a site for shitheads.

    Please turn in your geek creds and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

  32. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    If I had creimer's life, that's exactly what I'd have to do.

    JUMP! JUMP! JUMP!

  33. Re:This is why they need H1b by pr0fessor · · Score: 1

    Me ex majored in English Literature like her mother but taught at a state university instead of a high school. I studied applied arts but left teaching to work for Ma Bell. I've contracted with 3 of the companies on that list.

  34. Re:This is why they need H1b by ghoul · · Score: 1

    H1Bs can be looked upon as internships only for people with degrees but missing the local cultural context. By the time they get their Greencards they have the cultural context as well. So the lower pay during H1-GC process is just another kind of intern pay

    --
    **Life is too short to be serious**
  35. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    We need sad losers to to diss and shit on for relaxation.

    Rorschach (The Watchmen): "I am not locked in here with you. You are locked in with me!"

  36. Re:This is why they need H1b by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 1

    Internships are really extended multi-month job interviews. That is how my company sees them, and that is how interns should see them. We never offer an internship to someone that we would not want to hire as a permanent employee. After graduation, we offer jobs to about 60% of our former interns, and most of them accept. We make NO job offers to any other graduates.

    So the competition for the best interns is really a competition for the best future employees. The competition is fierce, and the best students usually have multiple internship offers.

    Students that don't intern, and expect to just magically find a job after they graduate, are idiots.

    That is a stupid way of looking at things. Quite a large number of qualified students simply cannot take internships for a variety of reasons. Additionally, that does not preclude them from finding good jobs when they graduate. Evidence from real life says you are wrong on that account.

  37. Re:This is why they need H1b by Trondheim · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Should you MAJOR in history or English literature? Not unless you have rich parents.

    I graduated with a B.A. in English, and now I'm an enterprise architect. Uninformed comments like this make engineers look foolish.

  38. cost of living by spongman · · Score: 1

    cost of living in the bay area is high. tax brackets and AMT and benefit qualifications do not take cost of living in to account.

  39. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by ghoul · · Score: 1

    Did you just subtract rent and then tax? Wish the IRS was that generous. Its Tax first and then Rent. 100K is 8K a month = 6 K a month after tax (marginal rate is 25 fed+9 state but not all income is taxed at marginal rate). Noone on a 100K is paying a 4500 apartment. They are probably sharing an apartment or a room so say 2k on rent. 4K. Health Insurance+Car+Car Insurance+utilities = Another 1 K. Leave 3K/pm for food, retirement savings, saving for a Downpayment

    --
    **Life is too short to be serious**
  40. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    i make fun of you for walking 3mph, you provide a link with a photo of it. what point are you trying to make?

    I'm not ashamed of my workout, as some asshat here made a huge fuss about over the weekend.

    you don't take antidepressants (yet?).

    Never have, never will.

    oh boy is it about to get shitty for you when you relapse off your diet. and you will - all fat losers do.

    I've been on a low-carb diet for five years, making changes where necessary.

    your comprehension mistakes are exactly the ones mediocre fat somewhat slow it people make.

    I'm doing it on purpose, dumbass.

    you're not a geek. you are some helpdesk monkey who can maybe write a little script, on a site full of actual geeks.

    I haven't done help desk in ten years.

  41. Re: This is why they need H1b by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Genuine question, what's an enterprise architect?

    They design starships, except during rush hour when they drive for Uber.

  42. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    low-carb? Is that the diet where you eat Clif bars, Power bars, and Fiber One bars by the box?

    From Monday through Friday I eat two energy bars for breakfast to "break fast" 12 hours after my last meal from the previous day. A three-month supply is ~120 bars (11 or 12 boxes) for $100 via Amazon and Walmart.

    Or did you finally "make the necessary changes" when people pointed out to you that eating that shit was just as bad as eating candy bars all day?

    I make changes based on my data and not someone else's opinion. For example, an asshat told me that TWO Snickers were healthier than two energy bars. When I compared the labels that proved that energy bars were better (except for sodium), the asshat changed his position to ONE Snickers bar. When I called him on that, he claimed it was sarcasm. This isn't the first time that an asshat has deliberately given me bad diet advice to ruin my health.

  43. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by mongothesecond · · Score: 1

    You can live modestly and not settle, too. Why not make 100k in the valley?

  44. Re:This is why they need H1b by slew · · Score: 1

    I studied applied arts but left teaching to work for Ma Bell.

    If I can infer from your invocation of "Ma Bell", you probably got your job back when there wasn't a horde of low-cost H1Bs with STEM degrees competing for jobs at high-tech companies...

    Today, studying applied arts probably isn't going to give you the same opportunities as getting a STEM degree. Just say'n...

    Full disclosure, I'm of the same vintage and they certainly didn't have a big computer scientist degree-ed hiring pool available back when "Ma Bell" existed. (not zero, but not big either). It probably isn't important technically, but getting past the HR filter w/o at least bootcamp-like credentials isn't as easy anymore....

  45. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    Why not make 100k in the valley?

    Because I'm a virtual ditch digger and virtual ditch diggers don't make $100K. That's why I'm studying for the Security+ and ITIL Foundation certifications this year, and probably the Cisco Security track next year. For my next job, I'll step up to $100K.

  46. Re:This is why they need H1b by gordo3000 · · Score: 1

    big banks have had internships that pay the same as a starting analyst for years (and starting analysts at banks make more than the average american for most of that time).

    frankly, when you are getting paid 5-6k a month, if you cant' find monthly accommodations that are sufficient for your needs and well within your budget, you have some pretty severe financial management problems. Our London based internships brought in folks from all across the EU and no one had an issue finding a room to rent, similar in Tokyo, New York,and Sydney.

    The harder part of a paid internship is you limit yourself to people allowed to legally work. That is not always the case with students who are doing university abroad depending on the country, and most companies now won't just ignore the employment rules.

  47. Not "really" that much is it? by p51d007 · · Score: 1

    Considering the housing prices in those areas, cost of living is pretty high. Unless they double, quadruple up, is that really a "lot" of money? I live out here in the midwest, where 96K would get you a huge 3,000 sq ft house in a pretty good neighborhood, couple cars, and money left over.

  48. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by Hadlock · · Score: 1

    I don't know anyone paying $4500 a month for a one bedroom in SF.
     
    $2700-3200 seems to be about the norm; you can get away with $1900 for half of a 2 bedroom oftentimes.

    --
    moox. for a new generation.
  49. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    (1) you're making 50k in the highest paid geographical it market, after 20 years of experience - that's simply a joke.

    Not for the line of work that I do. Remember, virtual ditch digger. Not programmer. Not developer. Not software architect. If you need a miracle worker, I'm the guy to call.

    (2) you got kicked out of college.

    I spent eight years in Special Ed classes, skipped high school, went to community college for four years (two years of remedial coursework and two years for General Education), transferred to the university, got kicked out of the university, and went back to school a decade later to get my A.S. degree in Computer Programming.

    (3) you diet by eating weight gain bars for athletes and you're still a fucking elephant after 5 years.

    I've been 350 pounds for last 10+ years. My nickname in school was "Titanic" not "Elephant Man".

    (4) you think walking real slow is working out

    I walk fast to put my heart rate into the cardio zone. The funny thing is that I have to walk slow when I'm with other people.

    You actually are a dumbass.

    If that makes you feel better to think that way, be my guest. People have thought much, much worse of me only to be proven wrong time after time.

  50. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    i'm the asshat alcoholic who drinks a glass of really good wine.

    Now that you admitted that you have a problem, what are you gonna do about it? Dropping $3K a night on wine is shameful.

  51. Re:What is a virtual ditch digger? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    Is that what they call Java programmers these days? Because of all the security holes they dig?

    Virtual ditch diggers do the IT jobs that no one else wants to do: help desk, desktop, deployments, inventory and data center build outs. Not sure if I would add Java programmers to that list.

  52. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    i'll assume some comic book loser shit an adult is into for some reason, which is not because his kids like it

    I read the Watchmen when I was in college. This is definitely not a graphic novel for kids to read.

  53. You're referring to corporate dems by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    they're not left wing. They're mostly trial lawyers opposed to tort reform that would put them out of business (not that tort reform's a good thing, lawsuits are about the only thing keeping mega-corps in check). Anyway if you want to know more on the difference see here. Also look up a Youtube channel called "Secular Talk".

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    1. Re:You're referring to corporate dems by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      they're not left wing Anyway if you want to know more on the difference see here [justicedemocrats.com].

      Well, they adopt third position economics. That makes them proto-fascist. So, you're correct, the Democratic party, Bernie Sanders, and the Justice Democrats are actually right wing.

  54. Re:This is why they need H1b by AaronW · · Score: 1

    This is how things worked out for me many years ago. I interned at a local tech company that sadly was past their peak and headed downward. After I graduated one of the managers I asked to offer a reference offered a job instead in a new division at another company. I didn't spend long out of college before I landed a job. As an intern I was doing some fairly sophisticated work, working on a lot of MS DOS TSRs as well as BIOS for at the time state of the art hardware. At the time I earned a decent salary, especially for an intern and college student and the overtime helped a lot as well. I graduated college with no debt and a job. Much of that began because I was very involved in programming as far back as grade school. This is long before the Internet was a thing. I was writing assembly language TSRs before I learned C and hacking on a lot of PC hardware at the time. For example, I had my own custom boot sector so I could take advantage of the extra memory in my computer without having to use a DOS TSR that rebooted the computer in order to get around BIOS limitations. We're talking mid-1980s here.

    If you want to get ahead, learn some good programming skills early. If you want to be pretty much guaranteed a job, learn how to work closely with hardware as well. Arduinos are great for this now. At the time I was growing up none of these sorts of things were available to hobbyists and information was limited without the Internet.

    --
    This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
  55. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by kamapuaa · · Score: 1

    I've been 350 pounds for last 10+ years. My nickname in school was "Titanic" not "Elephant Man".

    School bullying is looked down upon. Even professional football players who are very tall and very muscular are fucking fat at 350 lbs.

    --
    Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
  56. Re:This is why they need H1b by Tuidjy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is hardly a new thing in the tech industry. It was certainly the case in the late Nineties. We do real work, even as interns, and get paid real money.

    It's political (lobbyists, canvassers, whathaveyou...) interneships that were unpaid, and as far as I know still are. They learn vital skills like trading semi-legal favors, selling the common good to the highest bidder, etc. Paying them would be counterproductive - poor people may get in... better keep those open for people who have rich, connected parents, and can spend the Summer without income.

    --
    No good deed goes unpunished...
  57. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

    What you should so is ask one some of the security contractors/employees how they got their jobs. Then do what they did. For example they might have gone for Cisco security track first and skipped the other certifications. But good idea getting in IT security.

  58. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    What you should so is ask one some of the security contractors/employees how they got their jobs.

    CompTIA Security+ and ITIL Foundation are the baseline certifications at my current job. Beyond that it varies quite a bit. Microsoft Server and Redhat Linux certifications are common. Cisco Security is not that common. Since I previously worked at Cisco and built out a hardware rack (four switches and three routers) at home, I'll continue with that for certification.

  59. Re: This is why they need H1b by inline_four · · Score: 1

    Reality check: you're commenting about a specific real person you don't know anything about.

    --
    Alexey
  60. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    you know what's wasteful? the sac of useless meat that is you. rock bottom.

    That you keep comparing yourself to a virtual ditch digger is really sad. You must really suck among your peers who are doing much better than you. Must be that insecurity from knowing that you're one paycheck away from losing it all.

  61. Re:This is why they need H1b by pr0fessor · · Score: 1

    No there wasn't and it's not as easy to get your foot in the door anymore unless you have a long good work history. My second wife did key punch before I met her but there really wasn't any call for it by around 95 and she had no idea what she was going to do so she ended up managing a restaurant.

  62. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    [...] get paid less than the interns in silicon valley.

    You mean the overpaid interns at the top five companies in Silicon Valley? When I was an intern in the late 1990's, I got paid $10 per hour at a Fortune 500 company. Having worked at Google and Facebook on contract, I'm not overly impressed by these wasteful expenditures of money.

    are you trolling or is this your real life?

    Real life. I have a demotivational poster in my home office: "Mistakes - It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others."

    https://despair.com/collections/demotivators/products/mistakes

    if it is your real life - for god's sake - stop bragging about being a loser.

    A loser is someone who have given up. I've never given up. Eight years of Special Ed classes and skipping high school didn't prevent me from getting A.A. degree in General Education and, a decade later, A.S. degree in computer programming. Being out of work for two years and filing for bankruptcy in 2011 didn't prevent me from bouncing back and recovering financially six years later. Being told that I would drop dead at 10-, 20-, 30-, or 40-years-old because I was "morbidly obese" didn't prevent me from living.

    what the hell is wrong with you?

    These pissing matches generate quite a bit of traffic and ad revenues for my websites. Since I'm already on Slashdot, I might as well beat my own drum all the way to the bank.

  63. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    i don't know what a virtual ditch digger is.

    I'm the guy your company brings in to clean up your mess after you screwed up the project. For example, I was given a blotched printer mitigation because the engineer ran the script without verifying his work and went on vacation. Took me a month to figure out that only half of the ~1,500 printers on the old Win2K3 print servers were for existing printers, find updated drivers, and set up the Win2K12 print servers. It didn't that the engineer came back from his vacation, pulled the old print servers a month ahead of schedule, and generated 100+ help desk tickets because there was no print service for three days. When I got done and the new print servers came online, those 100+ help desk tickets auotmagically disappeared. If I haven't pulled that miracle off, I would have been fired. I'm a $50K virtual ditch digger, not $200K fuck up.

    we enjoy shitting on you.

    I appreciate the extra traffic and ad revenues to my websites. Keep up the good work, asshats!

    I can bench you 8 times.

    You probably scream like a pregnant woman when you do. Those guys are so annoying at the gym.

  64. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    This is a site for nerds (smart people).

    Awesome! I made the president's list at my community college for maintaining a 4.0 GPA in Computer Programming while taking two classes, working 60+ hours as a lead video game tester, and teaching Sunday school.

  65. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    Quick question - was the last time you saw your dick 10+ years ago?

    This morning. I used to do long-distance bike riding (20+ miles). From the waist down, my junk and legs look awesome. The rest of me, meh.

  66. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    We do not believe you.

    This picture was taken last year. Cheers and jeers!

    https://www.cdreimer.com/images/cdreimer_350.jpg

    If you're wondering about the shirt, it can be found here.

    http://6dollarshirts.com/viewer-discretion

  67. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    Do you see plumbers who change your water filter trying to contribute to forums on industrial water purification systems?

    My plumber is a woman. She's 100% dyke.

  68. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    here's a project i did. migrating about 2k windows/linux server VMs, and about 20 aix boxes from standalone and a flex farm on sharks to a cisco san on ucs and vmax3 tiered.

    The server team I work with is doing a similar project to set up Win2K12 VMs to replace physical Win2K3 and Win2K8 servers, as the older servers represent a security vulnerability in terms of patching. I don't know the exact numbers buy they're freeing up half the physical space in the data centers around the country.

    do you even know what I'm talking about?

    Yes, but only because I previously worked for Cisco and my current job is one of Cisco's larger customers.

    I've never seen what a helpdesk ticket looks like.

    That's the nice thing about my current job: 80,000+ workstations and NO USERS. The only tickets I deal with are the ones I create for the local desktop tech to go find a workstation and turn it on for me.

  69. Re: This is why they need H1b by Ryn · · Score: 1

    Reality check: Grow a pair.

  70. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    This is a community you don't belong to. You are not welcome here.

    Complain to management. However, since I'm consistently upvoted than downvoted by the mods on a daily basis, I doubt they will do anything.

  71. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    [...] you have an ethernet card for network traffic [...]

    Server motherboards have dual-NIC for redundancy or quad-NIC for channel bonding.

    [...] a host bus adapter which is connected to some disks [...]

    Those disk arrays are so damn heavy. I actually nicked the center of my palm when installing one.

    [...] and a host bus adapter which is connected to some disks [...]

    Dual cards for redundancy.

    This is about using a single card in the server to do all the different types of external IO.

    Uh, no. Single point of failure is reduced with redundant cards. At least, in my work experience at Fortune 500 companies.

  72. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    Cisco UCS guy here. Umm no, they do not have "NICs" for dedundancy. They do not have NICs at all. There are 8 servers in a module that has a bus. That bus has 2 unified IO cards that to 2 FI switches. There is no such thing as Channel bonding - there are Port Channels. Several ports in one channel, not several channels as one port - the exact opposite of what you said.

    I stand correct. I thought the discussion was general server hardware.

  73. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    If you had, you would not claim you installed one.

    I've installed Dell disk arrays.

    Please stop posting made up bullshit to draw traffic to your blog.

    The increase traffic comes from the asshats who are complaining about me. People see that, wonder why I get all this shit, and then check out my websites. I don't mind the extra $75 in ad revenues last month.

    People are trying to have a conversation here.

    That's funny. A bunch of asshats started bitching about my weight yesterday and continued this morning. If you got a complaint, take it up with them.

  74. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    are you APK?

    Nope. APK and I had our falling out a few months ago. It was epic. We've been keeping our distance since then. Slashdot would not survive we if got into it again.

  75. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    Just wanted to pop in and say, I don't know why these folks are being a**holes to you.

    If a fat person can be successful, than anyone can be successful. Some asshats have a problem with that. Casey Neistat did a video that summed up the situation.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iQ8BGw13So

    I'm sorry that you're being subject to that, tho I'm not sure why you're engaging them.

    I love trolling the trolls on Slashdot.

  76. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by kangsterizer · · Score: 1

    then you're at the border/bad area/roommate/etc
    this is all possible of course, but, please, link me to that 1900USD 2BR? Any. Please.

  77. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    Let's assume you eat 3 eggs every morning - that's 48 cents each day.

    Why do you continue to give bad dieting advice to fat people? I'm on a low-egg diet (two brown eggs per week). I can't eat 15 eggs per week.

    http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/04/01/eggs-cholesterol-levels.aspx

    You're welcome, creimer.

    STOP BEFORE YOU GET SOMEONE KILLED WITH YOUR BAD ADVICE!

  78. Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    Here's the thing: I'm not a doctor, but I *AM* giving you good nutritional advice.

    YOU ARE NOT! STOP BEFORE YOU GET SOMEONE KILLED!

  79. Re: and the cost of liveing in the bay area is ver by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    And yet, strangely incapable of refuting anything that's been offered up as advice?

    Why bother? You are obviously determined to give bad diet advice to a fat person. Not to help, but to harm. I deal with guys like you at work all the time. One asshat told me unprompted in the middle of a meeting that I needed lap band surgery — and then wondered why every treated him like douche bag after the meeting.