5 ms·

What's the benefit to these companies of having interns? Traditionally, an intern was paid a pittance because they weren't expected to produce (or at least, to

What's the benefit to these companies of having interns? Traditionally, an intern was paid a pittance because they weren't expected to produce (or at least, to produce significantly less); the intern learns things and gets a little cash, the company gets a cheap dogsbody in exchange for ensuring said dogsbody does get some useful knowledge and experience. But with this kind of payment to interns, why not just spend the money on someone who already has knowledge and experience and will produce?

bweitzman 11y ago
It's a recruiting scheme.
davidgay 11y ago
> What's the benefit to these companies of having interns? Think of it as a long-term interview and/or cheap test-hire.
wcrichton 11y ago
It's an investment in the future. There's a lot of competition for the top developers coming out of college, and if any of these devs had an internship at your company, they're much more likely to pick you for their first job.
potatolicious 11y ago
Like others have said, it's a recruitment scheme. It should also be noted that the top SV companies recruit interns primarily (and in some cases, exclusively) from top schools. Ultimately it comes down to the belief that investing heavily in a Stanford/MIT/Berkeley/CMU undergrad with no other job experience is a smarter bet than finding a less-pedigreed graduate who is already in the work force. The existence of this whole recruitment scheme - while not exactly evil in and of itself - suggest a level of credentialism that we like to pretend doesn't exist in our industry.
- Bartweiss 11y ago
  In an odd way, it's also a consequence of how little credentialism there is elsewhere in the industry. People have little faith that an arbitrary candidate (even one with prior experience) is competent, and the basic interview process is widely agreed to be inadequate. Given all that, it suddenly starts looking worthwhile to spend 3 months and $30k vetting promising recruits.
  - potatolicious 11y ago
    Agree that in theory internship programs can be a great demonstration of the lack of credentialism. Having gone through the internship gauntlet myself with an AmaGooFaceSoft company in my undergrad years, though, I could count the number of interns from non-top schools on one hand, out of a total cohort of ~300 interns. The internship mechanism would be more convincingly meritocratic if its ranks weren't almost exclusively stacked with MIT/Stanford/Berkeley/CMU/other-top-school students.
bobbyi_settv 11y ago
It's a recruiting program. The point is that you have someone work for you the summer before their senior year and then if they like it, they join you full time after graduation. It's way cheaper to pay someone $6k or whatever for a summer to recruit them and then pay them a new-hire salary than to recruit someone "who already has knowledge and experience" and pay them the appropriate salary. It's also more scalable and repeatable because you have an internship program that provides potential hires in batches funneled through colleges, whereas the experienced people you are talking about generally need to be found, courted and recruited individually.
- treehau5 11y ago
  It's also brand awareness and marketing. Said student goes back to their university and starts spreading the word on campus about "how awesome my summer was working for X!" and how many "interesting" problems they got to solve. Many places will set aside specific, "interesting" side projects solely for the interns (while the rest of us engineers wish we could work on these projects, but are busy with the mundane tasks of keeping the lights on, which I imagine if you gave an intern this task they wouldn't be so thrilled to go spread the word when they go back, so yeah there's definitely marketing involved.)
- ihsw 11y ago
  It's a pipeline, essentially. It has been established that the cost of baiting these college seniors is comparable to having recruiters attempt to woo them after they graduate, and as such. Interestingly, this contrasts heavily with the school-to-prison pipeline[1] increasingly occurring -- kids ending up in prison immediately after finishing their schooling. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School-to-prison-pipeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School-to-prison-pipeline
chrisseaton 11y ago
It sounds like you may be confusing work experience for internships. Interns often produce the best work in a group because they have fresh ideas and have the time and space to focus hard on a single hard problem, while the normal members of staff have to make things happen day to day.
- Bartweiss 11y ago
  I definitely see a lot of companies where internships are used to handle "nice-to-haves" that the main team is too busy for. It's a good balance of "we can't let this person touch our core product" and "this person is free to spend three months working on something totally outside our normal workflow".
kragen 11y ago
"why not just spend the money on someone who already has knowledge and experience and will produce?" Those people already have jobs, and they're tired of clueless tech recruiters trying to contact them. To hire them, you need to wait for their company to go out of business, or for some kind of management debacle to happen inside of it, or you need to know them personally. It doesn't really matter whether you're hypothetically willing to pay them $120k or $240k or $480k a year if they don't answer your emails because they're already quite happy where they are.
- Bartweiss 11y ago
  There's a pretty noticeable pattern where good devs with little interest in advancement will hole up at one company for decades - usually the first company they enjoy working at. As you say, bidding hard on interns is worthwhile for the chance to snap up a few long-term winners.
  - phamilton 11y ago
    The number of interns->hires I've seen that, once they got an offer, didn't even bother interviewing elsewhere is astounding. Then they stick around for 5 or 10 years. I've told many of them that they are doing themselves a disservice. I see many carry intern shenanigan baggage with them for years, limiting opportunity because they aren't taken seriously.
rayiner 11y ago
It's recruiting. When there is high competition for desirable candidates, one way to make sure they accept a full time offer with your company instead of a competitor is to pay them $30k + extravagant lunches for a summer of often worthless work product. And if it becomes a trend industry-wide to have these internships and extend full-time offers to interns, then it becomes hard not to play along, because then your pool of recruits at graduation will consist mostly of people who didn't get a full-time offer through an internship, plus a handful of people looking to "trade up."
ejcx 11y ago
Many have pointed out that it's a recruiting effort, which it is. But it's also an easy way to get rid of people who don't work out. If it's clear an intern is not performing well or not cut out, it's easier to weed them out as an intern at the end of the summer, than firing them later on.

bweitzman 11y ago

It's a recruiting scheme.

davidgay 11y ago

> What's the benefit to these companies of having interns? Think of it as a long-term interview and/or cheap test-hire.

wcrichton 11y ago

It's an investment in the future. There's a lot of competition for the top developers coming out of college, and if any of these devs had an internship at your company, they're much more likely to pick you for their first job.

potatolicious 11y ago

Like others have said, it's a recruitment scheme. It should also be noted that the top SV companies recruit interns primarily (and in some cases, exclusively) from top schools. Ultimately it comes down to the belief that investing heavily in a Stanford/MIT/Berkeley/CMU undergrad with no other job experience is a smarter bet than finding a less-pedigreed graduate who is already in the work force. The existence of this whole recruitment scheme - while not exactly evil in and of itself - suggest a level of credentialism that we like to pretend doesn't exist in our industry.

Bartweiss 11y ago
In an odd way, it's also a consequence of how little credentialism there is elsewhere in the industry. People have little faith that an arbitrary candidate (even one with prior experience) is competent, and the basic interview process is widely agreed to be inadequate. Given all that, it suddenly starts looking worthwhile to spend 3 months and $30k vetting promising recruits.
- potatolicious 11y ago
  Agree that in theory internship programs can be a great demonstration of the lack of credentialism. Having gone through the internship gauntlet myself with an AmaGooFaceSoft company in my undergrad years, though, I could count the number of interns from non-top schools on one hand, out of a total cohort of ~300 interns. The internship mechanism would be more convincingly meritocratic if its ranks weren't almost exclusively stacked with MIT/Stanford/Berkeley/CMU/other-top-school students.

bobbyi_settv 11y ago

It's a recruiting program. The point is that you have someone work for you the summer before their senior year and then if they like it, they join you full time after graduation. It's way cheaper to pay someone $6k or whatever for a summer to recruit them and then pay them a new-hire salary than to recruit someone "who already has knowledge and experience" and pay them the appropriate salary. It's also more scalable and repeatable because you have an internship program that provides potential hires in batches funneled through colleges, whereas the experienced people you are talking about generally need to be found, courted and recruited individually.

treehau5 11y ago
It's also brand awareness and marketing. Said student goes back to their university and starts spreading the word on campus about "how awesome my summer was working for X!" and how many "interesting" problems they got to solve. Many places will set aside specific, "interesting" side projects solely for the interns (while the rest of us engineers wish we could work on these projects, but are busy with the mundane tasks of keeping the lights on, which I imagine if you gave an intern this task they wouldn't be so thrilled to go spread the word when they go back, so yeah there's definitely marketing involved.)
ihsw 11y ago
It's a pipeline, essentially. It has been established that the cost of baiting these college seniors is comparable to having recruiters attempt to woo them after they graduate, and as such. Interestingly, this contrasts heavily with the school-to-prison pipeline[1] increasingly occurring -- kids ending up in prison immediately after finishing their schooling. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School-to-prison-pipeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School-to-prison-pipeline

chrisseaton 11y ago

It sounds like you may be confusing work experience for internships. Interns often produce the best work in a group because they have fresh ideas and have the time and space to focus hard on a single hard problem, while the normal members of staff have to make things happen day to day.

Bartweiss 11y ago
I definitely see a lot of companies where internships are used to handle "nice-to-haves" that the main team is too busy for. It's a good balance of "we can't let this person touch our core product" and "this person is free to spend three months working on something totally outside our normal workflow".

kragen 11y ago

"why not just spend the money on someone who already has knowledge and experience and will produce?" Those people already have jobs, and they're tired of clueless tech recruiters trying to contact them. To hire them, you need to wait for their company to go out of business, or for some kind of management debacle to happen inside of it, or you need to know them personally. It doesn't really matter whether you're hypothetically willing to pay them $120k or $240k or $480k a year if they don't answer your emails because they're already quite happy where they are.

Bartweiss 11y ago
There's a pretty noticeable pattern where good devs with little interest in advancement will hole up at one company for decades - usually the first company they enjoy working at. As you say, bidding hard on interns is worthwhile for the chance to snap up a few long-term winners.
- phamilton 11y ago
  The number of interns->hires I've seen that, once they got an offer, didn't even bother interviewing elsewhere is astounding. Then they stick around for 5 or 10 years. I've told many of them that they are doing themselves a disservice. I see many carry intern shenanigan baggage with them for years, limiting opportunity because they aren't taken seriously.

rayiner 11y ago

It's recruiting. When there is high competition for desirable candidates, one way to make sure they accept a full time offer with your company instead of a competitor is to pay them $30k + extravagant lunches for a summer of often worthless work product. And if it becomes a trend industry-wide to have these internships and extend full-time offers to interns, then it becomes hard not to play along, because then your pool of recruits at graduation will consist mostly of people who didn't get a full-time offer through an internship, plus a handful of people looking to "trade up."

ejcx 11y ago

Many have pointed out that it's a recruiting effort, which it is. But it's also an easy way to get rid of people who don't work out. If it's clear an intern is not performing well or not cut out, it's easier to weed them out as an intern at the end of the summer, than firing them later on.