Interns At Tech Companies Are Better Paid Than Most American Workers (qz.com) 158
According to a survey conducted by Jesse Collins, a senior at Purdue University and former Yelp intern, interns at tech companies make much more money on an annualized basis than workers in the vast majority of other occupations. From a report on Quartz: About 300 of the nearly 600 people who responded to the survey said they had received internship offers from big companies like Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and Goldman Sachs for 2017. On average, the internship recipients said they would be paid $6,500 per month, the equivalent of $78,000 per year (the survey is still open, so results may change). Many also said they would receive more than $1,000 worth of stipends per month for housing and travel or signing bonuses. Internships typically run for a summer, but we've annualized the numbers. If the average intern who responded to Collins' survey were to work for a year, he would make $30,000 more than the average annual income for all occupations in the U.S., which is $48,000. Of the 1,088 occupation categories within which the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks average income, workers in only about 200 of them on average make more money in a year than the intern would.
Social Media overvalued (Score:1)
Film at 11
Re: (Score:2)
value of advertising... overvalued???
news flash - income varies by region (Score:2, Insightful)
A salary that is comfy in Kansas will have you sleeping in a van in Silicon Valley.
Re:news flash - income varies by region (Score:5, Insightful)
Most interns split the rent 3-5 ways. It's hard to find a rental for such a short term, and the rates tend to be pretty astronomical. Splitting a $6000/mo(+/- $1000) 4-bed/2-bath townhouse four ways is a practical way to go. But the $40/hr that an engineering intern might make in SV dries up pretty fast with rent, food and taxes.
I've lived in a decent 1-bed apartment in silicon valley (san jose) for $1200/mo. There were laundry facilities and a swimming pool and it was only a 1 mile walk to a light rail stop. It was month-to-month, no lease, but I was a long time resident and I doubt an intern that had no credit and only wanted to stick around for 3 months would get the same deal.
Re: (Score:2)
I live in a 2700 sqft house just 10 minutes from work and pay $500/month. Also own 5 acres overlooking a large lake for $200/month. I'm a 2 hour flight from and in the same time zone as Silicon Valley yet they have no interest in opening up jobs here despite the low cost yet high engineering and science skill (I have 3 degrees).
Re: (Score:3)
I live in a 1200 sqft house 15 minutes from work in the heart of Silicon Valley, and pay $3500/mo for the mortgage. I have a small lot (not much to mow at least) and a view of the hills and observatory. But if I ever leave my job there are 10 more waiting for me because I live in the Bay Area.
It is easier to get promotions at my company for people who are on site versus those who telecommute. But other than that small factor, telecommuting is a very good deal.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's probably not as fun of a ride to your observatory. The route to Mt Hamilton is covered in motorcycle riders.
Re: (Score:2)
You miss the primary advantage. I can grind away for 20 years in the Bay Area (1/2 way there already) and RETIRE AT 45 to live like a king in your area.
Re: (Score:2)
Most interns split the rent 3-5 ways. It's hard to find a rental for such a short term
It is common for Valley tech companies to rent a big house and make the rooms available either free or at a discount to summer interns.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say about a third of the big companies do that. (very rough guess)
There are definitely several companies here that do not do that.
Re: (Score:2)
A salary that is comfy in Kansas will have you sleeping in a van in Silicon Valley.
Not quite. I live in Silicon Valley and rent a studio apartment. Depending on how much IT contract work I do in a year, I make $30K to $50K. Silicon Valley can get very expensive in a hurry if you want a big house, big cars, big women and big kids. A modest lifestyle is doable in Silicon Valley if you don't mind your coworkers thinking that you're poor.
Re: (Score:2)
..., big women and big kids.
The SF Bay Area doesn't have many big women or big kids. It has one of the lowest obesity rates in America. If you go to a restaurant, even the chefs are skinny.
Re: (Score:1)
That's a bad idea (Score:2)
The recent Oakland warehouse fire of Dec 2, 2016. So far 33 found dead, 70% of the building remains to be searched. While having a place to do art, make things, play music, and hang out with like minded individuals sounds terribly romantic. Fire safety is no joke, and I really hope the cities in the Bay Area crack down hard on these sorts of artist colonies and either shut them down or ideally help them solve their code violations. (the latter option is doubtful, since it costs money)
Re: (Score:2)
Hm, you think maybe knowledge of that incident is the reason that the OP said that?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think so. I've ran into a lot of people who haven't heard the news.
But a bunch of millennial hipsters living in a warehouse has been a thing for years now. And before that the punks were doing it, before them it was the hippies, etc.
Re: (Score:3)
The recent Oakland warehouse fire of Dec 2, 2016. So far 33 found dead
Those people weren't living in the warehouse. They were attending an overcrowded concert there. The venue was in blatant violation of the fire code.
Re: (Score:1)
Not all were living there, I read that there were RV's inside the bottom floor being used as living quarters for some people and that the local code enforcement people were investigating reports of people living there.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Some people lived there or nearby. Lots of people would hang out there every day as it was effectively their primary space.
It was a place for people to meet up, make things, etc. I think such spaces are a great idea, but it's tragic that people were unwilling or unable to follow safety guidelines.
News flash: Average income is deceiving (Score:1, Flamebait)
The average income of 10th through 70th percentile - in other words, most citizens - is $32,245 / year (source, EPI Data Library - Wages by percentile.csv, 2015 [latest] row [eip.org]).
Over 40 million (out of 319 million, or about 12%) of US citizens are going hungry (feedingamerica.org [feedingamerica.org]).
The social safety net isn't safe, nor particularly social.
I'm sure we can expect relief from the Trump administration (cough... choke.)
But hey, let's worry about tech interns. My blinders need a workout anyway.
That's not a cherry, that's a gallstone (Score:2)
What I "cherry-picked" was 70% of the population.
The whole point -- which you completely missed -- was that 70% of the people are not doing well.
But don't worry, you're in considerable company.
Re: (Score:2)
The moderators clearly agree, lol.
Re: (Score:3)
Kansas doesn't need help.
Students are income tax exempt, too (Score:1)
Students are income tax exempt, too.
But it's an error to project an intern's monthly pay over the entire year. The amount they earn is for a small number of months, and has to last them the remaining 9 or 10 until the next time they can intern.
Re:Students are income tax exempt, too (Score:5, Informative)
Students are income tax exempt, too.
Bullshit. https://www.irs.gov/help-resou... [irs.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
I do remember claiming an exempt status on my taxes one year because I was a full time student and had no income. It was right on the 1040 form which is how I knew to claim it...
If that was wrong, I have never heard about it from the IRS...
Re:Students are income tax exempt, too (Score:4, Informative)
The income tax exemption is when you make under a certain amount after dependents adjustments.
And if you actually had no income at all, why would you think you would have to pay any taxes at all?
Re: (Score:2)
I think the US system is different, but in the UK you don't pay tax on the first part of your income and a student stipend is non-taxable. This means that you can live very comfortably as a PhD student: the stipend covers your cost of living and then you can earn roughly as much as someone working a full-time minimum-wage job on top of that before you start paying taxes. When I did mine, I was coming close to the tax-free allowance from consulting work, so at the end of it I'd saved enough for a deposit o
Re: (Score:2)
In the US, low income citizens pay negative tax. We call it Earned Income Tax Credit [wikipedia.org]. If you live alone and make no money (and therefore pay no income taxes), you get back a few hundred at tax return time. If you have kids, you get several thousand.
Also, the first ten thousand or so of income is non-taxable. Combined with the Earned Income Tax Credit, families with children usually don't pay taxes on the first twenty to thirty thousand dollars of income. 45 percent of the US pays no federal income tax.
Re: (Score:2)
In the US, if you actually work for a living, you get hit by FICA taxes. Income taxes are generally the most progressive out there, so it's disingenuous to look at them alone.
Re: (Score:2)
Because of EITC, the negative federal tax rate offsets FICA for incomes under $10,000. So, even factoring in FICA, most students pay no net income tax.
Re: (Score:2)
During my first tour through college, I typically worked 30 hours per week at the college bookstore. I probably made no more than $10K per year and paid zero in income taxes. Mostly because the county never took out taxes from the monthly paycheck (a huge problem for the regular staff as they needed to sit aside money for taxes) and the amount fell below the threshold for taxable income.
Re:Students are income tax exempt, too (Score:4, Informative)
So, very, very wrong. [irs.gov]
Internship income is earned income as surely as work income is earned income. You may be confusing this alleged student exemption with an exemption for dependents who earn less than the amount of the standard deduction in a year [irs.gov] (currently $6300). Which these interns would blow past in the first month.
Re: (Score:2)
But it's an error to project an intern's monthly pay over the entire year. The amount they earn is for a small number of months, and has to last them the remaining 9 or 10 until the next time they can intern.
Where did you get this? Intern money is not designed to support someone for the entire year. It's designed to give them a little bit of experience and maybe a little bit of pocket change. Some interns don't even get paid. They are not paying you more because it's only a short time. Projecting it over a full year seems perfectly reasonable. Also, how many people actually do more than one intern? Most people I know do one their Junior year and that was it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Some interns don't even get paid.
In America, unpaid internships are illegal.
Re: (Score:2)
In America, unpaid internships are illegal.
No they are not. But in the USA, in order to not have to pay them minimum wage you do have to meet certain criteria:
http://smallbusiness.findlaw.c... [findlaw.com]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/th... [forbes.com]
Re: (Score:2)
in order to not have to pay them minimum wage you do have to meet certain criteria:
The criteria are that the "intern" can't do any useful work. Which means they are a student, not an intern.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Planet 1991, apparently.
The exemption expired at the end of 1991. Apparently congress didn't renew it.
You can view historical IRS forms here:
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pr... [irs.gov]
Looks like students can no longer check "exempt" on their W4.
Why should this be surprising? (Score:5, Informative)
Many of these tech companies are located in areas that have a very high cost of living, so it's unfair to compare their intern salaries with average workers in the rest of the country. Also, many of these interns are either in high-demand programs at prestigious universities or already have degrees from them, and are doing actual productive work. They are not spending their time fetching coffee or shadowing real employees.
In my experience, technical internship programs are a good deal for both the company and the intern. They provide competent labor at a good price for the company and give students excellent opportunities for learning and growth.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Why should this be surprising? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then every place you've worked made poor use of its interns.
Re:Why should this be surprising? (Score:4, Interesting)
Then every place you've worked made poor use of its interns.
Indeed. An internship is an extended job interview. You need to give interns challenging and interesting work, both to test their abilities, and to make them want to accept your job offer when they graduate.
My company makes job offers to about half of our former interns during their senior year in college, and about 70% of those accept. We rarely hire any other graduating techs.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
That's so sad, getting the most out of them is what keeps the good one coming back, and telling their friends about your place, plus that's the best you can do for your business too. Oh well, to each its own!
Re: (Score:2)
I work for a Marketing Analytics firm. Our interns do real work so we can gauge their effectiveness should we offer them a full time position.
Honestly, I haven't seen worthless interns anywhere in the last decade; perhaps this is due to the economic climate through those years?
Re: (Score:2)
When has an intern done any actual productive work? Every place I worked, the interns were always assigned the most menial, busywork tasks that we could come up with.
a) The companies you've worked for pay interns peanuts so you get monkeys
b) The companies you've worked for have already decided they're no good and not to be hired
c) The companies you've worked for are too stupid to give them a chance to prove themselves
d) The companies you've worked for are overworked and needed a steam valve
e) The companies you've worked for are testing their ability to suck it up and endure
f) All of the above
Even if they're serious students you can end up with a lot of strange things fr
We did that at one place. Interns training for FT (Score:2)
The last place I worked, interns did menial tasks. Mostly tasks that needed to be done, though.
At my current employer, at least on my team, interns are considered in-training for the full time position we'll offer when they are about to graduate. That has worked very well. It avoids wasting several months training and weeding out full-time hires at full-time pay.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why would you bother with interns at all if this is how you treat them?
You don't have to go through the whole hiring process to come up with a fully qualified employee that you want to hang around long-term. It's not as productive, but it's still productive.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I felt p
In my experience (Score:2)
Back in my day before the visa programs we used to call people who did useful work 'employees' and they were paid as such...
Re: (Score:2)
While transitioning from a J1 internship visa to an H1B employment visa is not entirely unusual, it also isn't a particularly useful strategy for the particular example that you are citing. J1 visas are limited to at most 18 months. They are only available for recent graduates or for students who are still in school. For many countries (including India), the visa holder must return to their home country for at least one year after the end of their internship program. Even if this restriction doesn't apply,
Re: (Score:2)
What will happen to them when automation overlords arrive?
Average is not median (Score:3)
By definition, half the people minus one are below average intelligence.
Nope. By definition, half the people minus one are below median intelligence.
Re: (Score:2)
IQ, a substitute for direct intelligence metric, was shown to be normally distributed. So mean = median = mode.
Re: (Score:1)
Nope. By definition, half the people minus one are below median intelligence.
Median's just a kind of average.
This type of average is the value which minimizes the sum of [ [ absolute value of data-average] to some power]. If the power is 2 you get the mean. If the power is 1 you get the median, if the power is 0 you get the mode and if the power is infinity, you get the point mid way between the two most extreme values. There doesn't seem to be much love for the 3-average out there :)
For fun, if the number
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
av()rij/Submit
noun
1.
a number expressing the central or typical value in a set of data, in particular the mode, median, or (most commonly) the mean, which is calculated by dividing the sum of the values in the set by their number.
"the housing prices there are twice the national average"
synonyms: mean, median, mode; More
You might be thinking of the arithmetic average, which literally just translates to mean.
Re: (Score:2)
By definition, half the people minus one are below average intelligence.
This is one of my pet peeves. "Average Intelligence" is usually assumed to be a range of points on the IQ scale, not just one spot. Also, since there are more than 300 humans alive, it stands to reason that there will be quite a lot of collisions when you start hashing humans to points on the IQ scale. Since it's usually described as a bell-curve distribution, there will be a large number of humans sitting at the exact average point. So even if you believe that "average" is just one point, and not a ran
Re: (Score:2)
Read this closely (Score:3)
"On an annualized basis", meaning that the number of hours worked, or earnings per hour, doesn't figure in.
Also cost of living in SV etc., which ought to be controlled for but isn't.
I'm confused (Score:2)
So... if you look at an internship that lasts 3 months and pays ~20,000 dollars, and multiply that by 4 regardless of the fact that the internship cannot actually be extended to be a year long, then in that hypothetical world (where nobody else's salary was also multiplied by 4, only the interns), interns would make $78,000 per year, and would therefore be making more than a lot of other people. But in the real world, where we all actually live, that person made a little less than $20,000 and is at the sam
Re: (Score:2)
First, I made an error in my math (I amortized over 9 months, not 12). $19,500 / 12 is actually $1,625 gross.
Second, the cost of college. $10,000 for tuition and fees, plus another $10,000 room and board are the US average for in-state public schools. Voila, the $19,500 is gone, and without considering incidental expenses (or taxes... they'll net more like $18,500). It's gone even faster if you're out-of-state or attending a private school. Maybe they have scholarships, or maybe their parents are payin
Re: (Score:2)
That depends on where you live. Salaries vary widely by area. So do costs of living.
Re: (Score:1)
Ok, that`s great then. In my area the average starting salary is amongst the lowest in Canada, and when I've seen tech worker in that range of salary, not getting much of an increase, that was either because they weren't valued employee at all (should perhaps have chosen another domain), or they were getting ripped off and didn't know about it - which is why I suggested thinking about it.
If your area allows to live comfortably on that salary then I guess it`s possible it isn`t that bad =)
Laptop and a ponytail (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
and 75K is crap in SV. In The rest of the world 49-60K is good pay
Not that much, really (Score:1)
Try to find a 1BR place and do deposit, first, last rent on that.
Ha!
That's not even middle class.
Double my income as an intern... (Score:2)
Not far off (Score:1)
The unfortunate tr
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Umm, these internships are super elite (Score:1)
These internships are super elite so why is this surprising? Most techies are not starting out at Goldman or Google or Facebook or Twitter or even a Yelp. Getting a job at one of these place is like getting into Harvard or winning the lottery both in terms of difficulty and in terms of how it sets you up for the rest of your career. I went to a top 50 US university but no top 10 or 20. I graduated and got an internships at JPMorgan. I ended up doing 4 years at JPMorgan. That job, the ridiculously good pay,
Re: (Score:2)
Getting a job at one of these place is like getting into Harvard or winning the lottery both in terms of difficulty and in terms of how it sets you up for the rest of your career.
The easiest way to get a job at Google is to get a contract support position. I never went to high school and only had a pair of associate degrees to my name when I worked at Google in help desk and data centers. Except for the roasted duck and mac-and-cheese on Fridays, Google was no different than any other Fortune 500 company I worked for.
Re: (Score:2)
Mean vs Median (Score:2)
Also bear in mind that that "average of all occupations" figure they give there is the mean. The median is around half of that. Meaning more than half of all Americans are making $50-something thousand a year less than these interns are.
So are full-time employees at tech companies (Score:3)
At any decent engineering firm, interns are doing real work that is worth real pay so it is unsurprising that at companies where the full-time employees make a lot of money the interns make a lot too.
Annualized (Score:2)
That ISN'T a lot of money (Score:1)
Highschool Drama Teacher (Score:2)
intern ceo - "This is that" (Score:2)
this is pretty funny: "Intern Exploited for 35 years - CBC" - http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/... [www.cbc.ca]
"This is that" is a satire news radio show for those who don't pick up on it when listening.
Re:Offshoring (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Off shoring won't happen to me since they need my warm ass in the chair in case something in the warehouse goes down, only then can I leave the chair - fix it, and go back to warming that chair with my ass.
Oh, and coding an EDI system. As well as the new order process system, and writing ETL maps.
But the latter part any burger flipper can do...
Re: Offshoring (Score:1)
And you get 20% of the product you wanted. If you think outsourcing guarantees you the same product but for 20% of the cost, you're going to be surprised. 'Poor quality at a great price is no bargain' - Japanese saying.
Re: (Score:2)
Also see the last story for why CEOs think it is worth it. IT workers are expected to be working toward putting other workers, including themselves out of the job. They don't succeed all at once but they do the shrink the pool a group at a time and eventually all the pieces will have been developed to accomplish this.
Re: (Score:2)
Every time I do that, it grows more heads!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yet IT workers are supposedly out of work.
Uhh ... no. Tech unemployment has been 3% or less for years.
Re: (Score:3)
CEO earns 10x what I do but does he work 10 times as hard?
When I worked at Cisco in October 2013, my contract came up during an announced layoff period and my boss was prevented from renewing my contract. The CEO got a 60% raise for having a lousy fiscal year. I was unemployed for eight months, had 60 job interviews, and had three job offers pending when I accepted my current position in government IT.
Re: (Score:2)
Seems sane to me. When I was an intern (erm, 14 years ago...) I started at $12 an hour and ended at $15 an hour I think. Just barely enough to live off of in my area, if full time, but not if paying for classes at the same time.
Re: (Score:2)
Just barely enough to live off of in my area, if full time, but not if paying for classes at the same time.
When I went back to school to learn computer programming at community college, my education was free thanks to a $3,000 tax credit that George W. signed into law, I was working 60 hours per week as a lead video game tester and made the college president's list for maintaining a 4.0 GPA in major. It really depends on how badly you want it.
Re: (Score:2)
Want what? Those were the top intern wages in this area, which also has a very low cost of living. I'm doing just fine here thanks.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
These tend to be very highly qualified interns, though. Landing an internship that pays this well requires a grueling interview process. And most applicants have advanced degrees (typically PhD's from the more well-known universities). It is generally a good way to enter the work force. In fact, without any other job experience to show for, this is often the only way to enter the work force. And at the end of the internship, most interns will be offered a full time position.
So, if you think of the type of i