Printable View
Hello. First post...
I have to do a 6-months internship (placement), from April - September, and I was wondering if you know of any good companies that offer this opportunity. I am not asking for small software houses, I'm sure there are many of them that can do that. I more asking about big companies, like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, IBM etc.
Does anyone have any idea if they offer placements for 6 months?
Have a good day!
EDIT: I'm looking for companies in the US...
...They all do...
The best way to get an internship is to go to a career fair at a local university, where these companies specifically come to recruit.
So, you want to skip the small company stage where you work in a closely knit group of friends who grab beers after work while producing amazing new stuff, and jump straight to the soul-crushing faceless monstrosity stage.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dush
Hmm. Odd choice.
Unless maybe you mean an oppressive bunch of nobodies to whom you will be serving coffee and forced to mimic in a friendly way, with little prospect of finding subsequent employment or gaining real experience. :p I have heard small organizations are more prone to abusing the possibilities of "internment" but I guess this will vary widely. Some people might rather "jump straight to the soul-crushing faceless monstrosity stage" in the hopes of avoiding "the soul-crushing, easily identified, tedious nowhere stage".Quote:
Originally Posted by brewbuck
At big companies like Microsoft, IBM, etc, interns work on fun stuff like unit tests, build environment scripts, and performance testing. At small companies, interns work on boring stuff like software design, critical bug fixes, and design implementation.Quote:
Originally Posted by brewbuck
Oh wait...
Not necessarily. I did my internship for a relatively large company, and my project as an intern was relatively large and included loads of new feature development. It was a fun project.Quote:
At big companies like Microsoft, IBM, etc, interns work on fun stuff like unit tests, build environment scripts, and performance testing. At small companies, interns work on boring stuff like software design, critical bug fixes, and design implementation.
I pity those who have to write unit tests all day long every day...not that they aren't necessary, just that that's not what this job is all about.
I admit my sample size is small, as I'm not in the habit of changing companies very much.Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidP
I started as an intern at a small company (12 people) and stayed there almost 9 years. By the time I left I was the technical overseer for a two million line project.
Now I'm at a somewhat larger (90 people) company but it still feels like a small company. My experience of huge companies is admittedly through what my friends have told me. I know many people who've worked for IBM and Intel.
The size of the company has nothing to do with the quality of work you'll be doing...
Yes I could go to careers fairs, but I live in London so I don't have that option.
Right now Google appears not to have any places for interns (from their website).
I'd also like to live in New York for some time, or a similar town, but I don't know what companies are located there (the ones I know are located in Silicon Valley).
I'll hazard a mildly educated guess and say that most of the computer firms here are not huge and service Wall St, eg, doing web-dev. Large software development companies would be located next door, in New Jersey, where they have things like industrial parks, which are an impossibility in NYC (I've lived here for 3 1/2 years and still not seen a single one).Quote:
Originally Posted by Dush
And, honestly, I've travelled enough of NA to tell you: there is no similar town ;)
Maybe this is possible in large large companies where the process is more automatic, but I can't imagine a company sponsoring a visa for you to come over and be an intern for six months; that's a reasonable investment of time, paperwork, and money and most probably wouldn't think it would be worth it, I would expect (unless you're a US citizen already). (Edit: This is assuming you need a worker visa for an internship, which actually I don't know, but presumably it's something you should check.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Dush
Our interns were utilized quite well and we made sure they received good hands-on experience. We didn't want to delegate the trivial boring tasks to them b/c we did not want to discourage them. This year our interns did amazingly well and contributed quite a bit to our project. The best thing for the interns, however, was the fact that they were able to just leave the project and go back to school while the rest of us are still stuck hammering away at it.
We even had a team send off for our interns at a local restaurant. Normally we like to look at interns as possible future employees and so we attempt to make their experience both educational and enjoyable with the hopes that when they graduate they might want to become a full-time member of the team.
This might actually backfire on you and turn you off to the industry as a whole. Google is probably the best in the list but by no means do these big companies have a patent on how to run a happy yet productive dev studio. Each company is different and the atmosphere's equally as different. Don't discount small studios just b/c you want to be at some big name company. Big names do not equal happiness much like small studios also do not automatically equal happiness. Interview for some intern positions and see which one fits you best. You are going to want your first experience to be a pleasant one.Quote:
I more asking about big companies, like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, IBM etc.
In my opinion you are limiting yourself by only wanting to intern at big companies. There are thousands and thousands of companies out there where you can gain valuable internship experience and no two are alike so why limit yourself to just a few?
The reason I'm limiting myself to just a few is because I've already worked for a big company, so I'm looking for something bigger. I'd rather go back to my old company than going to a small software house, cause yes it might be super-fun in a small company but:
1. It the name of the company that counts in the end
2. The salary won't be competitive
Have you guys considered working in the IT department of an Investement Bank?
That is where you are mistaken. Sort of arrogant for you to assume you 'know' so much about every small company out there don't you think?Quote:
1. It the name of the company that counts in the end
2. The salary won't be competitive
If you hadn't noticed it is the small companies that have weathered and are weathering the recession better b/c they usually have less overhead and less debt.
Of the two reasons you give, this is the most devastating. I won't discuss the salary. You obviously associate big names to big salaries. A mistake you'll realize soon enough. No need for me to go into a tirade.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dush
But less obvious is that idea quoted above.
Show me indeed a resume with names like NASA, NSA or Microsoft in there and I'll be impressed. But what did you do there? That will be the first question I will look for in your resume. And that is the one that will get you or not the job. Dig it?
Now, for you to even have a glint of hope to come out of a job at NASA that doesn't involve serving coffees, you had to have some sort of hands-on experience and revealed some sort of rare or extreme know-how. These are the skills and features you can only learn and train in obscure small to mid-size companies. Those companies that are indeed the backbone of technological development under most circumstances. Just so you have an idea, NASA doesn't do it anymore (heck! did they ever?). They buy it already done. So, it's those small companies the ones that under most circumstances will shape your future and will guarantee you a comfortable seat on a big company later on in your career.
...
If your desire is to show off your resume with big names, you are in for a short career. A big company cannot ever directly compete with the small companies development cycles, simply because there's too many of them. So under most circumstances they either buy them out, buy their findings or imitate. Only a handful of new technologies get to be developed by them. And guess who will be developing them? Not you. No sir. Remember? You don't have any of the experience or know-how you would have acquired had you worked for one of these small obscure companies you seem to like to ignore.
OK that is perfect, so you guys go and apply to those small companies and leave Google, Apple, Cisco, eBay etc to me. Because we all know that people who work there have boring jobs, and we all know that if we had the chance to work there we'd turn them down. Right.
Dude, we're just trying to impress upon you the fact that the name of the company you work for doesn't matter in the end, it's what you do and what you learn while doing it. Small companies often have just as good of salaries as bigger companies.Quote:
OK that is perfect, so you guys go and apply to those small companies and leave Google, Apple, Cisco, eBay etc to me. Because we all know that people who work there have boring jobs, and we all know that if we had the chance to work there we'd turn them down. Right.
Last summer I was offered an internship at a relatively large company (about 5000 employees worldwide, but about 2500 employees at their main campus), but not near as large as some of the major players (Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc.). After considering this internship, I also received a call from Apple saying that they had an internship spot available. I asked Apple what I'd be doing. They said some sort of jibberish that in the end I took to really mean "data entry". I was like, "um.....bye", and I went and worked for the other company and loved my internship there.
Most companies have very competitive salaries, regardless of size, otherwise it'd be hard to hire good programmers who get the job done.Quote:
1. It the name of the company that counts in the end
2. The salary won't be competitive
When you say that it's "the name of the company that counts", that worries me. You sound like an MBA student who's sole intent is on "networking" and "getting your name out there"....and as much as you do that it won't help you an ounce in life unless you got some good experience to back it up.
Lol. That was precious. You are the cutest greenie.Quote:
OK that is perfect, so you guys go and apply to those small companies and leave Google, Apple, Cisco, eBay etc to me. Because we all know that people who work there have boring jobs, and we all know that if we had the chance to work there we'd turn them down. Right.
You'd be surprised at the experience of many in here and the places they work on. You come here and after 4 posts already assume you know more than people that are working in the industry for more than 20 years.
All the best to you. Bye!
Dude, I am not saying the name of the company is the only thing that matters. Obviously, what you make out of it is what counts, and also that's what you're probably gonna talk about in an interview, so it has to be good. And yes, I wouldn't go to a big firm if I they wanted me for unit testing.Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidP
For some reason people here _assume_ that I won't care about the quality of the work I'll be doing. But even worse, they go on assuming that bigger companies will give you ..........ty tasks, which is just... ignorant? stupid? You name it.
So Apple wanted you for data entry? Are you sure you applied to the right department? Maybe they thought you can't do better than that?
This summer I've had my internship with a company that has 10,000+ employees and I loved it. I was given 2 big projects to finish, and I found it very interesting.
And yes, the name of the company counts a lot, cause if you have to choose between 2 applicants who both did good projects, you're gonna go with the one from the big company, cause you know that it was much harder for them to get accepted there. Everything else is nonsense.
Absolutely not. I would go with the one who impressed me more during the interview.Quote:
And yes, the name of the company counts a lot, cause if you have to choose between 2 applicants who both did good projects, you're gonna go with the one from the big company, cause you know that it was much harder for them to get accepted there. Everything else is nonsense.
Case in point:
While a student at BYU, I worked for a department where we did some PHP web development. All of us programmers were students (since it was a university department, it was a great place for students to get work experience). One of our programmers left when he graduated, and so we had the opportunity to interview students who wanted the available programming job.
Many students applied. Some of them had beautiful resumes with internships in high places. Who did we choose for the job? We chose a freshman computer science student who had no outside internship experience, because he truly impressed us during his interview.
Really? Are you sure? Like positively sure?Quote:
Originally Posted by Dush
Sorry but I find that hard to believe. It's alright though; you can ignore me and my ways.
As for your initial question. If you know everything as you seem to do, why do you ask? Shouldn't you be an expert, or something like that, in big company job markets? Please don't waste our time with questions to which you know the answer already. No one here is going to be impressed with your antics. Although we do thank you for the trip down memory lane when we too were sweet fools.
Yeah. That's it. We've all been there. Don't fret.
OK good, but the other thing is that you get interviews more easily when you have good names to back up your work experience. If you screw up in the interview that's a different story, but at least you had your chance...Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidP
@Mario F: Em, do you think I signed up here cause I wanted to impress some strangers on the internet? Impress them with what? With the company i did a st**pid little internship?
Let's me try again because I feel tension in the air.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dush
1st. Just to clear something here. No one is trying to convince you to go the way you don't want to. What however is being argued is your notion of what small companies are and what they can offer in the job market. You are totally and irrevocably wrong. And this comes from people that know well the market and have been in and around it for more than 2 decades. More importantly you are ignoring the arguments of people that actually have been making exactly this type of decisions for the past years. People that decide who does and who doesn't get accepted.
The least anyone would expect was for you -- in case, understandably, you don't want to listen to us -- to at least question your current belief and say something in the lines of "ok. I'm not so sure. But i'll keep that in mind." Because let me tell you, that attitude you reveal, if caught by an interviewer, will almost certainly mean you will not get the job no matter your resume and the shinny company names in there. Personally I already don't want you working for or with me.
As for your "2 big projects"... well, I guess you know where I'm headed. They weren't that big (because really you don't deliver big projects in big companies to just one person), and you weren't really expected to finish anything they haven't already (because you don't trust a company's business to an intern). It's ok though. Part of the fun is making the intern feel the pressure. It's part of the evaluation.
Just want to comment on the two big projects I did. Yes, they weren't exactly big, my internship was 10-weeks long. And the second one wasn't finished to the point I wanted it, cause people were undecided how they wanted the program to look like.
The first one was to be used internally, so even if i screwed it up, clients wouldn't know. It was a project to make life easier for my team. (It's gonna be used by another department within the company).
Second one was client-facing, and it was gonna be used by _a lot_ of clients. I had to add functionality to a program they already have, but they couldn't decide on the new UI so in the end I had the back-end to work, but the front-end needed 1-2 more days of work, and a lot of testing.
You speak rubbish and sound as-if you haven't even started your internship.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dush
Speaking of which, I would really like not to do my internship at Microsoft, IBM or Google. Since those sort of companies seem to take pleasure in taking your ideas and crushing your soul.
> You speak rubbish and sound as-if you haven't even started your internship.
OK... and why do I sound like I haven't started my internship?
> Speaking of which, I would really like not to do my internship at Microsoft, IBM or Google. Since those sort of companies seem to take pleasure in taking your ideas and crushing your soul.
So that's why Google and Microsoft are successful, because they are crashing the soul of their employees. And if that's what you're afraid of - that your ideas will be "stolen", can you give me an example of a great idea you had, you implemented it and you made lots of money from it?
Well if I were interviewing you for an internship at our company and I picked up on this attitude in the slightest little bit the answer of my fellow co-workers and my answer would be a huge no. Quite plainly your attitude sucks and I wouldn't want you demoralizing the rest of the team with your arrogant assumptions that small companies are somehow worse than big companies. Remember that behind every 'giant' you see touted in tech news there are several groups of small supporting companies that assisted them with their products.
If you take this attitude with company selection what type of attitude do you take when programming? It seems that you have a 'my way' or the 'highway' type of attitude and that simply will not cut it on a development team. You also seem more concerned with looks and appearances than anything else. Maybe you should try to become a project manager instead of a developer.
Quite frankly you are arrogant and pretty much the exact type of person I would never want to work with. I find the ones who are the most arrogant and cocky about this or that are the worst programmers regardless of what they know.
Do yourself a favor and grow up a bit before you do anything. You are talking to many many people here who are already in the industry and who have dealt with or who used to be people just like you. Trust us when we tell you that your current mindset is not going to take you very far at all. For me attitude is just as much a determining factor in an interview as technical ability.
If you have already done an internship then what is this thread about? If you already know the answer then why did you ask us?
Well, that might be why a small company is inappropriate for some people. Large companies are usually bound by certain laws, etc. whereby it will be difficult for them to have an across the board policy like "we don't hire women or black people, we frown on communists, etc", whereas with a small company it is possible to do this. That may seem like a lucky thing if you are a white guy, until you meet the rest of the white guy gang :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Bubba
By extrapolation, a large company can afford to not worry too much about an individual's attitudes about many things (as long as it does not affect their performance), and may even benefit from certain kinds of diversity. Ideally, I would like to think that small companies could provide greater individual freedoms to their employees, but in my real experience, this has not been true at all unless you "fit right in" -- which makes the whole idea that "freedom" is involved very very theoretical. Perhaps this is because smaller companies may be more easily consumed about growth and "fitting in" themselves, and so are more easily frightened by diversity because it could be a liability (no changes to the recipe please!).
That statement is ignorant. All companies are bound by those laws. But attitude and qualifications are not a protected category where as race, gender, religion, etc. are protected categories. If you take all measuring sticks away then you effectively have to hire everyone and I hope we never get there. To make reference to the fact that what I am doing is somehow illegal or inappropriate is offensive and uncalled for. I assure you that attitude is not a protected category in my area.Quote:
Well, that might be why a small company is inappropriate for some people. Large companies are usually bound by certain laws, etc. whereby it will be difficult for them to have an across the board policy like "we don't hire women or black people, we frown on communists, etc", whereas with a small company it is possible to do this. That may seem like a lucky thing if you are a white guy, until you meet the rest of the white guy gang
And I appreciate diversity as much as the next person but I also know that poor attitude is very hard to fix and hard to work with and can reduce production or completely demoralize a team. Diversity is absolutely necessary but troublesome employees are not. I would say that the company I work for has people from at least 10 different nations and it is very cool to be able to work with them.
The attitude we are discussing here could reduce performance if carried into the job.Quote:
By extrapolation, a large company can afford to not worry too much about an individual's attitudes about many things (as long as it does not affect their performance), ...
You do make some good points there. However my experience has been more diversified. I did enjoy many personal freedoms while working for small companies, down to the point of being able -- and encouraged! -- to use their resources to develop my personal projects (and retain ownership), provided that didn't interfere with the deadlines.Quote:
By extrapolation, a large company can afford to not worry too much about an individual's attitudes about many things (as long as it does not affect their performance), and may even benefit from certain kinds of diversity. Ideally, I would like to think that small companies could provide greater individual freedoms to their employees, but in my real experience, this has not been true at all unless you "fit right in" -- which makes the whole idea that "freedom" is involved very very theoretical. Perhaps this is because smaller companies may be more easily consumed about growth and "fitting in" themselves, and so are more easily frightened by diversity because it could be a liability (no changes to the recipe please!).
All in all, I'd think you can find a little of everything everywhere. Be it a small or big company. But the comparatively large numbers of small companies added to a smaller number of employees, provide better odds of finding a nice working environment where one can feel right at home.
Curiously my best experience ever was on a large company. But statistically that means little. Because in contrast I've had more good experiences in small companies than large ones.
One last thought though, probably much less congenial; I'm not a fan of happily married, multi-cultural, democratic working environments such as those found in large corporations. Tensions tend to amount. Human relationships, no matter our efforts, are eventually based in familiarity to ideas and to behaviors. There is also a certain loss of individuality... ugh, I'm not sure I can explain this. In any case, I always felt more at home in smaller companies where I can better adapt to the rules and behavior being that they are less diversified, and where I can also better have a feel for my individual contribution.
Well, just to be factual, in the United States and Canada at least, many or most laws of this sort (eg, affirmative action) do not apply to small businesses, so the ignorance is all yours. Of course, you cannot put a sign up "we only hire white men", but if that is all you do, it won't matter. The upshot being at a large corporation, you are guaranteed a diversified environment; at a small one, you are not. I'm not arguing the rightness or wrongness of that, since I agree it is a bit much to look at a small business and say, okay, you have twenty people, we want 10 women, etc. That's no good.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bubba
But if you are someone who is more comfortable with diversity than homogeneity, then that could be a real consideration.
Yeah, it's basically life experience that would lead me to take this position, since philosophically I am far more in favour of the small tight knit operation vs. the corporation. But I would have to lie to make this fit my reality. The best employer I ever had was a large pseudo co-op (eg, that had employees like me that did not have to buy a share) altho the job was boring.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mario F.
I've had bad and good experiences at large and small companies, but ultimately I have to say the small ones seemed more prone to autocratic/absurd behaviour by management, perhaps because "the boss" really was the boss and didn't have to answer to anything, so his or her authority was totally arbitrary. A lot of small business managers are power trippers who could not hack being managed themselves in a corporate hierarchy. They don't want to have to obey rules, they want to make them for others. That is the dark side of the high-minded, over-idealized "entrepreneur" figure -- it's a mini chieftain!
If you are sufficiently oddball (which I probably am, and have been most of my life*), you can get hired by some small companies, and most large ones, but there are a lot of small ones where you are totally wasting your time -- those people will not hire you, period.
I'm not complaining about that, since I probably don't want to work there either, but I could empathize with a perspective vis, I do not want to bother with the in-house politics of small companies, period, because IMO even the "nice" ones are nothing special anyway, unless you want to wear those rosy glasses they make for you. That's business. Altho perhaps that is not where the OP is coming from.
* I will even put that down to something as banal and ridiculous as having long hair (as a man) and refusing to cut it.
I just want to comment on this:
>Well if I were interviewing you for an internship at our company and I picked up on this attitude in the slightest little bit the answer of my fellow co-workers and my answer would be a huge no.
You know what? I believe that the very few people who would be able to complete their projects, meet deadlines, be relatively good at programming etc, and that actually do have this kind of attitude that you think I have (I don't, but that's a different story), you wouldn't be able to pick on this attitude in an interview. Sure, you could catch some people with this attitude, but those people wouldn't be good at anything else anyways. The ones that would be good otherwise, you wouldn't know until you work with them for some time. But it's not so common to find people like that, and I think I was lucky enough in my life to meet one. Just my arrogant opinion for you, all-knowing Mr. Bubba.
> If you have already done an internship then what is this thread about? If you already know the answer then why did you ask us?
Well I wanted to know if my beloved community has any suggestions for companies especially in New York.
Like I said before, look in New Jersey, not New York. It is a separate state, you take a bridge over the Hudson River from Manhattan, you are in New Jersey. If you want to commute, that is lucky since you will be against the grain of the normal gridlock.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dush
NYC is not a high tech place. There is little to no industry. The economy is based on entertainment and finance.
You could also google for stuff on Long Island, which is like the extended suburbs but outside the city limits; there is far more infrastructure supportive of stuff like that there.
The ignorance here is that you assume I'm from a small company when you actually don't know anything about my employer or me for that matter.Quote:
...do not apply to small businesses, so the ignorance is all yours.
http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/vii.html
According to this any company with 15 or more employees are bound by the EEOC laws.
It is you who appears to be all knowing and incapable of seeing things from a different perspective other than your own.Quote:
But it's not so common to find people like that, and I think I was lucky enough in my life to meet one. Just my arrogant opinion for you, all-knowing Mr. Bubba.
It is pointless to argue with ignorance. But this has gone too far and I remove myself from the discussion for the sake of the thread.
I do apologize for the direction this thread has taken.
Whoa, whoa! Wait a minute there. Do you mean to tell me that in the Land of Freedom and Equal Rights, God bless, if a person constructs a solid court case in that they weren't hired solely on the basis of their sex, sexual orientation, religion or race, they are never going to win if the company is a small company?Quote:
Originally Posted by MK27
Think again.
Diversity doesn't come from equal numbers. That is a strong fallacy and it is at the basis of your strange and mistaken view of small companies.Quote:
I'm not arguing the rightness or wrongness of that, since I agree it is a bit much to look at a small business and say, okay, you have twenty people, we want 10 women, etc. That's no good.
But if you are someone who is more comfortable with diversity than homogeneity, then that could be a real consideration.
To be clear, I don't question your assumption that big companies do generally have a more clear plan towards diversity. But lack of a plan, doesn't mean that:
a) Diversity can't happen spontaneously on a small company worried in hiring for the business (many small companies already understand the apparent benefits of cultivating a diversified working environment).
b) Diversity will not affect the ability of some specialized company to hire "only the best" and is thus not a priority (as it shouldn't).
c) Big companies, that advertise diversified working environments, are going to follow through with the costs associated in cultivating that environment behind their closed doors. It's just not hiring. It's actually promoting within a diversified environment.
I do question your notions when it is clear that the United States are still the Land of Opportunity and that immigrants are fairly distributed among all types of companies (I need a quote, I know). Or that racial or religious distribution of jobs almost certainly show that small companies make no distinction. In fact, in my 22 year career (which included 4 years in Canada and 7 in Australia) I can safely say without any reservations whatsoever, I have never, even once, worked in a company where I didn't meet a diversified group of workmates. And incidentally I was made to be felt as a lousy immigrant at a certain large database company in Canada when I have never felt, or was made aware of anyone else being treated differently (for better or for worse) anywhere else.
...
In the end generalizations are dangerous in this area. Especially because they can never be true. To say that small companies tend to be less diversified or that tend to be places where the boss hand is felt more severely is ignoring a huuuge number of companies where this ain't so.
In contrast I could say large companies tend to dispose of you more easily than small companies, because in all their diversity and respect for the human being, they forgot to respect you. And yet, know what? That isn't very true either. Many large corporations are more conscious about the value of their employees. Up to the level of small companies.