

Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process - dodger
http://behindthescenesrecruiter.com/post/82005145232/the-single-most-sure-fire-hiring-decision-you-will-ever

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crazypyro
As someone who just went through the internship process with a few different
companies, I find this fascinating. This is pretty much what I expected going
into the experience (multiple interviews, at least 1-2 coding
questions/examples to do, a test maybe). Out of the few companies I
interviewed from, I had nothing as intense as this. The majority of them
didn't even test coding/theory knowledge at all. They were just simple
interviews that lasted 2-5 hours. The hardest part of any interview was a
freaking mental acuity standardized test I took at the company who I'll be
working for that wasn't hard, so take the term "hardest" lightly. Good news is
I accepted an offer at that smaller engineering company! A good portion of my
interviews were for engineering companies because of the employers my
university attracts, so that could also have affected the technical parts of
the interview.

I'm not sure how I feel about how many interviews and how long this process
is. I know some of my fellow students would be completely blindsided by such a
long process unless it was clearly laid out. The compensation seems nice from
the companies that hire around here (I go to a predominately STEM university
in the Mid-West and all the companies I interviewed with came to our career
fair in February, which is pretty late in the process). I'll make just over
half that much monthly, but it'll be June-December and in STL. The highest
I've heard from my classmates is 7k/month, but that was from Exxon Mobile and
there was very little technical parts of the interview. He did have to take a
hair test for drugs though. Ideally, I believe most of the larger
corporations, like Boeing, Monsanto, etc, (like the article said) start
interviews after the fall career fair.

Another side note about compensation: Seems to be pretty wide spread between
13-30/hr (without adding in housing) at companies around the Midwest. I don't
exactly have the greatest academic credentials though (3.0 gpa), so some of
the more selective companies may pay more, especially for graduating seniors.
Exxon-Mobile being the highest, Boeing right in the middle of that range, and
a local ISP looking for a non-coding cs major on the low end for the curious.

edit: Just adding in details as I get time.

FORGOT THE MOST ANNOYING THING

I was given the offer on Friday and he needed an answer on Monday, else he was
going to extend the offer to other candidates. This was pretty obnoxious to
me, but I ended up taking the offer because I was interested in it more than
my other potential offers, but seriously, recruiters, a weekend is not enough
time to get back to you with an offer, especially when other companies are
asking you to keep them notified with enough time that they can either speed
things up or not waste time on a candidate.

~~~
scrumper
> MOST ANNOYING THING

A weekend is _plenty_. You're an intern: there are many, many more of you to
choose from. As you pointed out, nobody wants to waste time. The person that
offered you the placement wants someone who wants to be there, not someone
looking for an backup offer.

~~~
asafira
I am going to respectfully disagree. Just because the company can do it
doesn't mean a weekend is _plenty_. You are given a weekend to decide where
you might spend months of your life, potentially in a place you've never been.
On top of that, who knows if that weekend was going to be extremely busy for
you? Just because you take one week to decide on an offer doesn't mean you
don't want to be there. It's also not at all an industry standard to give such
a short timespan for the decision; if anything, it's a reflection of how
little the company will care about the intern when he/she is there.

All in all, a weekend is certainly not "plenty". I sympathize with crazypyro.

~~~
scrumper
Thank you for the respectful disagreement (vs. 'smug'.) You make good points
and I have some sympathy too - I understand that it's not easy being forced to
make a quick and major decision. That being said, you don't always get to set
the pace, and being confident in making decisions on the basis of imperfect or
incomplete information is a valuable life skill. I can think of no better time
to make a low-risk, snap decision about where to spend a few months than in
the middle of college.

With regards to the decision around where you might spend months of your life,
it's not like the location of the internship was a secret before crazypyro
interviewed. The question about whether the company will treat the intern well
is more nuanced, and you'd have to go with your gut.

Given the competitive nature of the market for CS interns and the quick
decisions needed, the Secretary Problem might offer a good solution for
crazypyro and others in that situation.

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dominotw
Can't they atleast hire one person that didn't luck out by being born in a
rich/middle class american family to go to ivy league universities.

What is such complicated product that Fog Creek makes that it needs graduates
from top 10 universities? Serious question.

~~~
HerokuMan
Jews that went to Ivy League schools tend to hire other jews that go to Ivy
League schools

~~~
ProAm
Oh go be a racist-troll somewhere else.

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ultimoo
As someone who did a summer internship last year at an amazing SF company, the
pay-scale at fogcreek sounds pretty competitive (read amazing).

$6,000 a month comes to a shade less than $40/hour. Bear in mind that most
full time students work only in summers so although considerable federal tax
is deducted from this amount, the intern is likely to receive most of it back
when filing taxes next year.

Also, catered lunches plus an apartment in NYC plus two amazing events in
twice a week (which likely include dinner) means that the only money that
needs to be spent is a handful of weekday dinners plus weekend fun, and I
haven't even gotten to the thousand dollar signing bonus yet!

Being in college, I knew about 10-12 others who interned last summer in the
Bay Area. With most companies in the SF Bay Area you're looking at about $27
to $34 at most large companies in the south bay and $35 to $40 in SF. Plus an
hourly pay scale means that interns don't get paid on holidays like 4th of
July, Labor Day, or when they get sick (didn't know anyone who got paid
monthly instead of hourly in the Bay Area). I haven't heard of housing
benefits in the south bay much and heard of only one company in SF that threw
in free housing.

(Sorry about a long comment focusing only on the financial aspects of an
internship program but it is an important factor that debt-ridden students
take into account).

~~~
yen223
$6000 a month is more than what most senior software engineers earn here,
_before_ considering currency conversions. You guys are lucky man.

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sbuccini
On behalf of a student who just finished up the internship search:
Companies/recruiters, please note the advice put forth here.

A couple of points I'd like to touch on:

* Be sure to provide your interns with a ton of guidance, and promote this in during your recruitment process. Many of my fellow students are turned off by the bigger companies since they feel like they won't be able to make an impact. As a smaller company, this is your ace in the hole. Use it to your advantage.

* Personally, exploding offers leave a bad taste in my mouth. Everyone knows how long the recruitment process takes, and you should give the intern the common courtesy to make an informed decision. The last thing you want is a disgruntled intern on your payroll for a few months.

* You should consider internships as an investment. Build a relationship with your intern, and it will pay numerous dividends in the long run. They might return for a full-time position or they may refer a friend that they respect. A good way to support your intern during the school year is to sponsor a hackathon or an interview workshop at their school. This gets you face-to-face with some of the most motivated hackers at any school, where you can begin the courting process.

Just some quick thoughts from the student's side of the table.

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LukeWalsh
> If you don’t know where to begin here’s a good rule: only target colleges
> that admit less than 30% of applicants. That will give you a head start on
> being selective, especially if you have limited spots available in your
> program.

I personally think this is silly. If you want to be selective just focus on
applicants who actually build things. If you look at collegiate hackathons at
places like university of michigan, UIUC, or Purdue it's clear that there is a
lot of talent in the midwest. Just because someone wasn't born on a coast or
with a connection to an ivy league school doesn't mean they don't make a cut
for selectiveness.

~~~
sadfnjksdf
I never thought of Fog Creek that way before. In fact, I've always gotten the
impression they were down-to-earth. But, that one shot of a spreadsheet in
this post listing Brown, Rutgers, Princeton, Yale, etc. changed my mind.

The other turnoff in this was the weeding out of candidates based on resumes.
We hired an excellent employee out of a batch of horrid resumes- what a great
hire, though.

~~~
dlp211
I'm glad that you put Rutgers with the likes of Princeton et al, but it is the
state university of NJ. So not everyone came from a prestigious school.

~~~
barry-cotter
Rutgers is one of the seven members of the ivy league. I'm guessing it's
pretty selective. If it's not at least eliteish like UC Berkeley or U Michigan
something went badly wrong.

~~~
dlp211
I hate to burst you bubble, and I am glad that you believe that Rutgers is a
part of the Ivy League[1], but I assure you it isn't. Rutgers admits nearly
61% of applicants in, and based on a cursory google search, UMich accepts
about 37% and UC Berkeley accepts 18%.

Rutgers is The State University of NJ[2]. It is a very old institution (8th
oldest), and that may be where the confusion comes from, since all the other
Ivy's came from that time period.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League#Members](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League#Members)
[2] [http://www.rutgers.edu/](http://www.rutgers.edu/)

~~~
barry-cotter
I sit corrected.

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inconshreveable
As a former Fog Creek intern (2010), I can tell you that Fog Creek's
internship program is one of the best built out programs I've seen in the
industry. It rivals and exceeds those of software firms with 10-100x
resources. The talent they attract is top-notch too.

------
covi
I have to say the pay is by no way "spoiling". It is no where near the top
tier pay (for interns) seen in the industry.

~~~
1a2a3a4a
It's not that far off the top tier pay for tech companies. Glassdoor compiled
their list for 2014, and it's not too inaccurate [1]. Speaking from personal
experience, the numbers for SWE undergrads for some of the companies on the
list this year:

Palantir - 7,500 - 1,200 for housing if you choose

Facebook - 6,200 + free housing

Salesforce - Varies per year, 34.50/hr for rising junior, housing.

Cisco - 22/hr

Quora and Dropbox are both missing from this list but they both have higher
salaries than Palantir, but not by too much.

[1] [http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/25-highest-paying-companies-
in...](http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/25-highest-paying-companies-
interns-2014-interns-earn-7000-month/)

~~~
shubb
Wow... this sounds kind of irrational. I mean, these are close to senior
salaries annualized - Sales force is around 70K, while a senior gets about
100K across most of the US.

Are 4 interns really more useful than 3 seniors? Really?

~~~
nickbarnwell
"Get 'em while they're young" is as valid for recruiting as it is brand
preferences ;)

Those interns will turn into salaried FTEs whose first three year's annual
compensation – amortised signing bonus, stock grants, and performance bonus
included – will be ~150k. Compared to new graduate FTEs, interns are
positively cheap!

The ~6.5k, housing inclusive, perks out the wazoo also all come from highly
profitable, competitive companies falling over each other to recruit from a
highly constrained pool. There are only so many Stanford, MIT, and CMU
graduates a year, and an even smaller number of hackathon winners, open source
contributors, inveterate interns, etc. For many, this is the last time they'll
ever openly be on the job market.

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jonheller
There was a whole movie about interns at Fog Creek.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRL7YsXjSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRL7YsXjSg)

I admit it could have been edited a bit better (read: more interesting), but
it was still fun to get a bit more of an inside view of a process like this.

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bcaine
This sounds like a great program, I just wish it was offered year-round. Even
though I think Northeastern University and Waterloo are the only schools with
a completely integrated, well defined Co-op program, it seems like its a
growing trend.

I'd assume having year round interns and a continuous recruitment process
would be less disruptive to the team's work velocity and give you a bit bigger
reach for students too.

Plus, I'm a bit jealous of some of the summer-only internships at a lot of
interesting companies. Can't complain about graduating with 18+ months of
interesting work experience pretty much guaranteed though.

~~~
CocaKoala
I didn't attend the Rochester Institute of Technology, but friends of mine who
go there tell me that co-ops are a mandatory part of the CS program there.

~~~
acchow
Waterloo's "co-op" system is quite different. The whole undergraduate co-op
program lasts about 5 years, and you alternate between 4 months in school and
4 months working throughout (i.e., you don't get summers "off"). This allows
the students to try many different companies of varying size and culture.

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sergiotapia
All of this sounds extremely exhausting for a simple internship. About 30
times more effort than I've ever had to put to land a job as a freelancer.

I'll take my standard $50/hour rate and avoid these rat-races. 400 applicants
and only 8 hires!? YIKES. Are these fellas going to the moon?

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mathattack
Remember that this is New York City. $6000 is great money to begin with. Add
$2000/month minimum for rent. (And imagine digging up a security deposit
too...) This is investment banking money for a software firm with a much more
respectable work-life balance.

(I have no connection to the firm, though I have read pretty much everything
that Joel has written)

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sscalia
Am I the only one flabbergasted by the comp #'s thrown around in the article
and in these threads?

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asselinpaul
Does anyone know how much one would make in a Finance Internship at a hedge-
fund, prop firm and investment bank?

~~~
S4M
I think an internship in a top tier bank in London pays about 3000
pounds/month for a summer analyst and 5000 pounds/month. My data are outdated
though, maybe the salaries have gone down after the crisis, but I doubt it and
would rather think they decreased the number of interns.

~~~
robotcookies
I've heard the hours are much longer though for that field. Correct me if I'm
wrong.

