Ask HN: How to negotiate a summer internship salary? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to negotiate a summer internship salary?

1 pointSyntaf4 comments

Hi all, I recently applied, and was accepted, to work as an intern for a web development company here in town. I'm in my last year of college, and feel I need the internship experience to make transitioning out of school into a web dev position easier.

Problem is: they're lowballing the salary really hard. I was just emailed I'd be making $12/hr, which is waaaaay low because I make $22/hr at my non-web related CS job right now. I have 4 years of summer internships / side research work under my belt so I definitely feel I deserve a considerably higher salary.

How do I go about negotiating this? Do I send them an email saying I feel I deserve a higher salary? Or not mention a number and ask to meet in person to discuss salary?

Thanks for any tips

Just ask. You can use your other job as leverage.

The fact is, you specifically say that you "feel I need the internship experience to make transitioning out of school into a web dev position easier."

Considering this is your only offer (I assume), you don't have a ton of leverage for getting more money.

As for logistics, email or phone is fine. In-person is just awkward for what amounts to a 5-minute phone call. They'll be back and forth on their end.

While this is my only offer, the internship I am currently at wishes to keep me for the summer (they are unaware that I received this offer).

I simply would enjoy the work at this other company more, but not enough to consider slashing my pay in almost half.

Do you think specifically mentioning my current pay is a good idea?

What state is the job in? Is it possible that $12/hr is actually under the minimum wage?

I reside in Las Vegas, so $12/hr is above the minimum wage.

The issue is that the university here has quite the poor CS curriculum, and pumps out a lot of sub par programmers. This company is probably used to taking in interns with zero web dev experience and paying them a low wage (because the student doesn't know better)

My case is a bit different, I feel comfortable with web technologies and will be able to give a lot more. Problem is their proposed salary is just toooooo low.

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