
Ask HN: Are there any remote internship opportunities? - stratosvoukel
I am a CS student from Athens, Greece. It's this time of my life that I must get into a demanding and high throughtput work environment with lots of learning opportunities (aka internship). Unfortunately good  internship opportunities in Greece (I cant speak for other countries) are very rare. Especialy for modern technologies like Rails etc (lack of a mature startup ecosystem).<p>Are there any Ruby/Rails startups willing to accept remote interns/apprentices? If yes please include email to send CV/Motivation letter. I guesss a lot of people (including me) would really love working for a startup (especialy one that is using our favorite programming languages, tools etc.) . Additionaly I think that such opportunities would benefit both sides as well as the general local ecosystem (eg. more experienced people in Greece).<p>PS. This question is for both paid and unpaid internships.
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readme
If you're going to work remotely, I would recommend skipping the internship.
If you know rails and can throw together a nice webapp, and you're studying
CS, you're qualified to do real work. Just apply for some contracts on the
basic freelancer sites out there, get some experience, then apply to more
ambitious places.

Open source participation could also provide meaningful interaction with
others on par with an internship.

~~~
lukeqsee
"If you know rails and can throw together a nice webapp, and you're studying
CS, you're qualified to do real work."

Dead on. I cannot stress this enough. The world is full of people that need
little apps done. I'm a CS major, and I've never been without a friend or two
bugging me to do a project for them. There are also many companies that need a
competent web developer. With time and effort, you can effectively shortcut
the internship and gain real experience, doing real projects and get paid real
money.

------
PanMan
Why would you want to do it remotely? I have worked with interns from a lot of
countries, and this is something especially the EU makes a lot easier (but
I've also worked with interns from e.g. Egypt). And while we have done remote
internships, I'm convinced being in the same spot works a lot better, for both
parties.

Depending on the company, you won't get rich, but we have always tried to make
sure interns could at least break even, and off-course learn a lot. Some of
them stayed, and I have now one remote person working for us in Egypt, who
used to be an intern (and stayed in Amsterdam, where we are based, during the
internship).

~~~
stratosvoukel
It is not much of a choice. While I have no problem travelling for an
internship, I am pretty much limited only in EU and I was rather unsure if
there are a lot of offers that include living and travelling costs. Does your
company offer intern positions at the moment?

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xxpor
Are you dedicated to staying in Athens? Or are you just figuring that no one
will be willing to pay for you to come to the US/UK/whereever. Because if it's
the latter, I think you would be surprised.

~~~
stratosvoukel
Travelling is not a huge problem for me, apart from the fact that I would have
to be in Athens for my exams. I had the impression that it would not be very
easy for a startup to pay for travelling expenses for an intern. I would love
if you could you point me at some. (Although, I have the impression that
travelling to the US for an internship could be rather hard due to immigration
limitations.)

~~~
xxpor
Visas for interns are actually pretty straight forward in the US.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-1_visa>

~~~
stratosvoukel
I see! Although (correct me if I am mistaken) a lot of US internship positions
require that you are already eligible to work in the US, clarifying that they
cannot offer help with visa applications etc.

~~~
GoldiKam
That's what me too have observed. In the application forms they have a special
option to choose if u have a US visa

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prateekdayal
We love remote working. We have the right processes and tools setup for this
(campfire/pivotal/github/BDD and the right mindset).

Checkout our product at <https://supportbee.com> and our developer site at
<https://developers.supportbee.com> and email me at prateek AT supportbee.com
if you find this interesting. Thanks!

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jacobmarble
Once upon a time, I found a software product I really liked. I emailed the
(very small) company and asked if I could intern, and they said yes.

A year later, I did it again, with a different company.

I only tried this twice, and it worked both times. In both cases, I was paid
enough to cover expenses, and the second company offered me a job. You could
probably start by doing the same, but be clear "remote only".

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twp
Have you considered Google's Summer of Code? <https://code.google.com/soc/>

~~~
excid3
I just want to second this. I participated in GSoC 2009 and absolutely loved
it. I'm from the US and worked with 2 mentors in Switzerland, a student in
India and a student Colombia.

We worked on a package management system like APT for Windows, and while it
was a bit unrealistic for 3 students in 3 months, I learned more in those 3
months than entire years at college.

Edit: There's also a Ruby Summer of Code in the same respect as the Google
one. <http://rubysummerofcode.org/>

~~~
tjbiddle
Have you ever checked out Chocolatey? Interested how it compares to what you
were working on. ( <http://chocolatey.org/> )

~~~
excid3
That looks pretty similar. We were building a GUI tool for it and a really
diverse hosting service that would let you torrent the packages and what not.

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btaitelb
I tend to prefer having face-to-face interaction with interns, because it lets
me determine more easily what they're understanding and what they're
struggling with. Physically being in the same space can also create a more
helpful environment where interns are comfortable to ask questions as they
arise. Still, this is becoming less and less important with virtual offices,
and tools like StackOverflow that can be better than asking a coworker anyway.
Also, I've found that with introverted interns, communication can often be
better through email than in person. Since I work on a distributed team at
Coshx Labs, feel free to ping us about our intern program and if we'd be a
good fit for each other.

~~~
stratosvoukel
Great! I have contacted you via your contact form!

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objclxt
Hi - you say startups, but have you considered going a bit larger? I work for
a large mobile (~800 employees, NASDAQ listed) technology company whose co-
founders were Greek, and our largest engineering team is in Athens. I know
some of our products are Ruby based (not my department, I deal with native
mobile apps).

If you want to get in touch with me I can forward your CV to the right people.
Just checked and we're recruiting Athens based interns right now (and they're
paid). Plus you'll get to do a lot of work with our offices in SF and London.
Send me a DM on Twitter (@objclxt) and I'll ping you my e-mail.

~~~
stratosvoukel
Great thanks!!

Update: Well I checked out your employer's intern opportunities and they are
only employing state-funded internship positions in Athens (and I am
overeducated to be eligible for a state-funded job, they are only for high-
term unemployed with lower education). On the contrary they offer real intern
opportunities in London. This is a great example of how twisted intern
opportunities (and jobs in general) can be in Greece, unfortunately. If there
are offers for university students, and they just are not on display on the
website, please let me know :)

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pedalr
We'd love to talk to you - founders@pedalr.com ... working on V2 of the
service (<http://www.pedalr.com> | <https://angel.co/pedalr>) and business
model. Please send your CV if you'd be interested in working on the
intersection of content and ecommerce with a fun group and some great
advisors. We're Ruby, MYSQL, Wordpress.

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jjb123
Email us at internships [@] crowdtilt.com. There may be a unique opportunity
to do something remotely with our API (just launched to the public this week).

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neerajdotname2
All the team members of BigBinary work remotely.

Anyone looking for internship opportunity can contact us.

<http://bigbinary.com/>

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TheMrTortoise
lol isnt the point of an internship to learn?

Best place to learn is right next to someone. There are significant
communication barriers in remote working. Sure they can be mitigated but
presence and a piece of paper is not to be underestimated.

If you can intern remotely just get a job as you would have to be capable.

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grkballer44
Fellow greek located in the us, interesting start up opportunity avAliable.
Email grk3288@yahoo.com

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jbverschoor
If you fancy some backend stuff for social games, send an email to
j.verschoor@bloomsix.com

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dennisvdvliet
Drop me your cv by email dennis@pressdoc.com

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eriksank
Have you tried the open-source product startups? They are approximately all
set up virtually. I have never run into one that actually had a real office.
It should not matter to them where you are physically, since they are not
dragging along a costly legacy of habits that requires it.

