The tech industry has a staggering amount of money, and that manifests itself in all sorts of ways. One of them is how they pay their summer interns, and unlike most intern “opportunities,” working there not only pays, but pays well.
The Guardian recently visited “Internapalooza,” a networking event held at the Giants ballpark at the club level. In a lot of ways, it’s a fairly typical networking event: Free swag, speakers everybody half-listens to while looting the booths, and food. What’s different is the scale. As the Guardian notes, these college kids are making up to $9,000 a month to code at some place, and get a $1,500 housing allowance on top of that. Of course, they’re still living three to a one-bedroom because the average rent in San Francisco is $3,900, but hey, free rent!
That said, there’s plenty of rather telling moments in the Guardian’s piece, which starts with rapacious interns stealing popcorn from a concessions dealer and features, among other things, a tech CEO telling college kids to sacrifice themselves on the altar of stock prices:
One intern braved a question: “At which point do you think it’s the right moment to start focusing on other things in life so when you’re 80 you don’t feel like you missed out?”
[Tech investor Keith] Rabois’s response invoked elite gymnasts who must miss out on school and friends as teens in order to make it to the Olympics.
Rabois, by the way, is on the board of Yelp, Xoom, and Scribd and has been an executive at a number of high level companies. He also told the crowd that they were getting close to the “prime of their careers.” So, the interns may get paid well, but it doesn’t look like their jobs will last all that long.
(Via The Guardian)