6 ms·

No. We looked at what students can make at jobs on campus, and then we pegged our wage to the high end of that. CS students have plenty of options, and if you

by price 17y ago

No. We looked at what students can make at jobs on campus, and then we pegged our wage to the high end of that. CS students have plenty of options, and if you don't pay your interns well ... you won't have any interns.

nradov 17y ago
Or rather, you will only have interns from wealthy families who can afford to work for free. Better to pay them and expand the applicant pool; it doesn't cost much.
potatolicious 17y ago
You are probably aware of this already, but there's a huge pool of CS students you're cutting out by pegging yourself only above, say, Starbucks wages. Most of the major companies (MS, GOOG, etc) pay in excess of $30/hr (some as high as $40/hr) for interns. This is way, way beyond the high end of campus jobs.
- Hoff 17y ago
  And (an entirely serious question) how can one tap into this huge pool of idle CS students?
  - dfield 17y ago
    Most aren't idle. But to tap into this group, try campus recruiting?
  - potatolicious 17y ago
    I'm not quite sure what you mean - my impression from engineering and CS during college is as such: - most of this pool of students you do not want to tap into. They're the ones who will do more harm than good, assuming they were even interested in doing any work. My impression from my time in college was that the majority of my colleagues were utterly incompetent and had no real desire to become competent. There's no hope for these people, and IMHO they make up the bulk of the "there are no jobs out there!" crowd upon graduation. These are the guys who do the bare minimum on assignments and have never written a line of code that wasn't required by a class, and get indignant when their framed piece of paper doesn't automatically deliver big paychecks on a silver platter. - the rest are worthwhile talent, but competition amongst employers for many of them is fierce. I have a friend right now who has extremely high-paying offers from just about every big software shop out there, as a soon-to-graduate undergrad. In recent years I've seen MS (and some other companies) poach interns from other tech companies at the interview stage. Pay levels are quite high, approaching full-time levels in some places. As a cost-conscious startup, you have to work hard to find the people that the Big Boys have overlooked. Recruitment processes is an extremely imprecise science, and from experience I've seen a lot of qualified people unfairly rejected because of dumb things like not having the right keywords in a resume to pass the inbound filter, or edged out because they froze up on a single interview question. There are quite a few of these guys out there, but the problem is that because many do not know how to market themselves, it's hard to distinguish them from the incompetent, worthless demographic.
    - wisty 17y ago
      They've probably read Joel's article explaining how the average school leaver is likely to be much more talented than the average unemployed programmer.
  - kmod 17y ago
    Simple: - Get a bunch of well-respected people together - Create something exciting - Use your connections to find people that you know are good
- smokinn 17y ago
  But that pay rate is typically for a 4 or 8 month internship. These guys were taking advantage of the fact that MIT in particular gives the month of January to students to work on their own stuff. MS, GOOG, etc wouldn't go through the HR headache and give high pay to an intern if he/she was only going to be around for a month.
- Groxx 17y ago
  However, those internships are so highly battled over, the majority of those students won't get one, and don't even expect to. The miniscule percentage that does? They're out of the pool anyway. The remainder? Still interested in anything that pays. And keep in mind that if you offer that much for a CS intern, you'll have serious competition on your hands. Yes, you'll likely get excellent students, but you'll need to hire a small army of people to weed them out effectively if you want "the best".

by price 17y ago

nradov 17y ago

Or rather, you will only have interns from wealthy families who can afford to work for free. Better to pay them and expand the applicant pool; it doesn't cost much.

potatolicious 17y ago

You are probably aware of this already, but there's a huge pool of CS students you're cutting out by pegging yourself only above, say, Starbucks wages. Most of the major companies (MS, GOOG, etc) pay in excess of $30/hr (some as high as $40/hr) for interns. This is way, way beyond the high end of campus jobs.

Hoff 17y ago
And (an entirely serious question) how can one tap into this huge pool of idle CS students?
- dfield 17y ago
  Most aren't idle. But to tap into this group, try campus recruiting?
- potatolicious 17y ago
  I'm not quite sure what you mean - my impression from engineering and CS during college is as such: - most of this pool of students you do not want to tap into. They're the ones who will do more harm than good, assuming they were even interested in doing any work. My impression from my time in college was that the majority of my colleagues were utterly incompetent and had no real desire to become competent. There's no hope for these people, and IMHO they make up the bulk of the "there are no jobs out there!" crowd upon graduation. These are the guys who do the bare minimum on assignments and have never written a line of code that wasn't required by a class, and get indignant when their framed piece of paper doesn't automatically deliver big paychecks on a silver platter. - the rest are worthwhile talent, but competition amongst employers for many of them is fierce. I have a friend right now who has extremely high-paying offers from just about every big software shop out there, as a soon-to-graduate undergrad. In recent years I've seen MS (and some other companies) poach interns from other tech companies at the interview stage. Pay levels are quite high, approaching full-time levels in some places. As a cost-conscious startup, you have to work hard to find the people that the Big Boys have overlooked. Recruitment processes is an extremely imprecise science, and from experience I've seen a lot of qualified people unfairly rejected because of dumb things like not having the right keywords in a resume to pass the inbound filter, or edged out because they froze up on a single interview question. There are quite a few of these guys out there, but the problem is that because many do not know how to market themselves, it's hard to distinguish them from the incompetent, worthless demographic.
  - wisty 17y ago
    They've probably read Joel's article explaining how the average school leaver is likely to be much more talented than the average unemployed programmer.
- kmod 17y ago
  Simple: - Get a bunch of well-respected people together - Create something exciting - Use your connections to find people that you know are good
smokinn 17y ago
But that pay rate is typically for a 4 or 8 month internship. These guys were taking advantage of the fact that MIT in particular gives the month of January to students to work on their own stuff. MS, GOOG, etc wouldn't go through the HR headache and give high pay to an intern if he/she was only going to be around for a month.
Groxx 17y ago
However, those internships are so highly battled over, the majority of those students won't get one, and don't even expect to. The miniscule percentage that does? They're out of the pool anyway. The remainder? Still interested in anything that pays. And keep in mind that if you offer that much for a CS intern, you'll have serious competition on your hands. Yes, you'll likely get excellent students, but you'll need to hire a small army of people to weed them out effectively if you want "the best".