Is internship a must for CS major?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of my DS will be attending college in the fall with the intention to major in CS at UVA. I've always thought that an internship is "highly recommended" for a CS major after the 2nd or 3rd year; however, my recently graduated niece and nephews just disproved my way of thinking.

My niece recently graduated with a CS major from GMU. She graduated in three years through a combination of credits from AP courses in HS and summer classes at GMU and NVCC. Instead of summer internships, she took summer classes at GMU and NVCC. She got several job offers and accepted an offer from Google. Nephew #1 recently graduated with a CS degree from UVA school of engineering. He did the same thing as his cousin. He also got several job offers and accepted an offer from Microsoft. Nephew #2 recently graduated from VTech with the same profile as nephew #1, and he accepted an offer from Oracle.

All three graduated in three years and didn't do any internships while in college and yet they all got high paying offers from employers. That got me thinking, why even bothers with internships when you can graduate early and make more money that way?

Am I wrong on this?

Can I ask what's your niece's starting salary? My niece is also interested in studying CS, and GMU is the most likely one she will be attending. She will be applying for college in a couple years.

This is OP. My niece's starting salary at Google is 150K, 135K for Microsoft and 150K for Oracle.

Wow, that's impressive!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tech person here who does hiring. I prefer to see internships as you learn how to operate in a work environment and we don't have to teach you that on the job. Also, doing some CS-related classes at the local community college isn't ideal -- you're in big-name university for their instruction after all.

But.... the market is hot right now, so any path will not mean a person ends up jobless in this field.

Rising junior DS is doing research with professor during summer. Does it help his future job hunting?

[Anonymous]

Yes. We are Indian-American. I would say it is an absolute must for my DS.

Perhaps OP is White, but we have to always include racism and bias in our calculus at all times. My kid is not going to be given handouts and he is not networked. Whatever he gets in life, he will get only because he is exponentially better than others. So yes, internships, independent projects, research etc...everything counts and is essential.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:$15000 sign-on bonus? For an intern?

Short term housing costs are high.

[Anonymous]

One thing that surprised me was that my child had "tech interviews" for both internships and then after graduation. She would be presented with a coding problem (or several) and be required to respond to it during the interview. For larger companies you might be able to get an idea of the questions on line. It took several rounds of interviews for DD to be comfortable with this. Even if your student does not want an internships, a few practice interviews might be good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of my DS will be attending college in the fall with the intention to major in CS at UVA. I've always thought that an internship is "highly recommended" for a CS major after the 2nd or 3rd year; however, my recently graduated niece and nephews just disproved my way of thinking.

My niece recently graduated with a CS major from GMU. She graduated in three years through a combination of credits from AP courses in HS and summer classes at GMU and NVCC. Instead of summer internships, she took summer classes at GMU and NVCC. She got several job offers and accepted an offer from Google. Nephew #1 recently graduated with a CS degree from UVA school of engineering. He did the same thing as his cousin. He also got several job offers and accepted an offer from Microsoft. Nephew #2 recently graduated from VTech with the same profile as nephew #1, and he accepted an offer from Oracle.

All three graduated in three years and didn't do any internships while in college and yet they all got high paying offers from employers. That got me thinking, why even bothers with internships when you can graduate early and make more money that way?

Am I wrong on this?

Can I ask what's your niece's starting salary? My niece is also interested in studying CS, and GMU is the most likely one she will be attending. She will be applying for college in a couple years.

This is OP. My niece's starting salary at Google is 150K, 135K for Microsoft and 150K for Oracle.

lol bs

No---that is what big companies are paying for CS majors. CS is the one area kids start out at ridiculous salaries

Are you just jealous your kid isn't a CS major?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:$15000 sign-on bonus? For an intern?

Short term housing costs are high.

Yes!! Bay Area and Seattle area are extremely expensive and it's difficult to find a short term rental. So sign on is literally just helping with housing for the 3 months

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Huh. My UVA rising second-year kid is interning and getting some certs. Several friends are taking classes at NVCC. They’re not working at all, just like OP described. Interesting. I think you need to be careful with the summer classes and be sure that UVA will actually accept them for transfer credit in your major.

This. UVA makes it difficult to graduate early. The only person I know who did it in three years came in from a governor’s school with 65 college credits under his belt. My own DC transferred 3 NVCC credits earned during high school but UVA wouldn’t take the grades

[Anonymous]

While not a must, it is certainly less risky to have internships. Right now the job market is insane and with Covid, there weren’t many internships to be had. But with a likely recession and moving forward despite covid, internships will become more important again.

[Anonymous]

I know of a kid- who is graduating from UMD- is hired at CApital One at 120 K with 15K sign on bonus.
She is Indian American.. not that it matters but since one poster brought up race into this.. I'm posting the race.

The young lady did do internships every year at Capital one..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tech person here who does hiring. I prefer to see internships as you learn how to operate in a work environment and we don't have to teach you that on the job. Also, doing some CS-related classes at the local community college isn't ideal -- you're in big-name university for their instruction after all.

But.... the market is hot right now, so any path will not mean a person ends up jobless in this field.

Rising junior DS is doing research with professor during summer. Does it help his future job hunting?

Yes but have DS enshrine this work in their GitHub. Not just code but everything associated with the work. Purpose, requirements, approach, verification procedures, whatever. For job hunting include links to the GitHub repo on resume and in LinkedIn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know of a kid- who is graduating from UMD- is hired at CApital One at 120 K with 15K sign on bonus.
She is Indian American.. not that it matters but since one poster brought up race into this.. I'm posting the race.

The young lady did do internships every year at Capital one..

Does she have a master's degree in CS, or just a bachelor's degree?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of my DS will be attending college in the fall with the intention to major in CS at UVA. I've always thought that an internship is "highly recommended" for a CS major after the 2nd or 3rd year; however, my recently graduated niece and nephews just disproved my way of thinking.

My niece recently graduated with a CS major from GMU. She graduated in three years through a combination of credits from AP courses in HS and summer classes at GMU and NVCC. Instead of summer internships, she took summer classes at GMU and NVCC. She got several job offers and accepted an offer from Google. Nephew #1 recently graduated with a CS degree from UVA school of engineering. He did the same thing as his cousin. He also got several job offers and accepted an offer from Microsoft. Nephew #2 recently graduated from VTech with the same profile as nephew #1, and he accepted an offer from Oracle.

All three graduated in three years and didn't do any internships while in college and yet they all got high paying offers from employers. That got me thinking, why even bothers with internships when you can graduate early and make more money that way?

Am I wrong on this?

Can I ask what's your niece's starting salary? My niece is also interested in studying CS, and GMU is the most likely one she will be attending. She will be applying for college in a couple years.

This is OP. My niece's starting salary at Google is 150K, 135K for Microsoft and 150K for Oracle.

OP, do you know if they did tech interviews as part of the hiring process or whether they were straight up hires without technical interviews?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of my DS will be attending college in the fall with the intention to major in CS at UVA. I've always thought that an internship is "highly recommended" for a CS major after the 2nd or 3rd year; however, my recently graduated niece and nephews just disproved my way of thinking.

My niece recently graduated with a CS major from GMU. She graduated in three years through a combination of credits from AP courses in HS and summer classes at GMU and NVCC. Instead of summer internships, she took summer classes at GMU and NVCC. She got several job offers and accepted an offer from Google. Nephew #1 recently graduated with a CS degree from UVA school of engineering. He did the same thing as his cousin. He also got several job offers and accepted an offer from Microsoft. Nephew #2 recently graduated from VTech with the same profile as nephew #1, and he accepted an offer from Oracle.

All three graduated in three years and didn't do any internships while in college and yet they all got high paying offers from employers. That got me thinking, why even bothers with internships when you can graduate early and make more money that way?

Am I wrong on this?

In my opinion, the real issue would be why the student has no internships.

If the student couldn’t get an internship for some reason, but genuinely enjoys computers and problem-solving, things will work out.

If the student isn’t really that bright, doesn’t like computers all that much, and is in CS for the money, that kid may start out with a good job but eventually will wash out, because reports that so so CS grads are getting more than $100,000 per year is a sign that tech companies are in some kind of unsustainable tulip bulb mania stage. Kids who get in now need to understand that they need to be prepared for a hard crash.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of my DS will be attending college in the fall with the intention to major in CS at UVA. I've always thought that an internship is "highly recommended" for a CS major after the 2nd or 3rd year; however, my recently graduated niece and nephews just disproved my way of thinking.

My niece recently graduated with a CS major from GMU. She graduated in three years through a combination of credits from AP courses in HS and summer classes at GMU and NVCC. Instead of summer internships, she took summer classes at GMU and NVCC. She got several job offers and accepted an offer from Google. Nephew #1 recently graduated with a CS degree from UVA school of engineering. He did the same thing as his cousin. He also got several job offers and accepted an offer from Microsoft. Nephew #2 recently graduated from VTech with the same profile as nephew #1, and he accepted an offer from Oracle.

All three graduated in three years and didn't do any internships while in college and yet they all got high paying offers from employers. That got me thinking, why even bothers with internships when you can graduate early and make more money that way?

Am I wrong on this?

Can I ask what's your niece's starting salary? My niece is also interested in studying CS, and GMU is the most likely one she will be attending. She will be applying for college in a couple years.

This is OP. My niece's starting salary at Google is 150K, 135K for Microsoft and 150K for Oracle.

OP, do you know if they did tech interviews as part of the hiring process or whether they were straight up hires without technical interviews?

Big tech will have technical interviews for all technical roles.