This.
Too many such aspirants to SV are ignorant of this fact.
Have friends working at the techy companies drop your resume during hiring periods.
You will definitely get a look see by a recruiter on the recommendation of a friend working at the company.
I wrote about internships. Unpaid internships still do exist–and that means no compensation, no stock, no nothing. The prize is the experience.
Internships should be compensated in cash or in credits. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.
My daughter and a number of her friends were recruited by companies they came in contact with at http://gracehopper.org/attend/
Interesting:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper
Post # 43. My daughter’s friend went there but did have an internship. But she was only sophomore, maybe that’s the difference.
These days, a CS major who takes an unpaid internship is either very bad or unlucky at looking for a paid internship/job or at best marginal at CS.
The Grace Hopper conference is a wonderful experience, but not much help to the OP’s young friend because he’s male.
Agreeing again with ucb about CS majors not needing to take unpaid internships, because plenty of the paid variety exist. Which is not to say that the unpaid variety don’t exist in CS. D1 opted for a highly unusual unpaid CS internship during one summer, giving up some other offers that offered hefty paychecks. The experience in this particular case was indeed the prize. It wasn’t about stock options, it wasn’t in Silicon Valley, and it wasn’t because she couldn’t find paid employment. Back to the OP’s young friend: if he is involved in some kind of community project, with a little bit of networking and some creative thinking on his part, he should eventually be able to find summer internships that will both help that community AND will help him develop technical skills.
Non-CS major D2 will probably have some unpaid internships in her future, so we’ll get to see the other side of the story. 
My thoughts exactly! But still an invaluable bit of information for at least half of the other people following this thread! 
I absolutely LOVE this suggestion!!!
Honestly, after reading the replies to this thread, I’m starting to wonder if he even belongs in Silicon Valley, given his passion for the project he’s working on, which has absolutely NOTHING to do with CS. But that’s something he’ll have to figure out for himself.
^^^ Just like in engineering, a lot of students start out in CS at college and then either change to MIS or to a totally different degree after they either find a passion for another discipline, find out CS is not what they thought it would be, or just can’t make the necessary grades.
Why would anyone actually seek to work and live in Silicon Valley?
My son lives there (not intentionally, he just happened to get a job there) and it’s insanely expensive. If you can possibly pursue a CS career elsewhere, it would be a good idea to do so.
Yes its insanely expensive. So are many top colleges that some students strive to attend. For those truly passionate about the tech industry, its a highly concentrated area of young, bright talent and job opportunities.
Which is why I posted the information. 
Post #45, just remember some of these kids are still freshmen and sophomores. I wouldn’t go that far. I talked to a parent whose son went to berkeley and he got no internship by April. He didn’t even started looking yet. Same with one parent whose kid is at MIT.
Post #49, it’s insanely expensive but no worse off than NYC.
Ummm…my DIL took several members of her team to Grace Hopper last fall. Several of them are male.
Probably because, for a CS graduate, there are more different employers and kinds of CS jobs available to seek. The fact that non-compete agreements for almost all kinds of employees are explicitly unenforceable in California may have (unintentionally) helped develop this situation, and is beneficial to employees in California to this day. Indeed, those in other states seeking to change jobs may find that moving to a job in California is a better deal that staying unemployed for a substantial amount of time due to a non-compete agreement that is enforceable in his/her current state.
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@CountingDown, maybe men can attend as presenters but not as students?
For why anyone would want to live and work in SV…one could say the same thing about someone in finance living and working in NYC. 
It seems like men can attend Grace Hopper but not in large number. But somehow I don’t think that is right. It seems like they want to take advantage anyway they can.
Hey, my kid attended a “Women’s Open House” at Olin several years ago! It was the only day he was able to visit, and they had room for him, so why not? (Although, to be honest, I didn’t tell him about the gender-specific open house until we were already halfway there . . . ) This may be a similar situation, with men permitted to attend on a space available basis. So why the heck shouldn’t they???