Programmer here - Computers and technology have a ridiculous amount of overlap. It’s not like engineering where you have to major in something specific to find a specific job. To an employer, a degree in Computer Science is basically the same thing as a degree in Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or even IT. Math-based programming is really just a small subset. Most programming requires no math at all. In fact, most graduates with technical degrees end up in corporate IT jobs and spend an entire career never looking at a math problem. It’s nothing to stress over. Learning is on-the-job, so the specialty is built where the opportunity is. For each subsequent job, he gains more skills.
IT majors tend to be less technical business based majors, so employers looking for more technical people for design, development, QA, etc. (versus managing computers) will prefer those with more technical degrees (CS, SE, CE, etc.) or equivalent self education and knowledge over those with IT (or MIS or CIS(ystems)) degrees.
I have a graduating college senior with six internships from startup freshmen year to SW powerhouse junior year that got converted to full time offer she accepted. Her main criterias were location, SW powerhouse and conversion rate to full time. I think a good number of top 10 sw companies already completed their internship offerings for the upcoming summer or are in final stages. Also with some sw companies on hiring freeze they don’t offer as many internships as they used to since they primarily use internships as recruiting tool.
"Our thinking is that college pedigree and lack of software company internship is playing a role. "
It’s probably not pedigree as your son is at a top-50/100 tech university, so if it’s a college like RPI or WPI, you’re fine. Lack of s/w company experience may be a factor, but that would depend on the quality of the previous work experience, not necessarily the company. You can still get around that by focusing on school projects or maybe work with a professor.
“Should he aim for internships at much smaller companies, but in SE, or in larger non-software companies where the software is a means to an end.”
Go with the smaller company if your goal is the leading s/w companies, they’d prefer kids who have worked in smaller places where you have less direction, have to do more than maybe just your job etc. Even though these companies are huge now, they still like to have a start-up feel to them and that small company experience may be a little better. There are some industries though where technology groups have a good reputation, like finance, so if the top-50 is a bank that would be different than say a consumer goods company.
“He is planning to apply to some government run programs that look interesting to him.”
Be careful on this one, while there are some govt agencies that use leading edge tech, many will be perceived as slow and bureaucratic.
Good luck!
The school may not matter but the knowledge base will. A friend once taught at a mediocre school where she was expected to teach less in a semester than she covered in a quarter as a TA elsewhere. Therefore I expect the top tier schools will get more notice among employers for that first job- given a choice of equal candidiates on paper. There was a reason son went through programming skills testing along with other aspects of his job interview day despite coming from a top tier school (remember he was a mth major first- excellent for CS, btw, and added the needed CS courses to add that major unlike CS majors who likely spent a lot more college time programming than he did).
Be aware that programming, research, IT, software development et al are all potentially different jobs within the overall computer software industry. Different skill sets needed- some don’t even need a four year degree. Others can be intellectually challenging for top college students. Each person must find their niche.
My D currently has the title of Software Engineer but she was not a CS major nor did she do a “tech” internship. She did a lot of work in languages associated with data science, however, in various research and work positions during the school year, summers and breaks. She’s learning the specific languages/dev systems she needs to learn now, in the company’s new grad program.
So do the specific internships matter too much? I’d be inclined to say not really, based on her experience. Her company does hire a lot of its previous interns but she wasn’t one of them nor were most of her cohort. I think they hired her intelligence, work ethic etc rather than her specific coding experience.
FWIW she had 3 somewhat similar offers to choose from and had to ask for an extension on 2 of them as she was still in process with the 3rd when the first 2 offers came. She was granted those extensions - a matter of a couple of weeks - and wound up taking that 3rd offer.
Yes, software engineering internships are extremely competitive but I think they can be valuable for learning your craft. A big part of the craft of software engineering is the collaborative nature of the process when you are working in a big team on a complex product. An internship gives you a leg up on that before you graduate and can influence your job choices as your start your career. Companies prefer the top CS schools, but are continually broadening the list because there are not enough grads to fill jobs.
What’s more important than the size of the company is the quality of the internship program. I work for a software company in the big data industry, and we started a formal summer internship program about 5 years ago. Even though we’re not a huge company, I think we have a great program.
Besides visiting campuses, reviewing resumes, and interviewing applicants, we put a lot of planning into the program itself. Every year, we scope projects that we need done, are ideal for the short length of an internship, and touch many parts of the engineering process. All projects are needed features that will ship in our products in an upcoming release. So it’s real work with tangible results. We give a lot of thought to the mentors who will pair up with the interns as well. During the first week, the mentors present the projects to the interns as a whole, and interns choose what interests them. We always have more projects than interns because we think having a choice is important.
During the internship, we have a whole set of special social activities for interns…lots of fun and team building. During the final week of the internship, interns give a presentation and demo of their project to our engineering team. We even have a couple of people who help the interns with presentation skills if they want it. Every year, I’m always impressed with what these interns accomplish and how polished they are at presenting. The program gives them solid experience in completing a real software engineering project in a large engineering group.
We’ve had some interns come back for more than one internship, and we’ve hired many of our interns when they graduate.
I hope this thumbnail of a successful program helps your son with the kinds of questions to ask when researching programs, talking with companies on campus, or interviewing for spots. He needs to know the kinds of projects and mentors and the general structure of the program. Then he can compare apples to apples. Good luck!
While it is good to be informed about what to look for in an internship, most job seekers do not have the luxury of getting multiple offers simultaneously to allow comparison. The more likely scenario if one gets an offer is to get an offer with a short time to decide whether to accept without knowing whether one will get any other offer. It is not like college frosh admission where non-ED offers have a common decision window (4/1 to 4/30) to compare offers before deciding.
Thought I think the internship program @motherville talks about sounds fantastic, I don’t think every worthwhile company building software has the time or energies to have that structured of a program for interns. I had a couple internships and I was thrown into the deep end on projects without a ton of support and had to be self learner and self starter. And you know what? It was great. It empowered me to be a strong applicant for a wide variety of other opportunities later. I learned a ton. I really think no matter where he ends up it will very likely end up win-win. If something is not his cuppa, he will learn that too which is good info as well.
I also think experience can come from a number of places. My kid joined a software development club on campus. He proposed a project and is now project leading a small group trying to bring a small app to fruition. That kind of self driven project based work that could physically be seen can tell employers a lot too. The company my husband works for is often much more excited to see work like that from new grad applicants than a degree from a particular school.
Software developers are often fickle in their employment. I know so many software engineers who’ve gone from no name software development, to huge software entities that CS seniors would likely drool over, to burned out on that, to a start up, etc. I actually think employers that want to keep smart software developers engaged will keep their opportunities dynamic. I really don’t think there is a magic path. Opportunities present themselves. Make the best of them for a time and then if you want to make a change, do it. I agree with OHMom, your particular internship really doesn’t matter that much a year or 2 down the line unless you love it and get hired on. Don’t get bogged down in what you’re not getting or with a couple big company names.
That may be true for some. Certain industries do seem to have seasons, some earlier deadlines some later.
But more important, researching the type of internship program a company offers can help an student decide where to apply, period. Each internship or job app takes a lot of time (good specific cover letter, possible coding/skills tests, phone convo with recruiter, all before any interview process would begin if it goes that far).
To continue your college app analogy, internship program research can help students “build the right list” so they hopefully do wind up with a good fit in the end.
Our S is a big planner (he’s always been that way) and he actually had an internship plan that he has been very effective following. His basic goals were to have internships each summer, in his field of expertise, with companies that span the range of size. To our amazement he has met all his goals while learning quite a bit about interviewing, negotiating, and making hard decisions. To date, he has held internships at a large tech firm, a privately held unicorn, and a small startup. Here is some of what our S has experienced.
Intern hiring season for the large tech companies (Apple, Google, FaceBook and the like) begin around September with much, but not all, of the hiring done by Christmas. Smaller companies seem to start later with hiring well into spring. While he applied online to many internships, all of the offers he received originated from companies reaching out to him directly or from referrals from professors, fellow students, and from a few VCs he has met at poster sessions for some of his classes (LinkedIn is, in his words, “awesome”). He has always started his internship searches early and has always had at least two concurrent offers to choose from.
The interview process used by most large companies is very similar; initial phone screen, series of code tests, interviews with potential team matches, offer letter. He found it interesting that the code tests at the large companies are all on foundational concepts. So, it doesn’t matter if you’re a graphics person or a cyber security person when it comes to the code tests. However, your area of expertise comes into play as you are matched with teams. Medium sized companies and startups will code test directly on what they are looking for (your area of interest). While many students claim that code tests from the big tech firms are intense, he says they pale in comparison to the code tests from startups.
From a luxury standpoint, it’s hard to beat the big companies. Breakfast, lunch, dinner provided and the quality of the meals blows away typical college dining hall cuisine - should you have sushi or wood fired pizza for lunch? Concerts, boat cruises, and more. However, the intern work has always been “real” and substantive – no busy work here. Our S is listed on a patent application from one company.
He has really loved all his internships. The experiences, both technical and social, were uniformly rewarding. Interestingly, when asked which internship was his overall favorite, he said the small startup. I’m not sure if the “startup” allure is an artifact of the college he’s going to or just reflective of his bent, but he liked the feeling of immediacy and the need to wake up each morning and tackle new challenges that could help launch a new company.
As a parental side note I thinks it was awesome for our S to start to see the opportunities that all his hard work is making possible. We’re excited for him.
It appears more likely that generic recruiting and interviewing with role matching later is more common at very large companies and for new graduates and interns.
However, it is likely that job seekers, particularly those with work experience will find that most employers try to role match first when looking at resumes before recruiting and interviewing, and interview questions tend to include more role specific ones, although some generic questions will also be included. Employers using generic recruiting and interviewing for experienced applicants tend to have somewhat harder generic questions and probably have higher standards when “grading” answers to such questions.
Also, standards get higher with higher experience. Those with lots of experience (which employers presume will mean wanting higher pay) may be expected to be exact matches with role matching employers, and give A+ answers to every question at employers which recruit generically. This may resemble age discrimination. It may also be why older people are more likely to move into management or other roles rather than remain as purely technical individual contributors.
Thank you all for your informative responses and sharing your own experiences. My son is getting some interviews already from companies he has applied to, not FAANG, but other well known companies in banking and related areas.
Great news, Keep us updated. The banking sector offers many interesting opportunities for interns in many areas. Capital One has an interesting program with lots of CS opportunities.
Update: DS1 decided to look for new opportunities in the banking sector and didn’t want to return to the Summer 2019 Fortune 50 company for internship. Well, be careful what you wish for:
DS1 now has a new conundrum - has an internship offer for Summer 2020 with a well known bank with some recent PR issues , but also got an online tech interview with another well known bank with a great rep. He is thinking of dragging his feet before making a decision on the offer, hoping that he’ll advance with the other bank. We are aware that internships with the great rep bank are highly competitive. Apparently no way to contact any human at this stage of the process with the great rep bank.
He has not heard back from any of the other places he applied to.
Looks like there are many posters here with background in this industry and/or internships in general, and so hoping for some perspective and advice. Thanks!
PM’ed you @momprof9904