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$45/hr is about what I was paid as a grad-student intern at Apple ... 15 years ago.
by stephencanon 6y ago
$45/hr is about what I was paid as a grad-student intern at Apple ... 15 years ago.
- akiselev 6y agoIt's also about what a Mozilla intern would get paid ten years ago.
- saagarjha 6y agoThis is also around what an Apple intern would get today as an upperclassman in college. (Without including benefits, of course.)
- dharmab 6y agoIt's way less than I made working in the IT departments of medium-size non-tech companies.
- giantg2 6y agoI have a salary that would work our to less than $45/hr, with extra hours dragging it down further.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- munk-a 6y agoMost people do - but don't hesitate to put more value in your labour and look for other career opportunities. The world is pretty unjust at a basic level and if you're waiting for someone to acknowledge your excellence and land a big payday in your lap you'll be waiting for a long time. A big piece of career advice I have for any folks that feel like they're in dead-ends or are just getting started is that, in modern society, you should be constantly expending time and energy to ensure you're in the most personally rewarding position - the world is a cruel place where the socially awkward and introverted have a constant uphill battle to not be exploited. Oh and we're all super lucky to be in tech because in a lot of other fields there is just no way to advance yourself.
- batty_alex 6y ago> A big piece of career advice I have for any folks that feel like they're in dead-ends or are just getting started is that, in modern society, you should be constantly expending time and energy to ensure you're in the most personally rewarding position - the world is a cruel place where the socially awkward and introverted have a constant uphill battle to not be exploited. This was both uplifting and an apt commentary on how to survive in the modern age. Well said. > Oh and we're all super lucky to be in tech because in a lot of other fields there is just no way to advance yourself. I feel like this is a pretty cynical take. Really, what's happening is that more and more jobs are becoming tech jobs. It may not be as glamorous as going to stand-ups each morning, but there's plenty of opportunity out there and we're just in an awkward transition period where societies are trying to play catch-up with, historically-speaking, a lot of changes in a short amount of time. Whether that transition ends with peace or chaos is going to depend on how easy the transition is made for everyone
- nineteen999 6y ago> It may not be as glamorous as going to stand-ups each morning I must have extremely different definition of glamorous to you.
- rezonant 6y agoAgreed- we don't even turn on the webcams for those
- imtringued 6y ago>Most people do - but don't hesitate to put more value in your labour and look for other career opportunities. The world is pretty unjust at a basic level and if you're waiting for someone to acknowledge your excellence and land a big payday in your lap you'll be waiting for a long time. It is also economically inefficient. If you are worth $100k/y and you sell yourself for $50k/y then you are basically doing charity for your company. If you really cared about charity you would ask for the higher salary and then donate the money yourself. What really happens is that you are keeping an economically inefficient company alive. That's not just bad for you but also for the economy as a whole because your "talents" are being wasted. >Oh and we're all super lucky to be in tech because in a lot of other fields there is just no way to advance yourself. It's the opposite. Low skill jobs are drying up. Most of them are going overseas. Getting a high skilled job is not luck, developed countries are restructuring their economies to specialize in high skilled jobs.
- lnenad 6y agoI mean that is a great salary all in all, be happy with what you have.
- dylan604 6y agoIf you make that while trying to live in SF/SV area, then it's probably hard to do. If you make that, and you live in nearly any where else, your money suddenly goes further. If you take it one step further, and make the same money but live in a state without state income taxes, your money goes even further. Keeping up with the Jones in the SF/SV area is quite expensive. Just a bunch of sentences to say that $/hr isn't the end all, but a decent at-a-glance way of comparing.
- stephencanon 6y agoNah, you can live very comfortably in SFBA on that even now. You’re not going to own the big house in the suburbs or the penthouse apartment, but you’ll still be better off than most people, can have a nice car, go out when you like, have nice clothes and lots of books, etc.
- saagarjha 6y agoOn $45/hour? I can see not starving on that, but you're probably going to be sharing an apartment…
- stephencanon 6y ago$45/hr full-time is $90k pre-tax, $65k after tax in CA. That’s $5400/month. If you have to pay for daycare or similar expenses, that’ll be a stretch, but you can definitely have your own pretty nice apartment and plenty left over for expenses and saving with that.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jimbob45 6y agoSalaries on HN are the new penis sizes on Reddit. Everyone is 15+ inches and making six figures minimum and if you're not, you're pathetic and are getting taken advantage of.
- astrange 6y agoWell, if you live in SFBA the interns are making six figures (equivalent per hour). Everyone's still living in a studio apartment though.
- raverbashing 6y agoSix figures, 10+ hours a day (including all meals at the FAANGPlex) but having to live in bunk beds if they want a rent under 4 digits. Not a very healthy situation, even now with everybody WFH
- saagarjha 6y agoNobody is forcing you to eat at work, nor should you be working 10+ hours a day if you don't want to (it's an easy way to get overtime, though).
- saagarjha 6y agoI know Apple pays for intern housing; I would think that most of the other large companies would too?
- imtringued 6y agoWell, if you subscribe to the idea that at least some of those jobs could be done remotely then it would not be that far from the truth.
- willis936 6y agoI have an MSEE working as an engineer on a cutting edge physics project making the salaried equivalent of... $31/hr. HN is great, but it really is not an accurate sample of real world wages.
- mobiledev2014 6y agoI’m not an EE and I think that’s an underrepresented group on HN, but... you are surely underpaid
- willis936 6y agoOh I know. Paying off student loans or owning a house aren’t in the cards, but the work is stimulating and the colleagues are smart and open minded.
- perryizgr8 6y agoTell me if I'm calculating this incorrectly. $45 * 8 (hours a day) * 22 (days a month) * 12 (months) = $95k You were getting paid the equivalent of $95k/year as an intern??
- evilos 6y agoFun fact you can approximate hourly rate to yearly salary roughly just by multiplying by two. $45/hr roughly 90k ish
- coopierez 6y agoSilicon Valley salaries are something else. ARM in Cambridge paid their interns something like £20-22K around 5 years ago. No wonder almost none of them stayed on as graduates.
- junipertea 6y agoInterns don't stay for a whole year, but yeah, this is typical internship salary (it might have gone to 55+ now) at FAANG.
- stephencanon 6y agoYes, that’s correct. Of course, interns don’t generally work 40 hour weeks for a full year, so in practice my W2 income was more like $55k. I was originally hired for the summer at $35/hr or so, and then got a raise at the end of the summer when they asked me to stay on part-time during the school year.