

Ask HN: Average summer intern salary? - wylie

This is my first time applying to summer internships, and it's very hard to find concrete salary numbers on internships. For example, I have anecdotal evidence of Google and Facebook paying $18-20k for a 12-week internship.<p>To make it more specific, I'm applying as a software developer to Silicon Valley startups. I'm a college sophomore.<p>What is an average salary for an intern at such a company? Are internship salaries negotiable? Should I expect an internship salary to be equivalent to a starting salary at a company?<p>And finally, why are such numbers so hard to find?
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derekja
18-20k seems high. I suppose in the case of someone with great experience
relevant to a particular team that might be possible, though. At MSFT the
specific interns were usually chosen by HR, or at most a team of people that
HR wrangled into volunteering. They were then sent around to teams where it
seemed they would fit best.

In that situation there's probably fairly little room for negotiation. If
you're dealing directly with the hiring manager, or at a smaller company where
the wall of HR is not so impenetrable, probably there's more room. I wouldn't
think of it as equivalent to starting full-time salary, though, because a full
third to a half of your internship may be largely coming-up-to-speed time.

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floppydisk
In general, you get hired as an hourly employee for summer internships instead
of a salaried full-timer. Hence, salaries will vary from company to company
depending on their valuation of intern's work so getting a bead on what's
"average" will be quite difficult.

Once place to look is glassdoor.com. See if the companies you are applying to
have listings there and what people have said about them, and any average
salaries. For instance, search for Intern in the jobs category and you should
see listings showing average salaries for posted companies, if people provided
the info.

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wylie
Thanks for the link, that's the best data I've seen so far.

Should I rephrase the title to be "average intern wage?"

