AMA: 4 Time Intern, Founder, CS Student
Hi all, I’ve interned at Tesla, Qualtrics, Belvedere Trading, and Barclays. I’ve interviewed and gotten intern offers at many other companies as well. I’m also a current CS student and founder of https://techinternship.io Ask me anything about internship programs at the companies I mentioned, internship recruiting in general, being a student founder, university recruiting, or anything else you’d like. #intern #ama
Techinternship
I really don't understand the people that wear the # of internships as a badge. Not talking about you necessarily but who's that semi-influencer on LinkedIn thats like "LOOK AT ME IM A 10X INTERN" ... kind of raises more flags than anything.
Totally agree. I know who you’re talking about, that guy is a 🤡. For me, I’m not mentioning it as a badge of honor rather just mentioning it so that there’s more experiences people can ask me about if they want.
Lmao I’ve seen this dude too, his profile is hilarious and you’d think he’d have a super prestigious internship like at a HFT or super niche startup but he went downward if anything throughout them. I’ve seen people go from no name to Jane Street or no name to Waymo or something, but through 10 jumps he made it to Salesforce (no disrespect to Salesforce, but 10 internships) lol. The smartest people on LinkedIn have the most concise headlines, he seems rather tone deaf.
Lol I'm very sure I'm younger than this person. I've never had any internships - and frankly I don't believe in their value. I ask these people that wear internships like a badge like the 10x intern dude and this person. Why don't you just work full time/part-time directly while still being in college if you are so good. I've done it - and it's done wonders for me before I graduated.
I wanted to get a breadth of different experiences. I did one internship after my sophomore year and one after my junior year. And I took one semester off, since I could graduate a semester early anyways, to do two more internships. Some companies give interns real work.
Ok well you are in school for 4 years. 1 year each do a full time. So you can have 4 yoe in different fields. The fraction of companies that have interns do real work is limited to startups and small companies. Even still you have a boss that doesn't trust you to do it yourself. You don't know what field you want to join in unless you've been at it for at least a year to see if it's what you wanna do for real.
Interning is only good if you’re able to get an offer out of it or it contributes to your ability to get a future FT offer. If you’re able to convert Belvedere to FT or bc of having Belvedere on resume able to get more FT interviews than it’s worth it. It probably is fun getting exposure to different companies though if you don’t mind the TC
Yeah, I totally agree. I converted three of the four to return offers so I’m very happy about that.
What happened to the fourth?
When should a Canadian University student in a Computer Science program at a 3rd rate school start looking for internships?
My experience is only in the US, but in general the sooner you apply the better. Some companies open up internship applications as early as August. Others don’t open until closer to when the internship actually starts.
Follow-up: Do companies tend to prefer American interns over Canadians?
Nice website. How was Belvedere Trading compared to a regular SWE job? I never worked for a trading company before.
Thanks! Belvedere was an interesting experience. It was much different than the other places I interned which all had thousands of engineers while Belvedere had roughly 100. This had pros and cons. Since it was a small company, you got to meet other people pretty easily. I really enjoyed playing poker with some of the traders and quants after work most days.
How is Tesla's SWE environment and culture?
I interned there remotely due to Covid so I might not have a complete understanding of the culture. But from my experience I loved it. All of the people I encountered were super helpful and very driven. If you didn’t buy into the mission, you probably wouldn’t thrive there. What I most liked most about the internship was that they just treated me like a normal engineer. They didn’t give me an intern project, they gave me real work with big impact. They let me work on some really cool stuff, and had me pushing code to production within the first week.
Which team were you in (you don't need to name it but I wonder what you worked on)? What was the tech stack? Do you feel like the engineering quality and practice was close to top-tier?
you are on the wrong platform. go post this on jumpstart. it's the blind for people still in college and who don't have jobs.
Lol. That’s what I thought too. Most interns simply don’t have enough experience to provide valuable insights to professionals who have many years of experience under their belt.
There are interns on blind. Probably more than on jumpstart, just given the size difference between the two.
When is it the best time to start applying for interns? I'm a first year CS undergrad (nyc) and want to start interning this upcoming summer? Is it too early? If not, when should I start applying? I'd rather postpone applying for a bit so I can familiarize myself some more with different libraries and python since it's been a while. Thanks
The more selective/popular the company, the earlier they fill up intern spots. I'd start applying now or in the next week or two if I were you
Starting off, I'm not looking too much into selectivity; I just want to get my feet wet. I'll look at FAANG's after my first year. So many startups in NYC so I was looking to apply there.
I've heard Belvedere's tech is really outdated and their talent is subpar compared to most trading firms, is that true? Their comp doesn't sound that great either.
I thought their SWE interview was on the easier side (still DP and graphs tho) and comp was tech competitive but not trading competitive.
I don’t have first-hand experience at any other trading firms, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Belvedere’s talent is below that level. Their comp also seems below most trading firms but on par with tech companies comp.
Yep, I didn’t have a great experience at Qualtrics either. The project I was given was a very poor match with my skill set, and I wasn’t very excited about the work in general. There was a lot of bureaucracy and loopholes to jump through which was rather surprising to me given that they’re quickly growing company.
Wow that sounds so much like my experience. They made me redo my project 4 TIMES because upper management couldn’t make a decision as to whether they wanted a service, batch job, library, or just a module for my project’s purpose and apparently they couldn’t figure it out before I got there. I was actually in awe, I thought they were trolling me.