Interns are unflatteringly stereotyped as a lowly role – making coffee, photocopying for hours on end, and getting paid little more than expenses.
This definitely isn’t the case in Silicon Valley.
Internships at America’s top tier tech companies are highly-prized and the businesses compete fiercely with one another for the very best young engineering talent.
There’s no expenses-only or minimum wage salaries here. Many tech interns are paid upwards of $6,000 per month – far more than some people in other industries make with decades of experience under their belt.
Using data provided by Glassdoor, a site for reviewing employers, we’ve ranked the 15 highest-paying internships in the US technology industry today. Everyone from Google to Uber is included, but the number one spot goes to a company you might not expect. Check it out below.
Note: The figures listed are monthly salaries, for companies with 10 or more intern salaries submitted to Glassdoor within the last two years. The salaries listed are all for internships based in the US. Conversions into pounds have been provided, but the amounts paid by these companies to their interns in Britain - and elsewhere in the world - will likely vary from what is paid in the US.
15 (tied). Yahoo: $6,333/month (£5,100)
"The pay and benefits are promising. Lots of fun activities during my internship. A must-mention: the foods are really good! The people are very friendly and the working pace is very proper for me: people work hard, but not too intensive."
15 (tied). Twitter: $6,333/month (£5,100)
"The interns are usually well-programmed. From they day one you can be on top of your project. I interned at Google Inc before and comparing to my previous experiment Twitter was awesome. The company is mid-size so you have place to grow."
15 (tied). Expedia: $6,333/month (£5,100)
"The company culture is great, with strong sense of belonging and great work-life balance. Coworkers were extremely friendly ... Expedia is a HUGE company at this point, and the work is distributed very efficiently--meaning not much room for creativity in everyday work."
15 (tied). Apple: $6,333/month (£5,100)
"Smart colleagues, good pay, decent hours, fun perks like subsidized food and nice cafes as well as company concerts and events ... Competitive, political, tough to get things done sometimes; intense scrutiny of work; parking lots are always full on main campus."
11. Google: $6,600/month (£5,300)
"You are given a lot of freedom over the work you do as an intern. I was given one main project to work on when I entered the role, but was able to branch out into additional types of work as well as the internship went on ... You don't have much say over the team and role you are placed into. Also, you do not know much about what your role entails until you actually arrive. Google is can be very secretive."
10. Groupon: $6,667/month (£5,300)
"great culture, very friendly people, very well established workflow and industry practices ... because it is somewhat of an older company as far as tech goes, it's no longer as "sexy" and they are more established in their ways."
9. Uber: $6,730/month (£5,400)
"Uber is an exciting company that is in the news weekly. They have weekly all-hands meetings with Travis fielding questions. This is somewhat unique compared to other companies of the same size. The culture is strong with the best ideas winning."
8. Nest: $6,773/month (£5,400)
"Really smart engineers. People are very invested in the product and the mission of the company ... Being tied to Google adds a lot of pressure in areas like finance and profitability. Lots of cut backs while I was there, doesn't seem to be a great relationship between the companies."
7. Microsoft: $7,000/month (£5,600)
"I had a great summer: great location, a great office, and great coworkers. The problems we solved were interesting, and our final product felt like it had purpose."
6. Walmart eCommerce: $7,219/month (£5,800)
"Great engineers and scientists working in Walmart Labs. Everyone who works there is very friendly. Good sense of mission. Very friendly culture. Willingness to take risks and try new things. Interns get to work on great projects and the internship program is clearly a high priority for the company."
5. NEC Labs America: $7,400/month (£5,900)
"Great place to do your own thing. The people are very friendly and extremely intelligent. The admin staff are the best I've seen ... Don't expect direction unless you want to do something EXTREMELY menial. Some groups are completely rudderless, and work is very silo-ed."
4. LinkedIn: $7,500/month (£6,000)
"LinkedIn has a great culture complete with bikes to ride, a gym and fitness trainer, pick up basketball, entertainment space and of course free food. The teams I worked with were very pleasant and eager to help. They even have an internal incubator and hackathons that allow you to build in any ay imaginable. The CEO Jeff Weiner is truly inspirational."
3. Facebook: $8,000/month (£6,400)
"Lots of good things to say about Facebook: I've worked at other Bay Area tech companies, and Facebook culture and management is really up there. Extremely open culture helps cultivate functional relationships between managers and employees, unity in understanding what the end goal we're working towards is, and huge ownership and responsibility of owned projects. Product directly affect the lives of millions of people everyday, and the company makes sure employees are taken care of (especially interns!). Company has good prospects, and the vision statements and culture strongly manifest themselves in how the company is run, and how products are made."
2. Pinterest: $8,125/month (£6,500)
"exciting technologies and vibrant culture. very dedicated to keeping employees happy and inspired. interns were treated really well. great efforts in increasing diversity"
1. Dropbox: $8,500/month (£6,800)
"I just felt like people cared about me. My mentor cared about me, my team cared about me, the other interns cared about me ... They also gave me a ton of money, but come on, hopefully that's not your main reason for working somewhere. Along similar lines, the food is, of course, really excellent."
