Ask HN: To Intern or Not To Intern? Share your experiences. | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: To Intern or Not To Intern? Share your experiences.

5 pointsintern3 comments

Has anybody had a really good experience? Why was it great?

I got burned by an internship last summer--essentially promised an awesome learning developer position, but got stuck doing data entry and trivial updates on existing projects. As you can imagine, after that I was hesitant to touch anything associated with the word 'intern.'

I'd like to hear about the differences of interning at a large company (Google/Microsoft/Apple) vs. small, young (funded) startups.

thanks.

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I interned at a large company - there's a good chance you have one of their products in your pocket right now - a few summers ago, and a had a really great experience. I ended up being able to do much more than my initial position promised, and the other members of my team were all about mentoring and helping me grow. Like many things we do, it's somewhat of a crapshoot - but if you work hard, act like you're a full-time employee (and demand to be treated like one), and contribute, you should hopefully end up with a good experience.

Something to look out for is also the number of interns that the company has; I would say that more is better. Not only will you have a peer group of fellow young ambitious people to network with, but if there's a large intern population then it's likely that the company has spent some time and effort devising programs for internship mentors, giving them time to do that in their plans, etc. - whereas if they're not used to having interns, they may just throw you at shitty work and hope you figure things out and be the squeaky wheel as needed.

Also +1 to wmf about connections. If you have a successful internship (and this is especially the case with large companies), you're very likely to be offered a position to come back when you graduate, or at least have a serious leg up on the competition. They know you, you're trained in company procedures, and you're in the system already, so it's cheaper to hire and on-board you as opposed to some random they picked up. Even if you don't want to, you'll make some good connections to the managers in your area (as well as others, if you make an effort) who will provide valuable references for future employment, as well as networking jump-off points.

I interned at BizRate when it was <10 people and at IBM; both were valuable for different reasons. In both cases I was doing "real work" which made it more fun. The differences between startups and bigcos are mostly what you'd expect; a startup has more camaraderie but startup people may not have as much time for mentoring since they're working so hard. What I found most valuable were the personal connections (it really is about who you know) and I think you can make more connections at a large company if you try.

I think it depends on what you want to do. If you want to work at a company there is no better way to get an in, then to do an internship that that company and show that you are really good and add value. This applies to both young startups and large companies.

At the same time there are some nice advantages to interning at a large company with an established internship program. 1) You'll meet other interns who are really good developers from all over the country, so if you want to launch a startup in the future you'll have a good talent pool. 2) You'll learn more about the corporate culture and procedures of larger companies, which will give you insight into the types of things to look out for when your young startup becomes a larger company. 3) You'll have a better idea for sure whether you want to do startups or corporate jobs in the future.

It doesn't sound like you interned at a company with an established internship program, as most companies with good internship programs use them as a recruiting and pre-screening process for hiring full time employees, so they try to give you something engaging to do.

Of course on the other hand interning at a small startup might give you more of an opportunity to release code to the world really early in the process. But you'll definitely have less potential other interns to hang out with, and may have to work as hard as the founders to be respected.

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