Interns at Facebook, Google Out-Earn the Average American (axios.com) 215
Alayna Treene, writing for Axios: Long gone are the days of unpaid internships, at least at these 25 companies who are paying interns more than what the average American earns. Tech and finance interns in particular -- including at Google, Bloomberg, BlackRock, and Facebook -- earn more per month than the average American, according to data released by Glassdoor Tuesday.
They make the *median* income of SV (Score:5, Interesting)
There are plenty of fields where employees, interns or otherwise, outpace the salaries of the vast majority of Americans; however, put into context, interns at companies based in Silicon Valley are making just about the median income for the area and about 1/3 above the Californian median.
I am not sure what this is supposed to tell us, honestly. Companies wanting to attract top talent need to pay decent wages. Clearly the marketplace is competitive, even pre-graduation, especially for those coming out of top-tier schools with advanced degrees.
I mean, it's very nice that everyone wants to have income equality; however, let's dispel with the notion it's going to happen anytime soon and move along.
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It tells us that at least half of all people in Silicon Valley don't work as software engineers or management. :-D
Re:They make the *median* income of SV (Score:4, Interesting)
It tells us that at least half of all people in Silicon Valley don't work as software engineers or management. :-D
That's a popular misconception about Silicon Valley. Not everyone here is a newly minted millionaire, billionaire or zillionaire. You got minimum wage people taking out the trash, virtual ditch diggers like myself cleaning up the messes, and everyone else who isn't management or engineering.
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Is that a new class in World of Warcraft?
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I think that's Minecraft
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I worked for a company based in Santa Monica and I never felt like it was all that nice in the majority of the town there. There were plenty of townhouses, run down homes, and homeless people wandering around. Comparing SM to Beverly Hills there's a noticeable gap in wealth but SM looks like any other suburb to me.
That said, when they were looking to relocate me to their SM office, even at a six-figure salary, I was going to have to live 45 minutes away (90-160 minute commute time) in Huntington Beach to ge
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Same with San Jose -- you can just -feel- how much money is floating around.
I lived in San Jose all my life and never experience that. The one-time I did experience that was when my brother's in-laws bought a five-bedroom, $1M home in Gilroy (30 miles south of San Jose). The kitchen was larger than my 475-sqft studio apartment. The wet bar was bigger than my kitchen. What made it even more obscene is that the in-laws had five bedrooms of furniture that been in the family for decades.
I highly doubt a fast food worker would endure, say, a 2 hour commute from Stockton or similar.
That's because most fast food workers live locally.
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When I worked for the company based in Santa Monica, my boss lived in Huntington Beach. His house cost around $750MM. It was 2000 sq ft and had a 'yard' a bit larger than a vegetable garden anywhere else in the country.
I mean, a $1MM home honestly doesn't bring that much in the LA area; however, I don't know how it differs from SJ.
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I am in between Santa Monica and Huntington Beach, and am yet to see a home sell for $3,000/square foot... although some ass thinks his 2,700 square feet of dirt are worth over $10 million...
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I lived in San Jose all my life and never experience that.
Maybe you don't notice the bubble because you were born in it. I grew up in Appalachia (eastern Tennessee) and now live in San Jose. To me, it is like two different planets.
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Maybe you don't notice the bubble because you were born in it.
Or maybe I see more of the underbelly because I take public transit. At $50K+ per year, I make more money than the people who clean toilets and the homeless who ride the bus.
I grew up in Appalachia (eastern Tennessee) and now live in San Jose. To me, it is like two different planets.
That's how I feel when I visit my extended family in Idaho. Never seen a place so full of white people. If you want to see a Chinese person, you go to the laundry matt or takeout place. If you want to see a Mexican person, go to the Mexican restaurant. If you want to see a black person tell an off-color joke to a white five-year-old boy
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That's because most fast food workers live locally.
The GP's point was that they wouldn't be able to live locally, due to the rent. What might be happening is that these jobs are being filled by youngsters - students and other people who don't have to pay rent. In most of the country, those people are simply getting pushed out of the job market; the workforce participation rate is dropping among young people faster than any other age group. The middle-aged uneducated guys who take the fast food jobs in the rest of the country have been pushed out. Kids with
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The GP's point was that they wouldn't be able to live locally, due to the rent. What might be happening is that these jobs are being filled by youngsters [...]
That entire premise is wrong. I'm seeing more and more senior citizens and fewer young people taking minimum wage jobs in my area of San Jose. I know people love to bitch and moan about how expensive Silicon Valley is, always ASSUMING that anyone making $100K or less must commute two hours each way from Stockton. I live in my own apartment in San Jose, I make $50K+ per year and I commute to Palo Alto on the Express Bus one-hour each way.
Perhaps Silicon Valley types rather spend their money at a full-service restaurant, where proportionally higher tips would make housing more in reach.
You're joking, right?
http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/01/24/whats-behi [eastbaytimes.com]
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The question I've always had is where the "service class" lives.
Gilroy.
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Gilroy.
I would say East San Jose. The Walmart in Gilroy is where you can find all the white trailer trash.
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Sure, but knowing the costs it takes to live in those areas one has to ask themselves why bother?
It's something that most people don't take into consideration. In my case, I was born and raised in Silicon Valley before it became Silicon Valley. Back then orchards and canneries outnumbered tech companies and a three-bedroom home cost $32K (which 30 years later would sell for $1M).
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To expand on what you're saying creimer, here is something to consider: when I was born - somewhere just North of 50 years ago - the concept of the suburbs was a relatively recent thing. Before that time, people either lived in the city - which was an area about 5 or 10 miles in diameter (for large cities at the time), or you were living in the country - the boondocks.
In 1946 there were 300 people living in the countryside that would become the culdesac and ranch house filled abomination of a subdivided
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Is that what they call Java programmers these days? Because of all the security holes they dig?
Virtual ditch diggers do the IT jobs that no one else wants to do: help desk, desktop, deployments, inventory and data center build outs. Not sure if I would add Java programmers to that list.
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Incomeequality is quite a pointless metric because it doesn't tell you jack shit. Instead you should be focused on consumption equality. I guarantee you that I'm living much better off than people in silicon valley on less that half of the income.
Re:They make the *median* income of SV (Score:5, Informative)
I think it just brings attention to how insane and dysfunctional California is.
Median income in California is well above the national level. Rising housing prices are actually a benefit if you already own your house, as most people do.
It also begs the question ...
No it doesn't. It raises the question. Begging the question [wikipedia.org] means something completely different.
... why the hell would anyone want to live like that.
1. High salaries that more than offset the high housing cost.
2. Making even more money as your house appreciates.
3. The best public schools in the country are in Silicon Valley
4. Lots of very interesting work
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We have substituted proper pensions for appreciating property that can be downsized at retirement. This is bad for everyone.
and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very hi (Score:2)
and the cost of living in the bay area is very high out there 60K is crap.
Other places 50-60K is good!
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Re:and the cost of liveing in the bay area is very (Score:4, Funny)
Not sure how many people want a big wife
You can't have big kids without a big wife. There are always exceptions to the rule. My parents were skinny as can be when they had me as a ten-pound bowling ball and brought me home in a bowling bag.
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Middle-aged, living by yourself and spending half your income to rent a studio apartment is not "a modest lifestyle".
Compared to a lot of other folks in Silicon Valley, this is a modest lifestyle. I know of few people in similar circumstances who still have money left over at the end of each month to save.
It's pretty much rock-bottom.
Rock-bottom is paying half your income on rent for a room in a house and living with roommates. For an extra $200 per month, I could get an extra wall to have a one-bedroom apartment.
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you walk 3mph during your workouts - super athlete.
https://twitter.com/cdreimer/status/858405712317210624 [twitter.com]
a guy making the same as an intro-level college graduate after 20 years of experience in an industry.
I don't have a high school diploma and I don't have university degree. I do have two associate degrees (A.A. in General Education and A.S. in Computer Programming) and no student loans. I deliberately went into IT Support because I enjoy the work. It's not fair to compare me to a recent college graduate with $100K in student loans and no expectations to pay them off in this lifetime.
rock bottom is having to plow through a bowl of prozac just to get through the day without jumping off the overpass because of your shitty life.
As I explained in a previous post, I've never taken anti-depressants.
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i make fun of you for walking 3mph, you provide a link with a photo of it. what point are you trying to make?
I'm not ashamed of my workout, as some asshat here made a huge fuss about over the weekend.
you don't take antidepressants (yet?).
Never have, never will.
oh boy is it about to get shitty for you when you relapse off your diet. and you will - all fat losers do.
I've been on a low-carb diet for five years, making changes where necessary.
your comprehension mistakes are exactly the ones mediocre fat somewhat slow it people make.
I'm doing it on purpose, dumbass.
you're not a geek. you are some helpdesk monkey who can maybe write a little script, on a site full of actual geeks.
I haven't done help desk in ten years.
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low-carb? Is that the diet where you eat Clif bars, Power bars, and Fiber One bars by the box?
From Monday through Friday I eat two energy bars for breakfast to "break fast" 12 hours after my last meal from the previous day. A three-month supply is ~120 bars (11 or 12 boxes) for $100 via Amazon and Walmart.
Or did you finally "make the necessary changes" when people pointed out to you that eating that shit was just as bad as eating candy bars all day?
I make changes based on my data and not someone else's opinion. For example, an asshat told me that TWO Snickers were healthier than two energy bars. When I compared the labels that proved that energy bars were better (except for sodium), the asshat changed his position to ONE Snickers bar. When I
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i'm the asshat alcoholic who drinks a glass of really good wine.
Now that you admitted that you have a problem, what are you gonna do about it? Dropping $3K a night on wine is shameful.
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(1) you're making 50k in the highest paid geographical it market, after 20 years of experience - that's simply a joke.
Not for the line of work that I do. Remember, virtual ditch digger. Not programmer. Not developer. Not software architect. If you need a miracle worker, I'm the guy to call.
(2) you got kicked out of college.
I spent eight years in Special Ed classes, skipped high school, went to community college for four years (two years of remedial coursework and two years for General Education), transferred to the university, got kicked out of the university, and went back to school a decade later to get my A.S. degree in Computer Programming.
(3) you diet by eating weight gain bars for athletes and you're still a fucking elephant after 5 years.
I've been 35
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I've been 350 pounds for last 10+ years. My nickname in school was "Titanic" not "Elephant Man".
School bullying is looked down upon. Even professional football players who are very tall and very muscular are fucking fat at 350 lbs.
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If I had creimer's life, that's exactly what I'd have to do.
JUMP! JUMP! JUMP!
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We need sad losers to to diss and shit on for relaxation.
Rorschach (The Watchmen): "I am not locked in here with you. You are locked in with me!"
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i'll assume some comic book loser shit an adult is into for some reason, which is not because his kids like it
I read the Watchmen [amzn.to] when I was in college. This is definitely not a graphic novel for kids to read.
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Why not make 100k in the valley?
Because I'm a virtual ditch digger and virtual ditch diggers don't make $100K. That's why I'm studying for the Security+ and ITIL Foundation certifications this year, and probably the Cisco Security track next year. For my next job, I'll step up to $100K.
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and the cost of living in the bay area is very high out there 60K is crap.
My company in San Jose rents a five bedroom house for the summer, within walking distance of our offices. Interns bunk two to a room. This free housing makes it much easier to recruit interns from outside the Bay Area, because they save more of their pay and they don't have to look for housing (which is a major time-wasting hassle in SV).
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100k usd in SF was considered low incoming recently (thats a little over 8k/mo), according to another slashdot linked article. and it's probably true.
4500usd/mo housing for a small 1 bed room
35%+ taxes
8.75% tax on purchases
so.. 100k-54k = 46k.. - 35% (and thats a low estimate) = 30k left over of utilities, food, car, insurance, etc.
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Exactly, I've looked at job offers in big cities and when I do a cost of living comparison I'm better off staying where I am. 95K a year in a town where 1k a month can get you a 3000sq foot home on a half acre of land, or 110k a year in a city where 2k a month gets you a small apartment....
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I've seen the same thing I make good pay for where I live, I could get better pay if I moved but the difference in the cost of living doesn't make it worth it.
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Did you just subtract rent and then tax? Wish the IRS was that generous. Its Tax first and then Rent. 100K is 8K a month = 6 K a month after tax (marginal rate is 25 fed+9 state but not all income is taxed at marginal rate). Noone on a 100K is paying a 4500 apartment. They are probably sharing an apartment or a room so say 2k on rent. 4K. Health Insurance+Car+Car Insurance+utilities = Another 1 K. Leave 3K/pm for food, retirement savings, saving for a Downpayment
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I don't know anyone paying $4500 a month for a one bedroom in SF.
$2700-3200 seems to be about the norm; you can get away with $1900 for half of a 2 bedroom oftentimes.
Seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)
outcome vs opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
The article's main point seems to be complaining about income inequality in general which is a complaint of equality of outcomes. Focusing on outcomes never seems to work. The war on poverty has killed too many poor people. More focus on opportunity and let people work out their own outcomes.
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Huh?
Re:outcome vs opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
The war on poverty has killed too many poor people.
Huh?
GP is right - being poor is strongly correlated with poor health outcomes. Diabetes, etc. lead to death very prematurely, especially without management. Availability of healthcare isn't the primary factor; people who are in poverty tend to seek care less often and are less compliant on average, regardless of healthcare availability.
The "Great Society" programs in the US have locked people into cycles of poverty. Look at the data for Eastern Kentucky, for instance: before the "Great Society" the net outflow of population was much higher. In prospective studies/experiments children who left with their families (subsidized to do so) at an early age did far better than their peers who stayed, and their life outcomes were much improved. But that's not how these programs work.
Before the "Great Society" if an area was overpopulated for its industries, the lack of work would cause people to leave. With these so-called "War on Poverty" programs, they are incentivized to stay put and collect welfare checks instead of seeking opportunity. There are multi-generational families in Appalachia who have never known a typical work environment.
Since the Green Revolution nobody is going to starve in a first-world country (obesity is our problem now). But the current Welfare State system definitively locks people into poverty and that turns out to be deadly.
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"There are multi-generational families in Appalachia who have never known a typical work environment."
Citation needed -- you can't collect welfare for more than 5 years of your entire life. About the only benefit you can get that's not time limited is disability or food stamps.
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The "Great Society" programs in the US have locked people into cycles of poverty.
My test for "locked in poverty" is whether a person of ordinary ability who is willing to work an honest 9-5 can find good meaningful work that pays enough to support a small family simply but comfortably (i.e. no one in the family is going to bed hungry, everyone on the family has basic medical care, the children in the family have access to decent schools, etc.).
The question of whether the government is providing such generous welfare that it's preferable to not work and simply collect welfare even though
Re:outcome vs opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
So the one explanation is that such jobs exist but people choose welfare instead. The other explanation is that such jobs don't exist - well at least not enough for everyone.
A third explanation is the one the GP alluded to: such jobs exist, but not locally. Because welfare is (barely) good enough and moving seems like such a risky endeavor, people stay put and get by on welfare.
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So as a married man with no kids, if I move to eastern Kentucky how much welfare can I expect to get? Assuming I simply choose to not work.
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So as a married man with no kids, if I move to eastern Kentucky how much welfare can I expect to get? Assuming I simply choose to not work.
How would I know?
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if I move to eastern Kentucky how much welfare can I expect to get?
That depends on what you're eligible for, and how efficient you are at converting non-monetary entitlements into cash:
https://theweek.com/articles/452321/appalachia-big-white-ghetto
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Because welfare is (barely) good enough and moving seems like such a risky endeavor, people stay put and get by on welfare.
Moving isn't easy but it's not that hard. Either your argument is that poor people are trapped in ignorance (like someone blinded by smoke in a burning building who can't see the open door to safety)
It doesn't have to be ignorance. It can also be apathy, or fear of the unknown, or any of a dozen other reasons. Note that I'm not actually claiming that any of this is the case, just that it's possible and the possibility shouldn't be ignored when trying to understand why people stay in bad situations.
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Availability of healthcare isn't the primary factor; people who are in poverty tend to seek care less often
uhhhh ....
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The war on poverty has killed too many poor people.
Huh?
GP is right - being poor is strongly correlated with poor health outcomes. Diabetes, etc. lead to death very prematurely, especially without management. Availability of healthcare isn't the primary factor; people who are in poverty tend to seek care less often and are less compliant on average, regardless of healthcare availability.
The "Great Society" programs in the US have locked people into cycles of poverty. Look at the data for Eastern Kentucky, for instance: before the "Great Society" the net outflow of population was much higher. In prospective studies/experiments children who left with their families (subsidized to do so) at an early age did far better than their peers who stayed, and their life outcomes were much improved. But that's not how these programs work.
Before the "Great Society" if an area was overpopulated for its industries, the lack of work would cause people to leave. With these so-called "War on Poverty" programs, they are incentivized to stay put and collect welfare checks instead of seeking opportunity. There are multi-generational families in Appalachia who have never known a typical work environment.
Since the Green Revolution nobody is going to starve in a first-world country (obesity is our problem now). But the current Welfare State system definitively locks people into poverty and that turns out to be deadly.
You're missing a huge factor- quality education. Somehow we have managed to tie the quality of primary education completely to where one lives. The good schools are in areas with a good tax base, and the poorer areas get schools that reflect the reduced tax base. Just a quick look around Beattyville, KY [trulia.com] (poorest white town in the USA) shows a lot of schools with GreatSchool ratings under 5/10. Multiple schools rated 2/10. The rating system may have some flaws but that is an indication that these school
ACA says you're wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
That "Cycle of Poverty" bullshit you're spouting comes from right wing "Think Tanks" set up to justify abandoning the poor. If you track back who's telling you that and look at who belongs to those tanks you'll find industry lobbyists all the way down.
People moving around out of desperation isn't how you end poverty. It's how you shuffle the poor around. And you have no idea how bad things were before the Great Society. Or you're actively choosing to ignore it. Or those "Think Tanks" are doing it for you. The outcomes the same.
Poverty ends first with food. Women need food while their kids are gestating so those kids don't have mental problems. It goes on to clean, lead free air & water. Again, prevent mental problems. Next is education. Lots of it. All the way to college. That won't stop poverty, since we're running out of work (Automation & productivity increases for the win) but it will create a population smart enough to solve those problems. All that takes money, and if you think the 1% is going to pay for it by choice you haven't been paying attention to the last 1000 years of human civiliazion.
People aren't starving because of food stamps and other welfare programs. Those programs are mostly allowed to exists because agribusiness lobbies for them. But even they've been losing to the "Cut my Taxes" lobby.
At the end of the day everything you wrote is something you're telling yourself to feel better about cutting your taxes while abandoning the poor. I sincerely hope you're better than that, will realize what you're doing and stop it. Keep in mind, when the 1%ers are done with the poor, you're next.
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It's jerks like you that condemn people to perpetual poverty by being tools for politicians who view welfare dependence and poverty as convenient vote getters.
You're referring to corporate dems (Score:2)
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Well, they adopt third position economics. That makes them proto-fascist. So, you're correct, the Democratic party, Bernie Sanders, and the Justice Democrats are actually right wing.
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I agree. In the "Why it matters" paragraph, the point is there is income inequality. I think it matters much more that there are good, high-paying jobs available in new, growing industries. That's fabulous news. And the jobs aren't all in the Bay Area, they're scattered around the country. So if you're stuck in a low-paying dead end job, get some software training and get an internship. That's a really plausible way to advance.
OK, if you're a 55-year-old machinist in Detroit and the plant just closed, that
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Once you get past your mid-fourties, you just don't have enough time or energy to begin retraining from the beginning. Generationally thing will work out. Your kids will get jobs in the new fields. But you may be left behind and that's hard.
I'm sorry to hear that you plan to remain stagnant for half of your life. I'd like to hope that I will continue to learn and improve until the day I die.
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Who said I plan to remain stagnant? I just don't think I'm likely to start a new career as, oh I don't know, a musician or doctor at this point.
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Once you get past your mid-fourties, you just don't have enough time or energy to begin retraining from the beginning. Generationally thing will work out. Your kids will get jobs in the new fields. But you may be left behind and that's hard.
I'm sorry to hear that you plan to remain stagnant for half of your life. I'd like to hope that I will continue to learn and improve until the day I die.
Regardless if you are stagnant or not, the unfortunate fact is that opportunities shrink when after you pass your mid-forties... Of course companies don't simply go Carrousel [sic] [wikipedia.org] on their employees, but age discrimination is rampant in most industries (esp high-tech). The expected rate of return from retraining is certainly going to be much lower than someone who is younger (and of course the actual net return will be lower as you will have fewer years to accumulate whatever return you get).
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One of the main "outcomes" that people want is equal "opportunity" for their children.
I don't know if it's just because most Americans are profoundly ignorant of the world outside their own country or what. But I find the amount of hopelessness and defeatism in the USA to be striking.
Absolutely - I think people here have a distinct lack of perspective. Lord Tytler explained the eight stages of democracy: bondage to spiritual faith; spiritual faith to great courage; courage to liberty; liberty to abundance; abundance to complacency; complacency to apathy; apathy to dependence, and dependence back to bondage. Which stage is the U.S.? I'd say we're in the middle of the final stage. People are not really all that happy, but as bad as anybody in the U.S. may have it, we're far better of
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They'd rather have a B- student from Harvard than an A+ student from state
Or literally any random person on an H1B visa, almost regardless of educational background.
How the dollars fly over time... (Score:3)
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When I did my 3 month internship I got 90% of the graduate wage. "Didn't have enough money" is no excuse for slavery.
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"Didn't have enough money" is no excuse for slavery.
Slavery, what slavery? I was tasked to regress 600+ bugs in six months, got it done in two months. Wrote a 300-page technical manual. Found a crash bug on the test server that my supervisor ignored, approved for the production server, and the company lost $250K in revenues as the engineers took the production server off line for three days to fix the problem. Of course, I didn't get hired on permanently and one-third of the department got laid off a month after I left to make up for the lost revenues. That
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Slavery, what slavery?
I should have asked when you did your internship. $10 for an internship is slavery by any modern or semi modern standards. Hell I got paid $25 as an unskilled factory hand while at uni spending my nights studying and my daytime working with people who struggled to spell their own names but did have the technical capability of dragging a palette around. And even that was 10+ years ago.
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Slavery, what slavery?
I should have asked when you did your internship. $10 for an internship is slavery by any modern or semi modern standards. Hell I got paid $25 as an unskilled factory hand while at uni spending my nights studying and my daytime working with people who struggled to spell their own names but did have the technical capability of dragging a palette around. And even that was 10+ years ago.
Don't know about when the original poster did their internship, but I made $8.08/hour back in the early '80s (30+ years ago) working on an internship with a high-tech company... I thought that was great vs my other job waiting tables at minimum wage ($3.35/hour).
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What is "being on a six-contract"? Asking honestly as I do not understand what that means. Six months?
My bad. A six-month contract.
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Or something like that, HehHeh
Work at a Fortune 500 company with stock options for the employees. "On, no! Stock down thirty-cents after lunch!! The bank is going to repossess my second Tesla!!!"
I couldn't take fart at Cisco without someone checking the stock price on their cellphone.
and employees from these companies (Score:2)
interns there, when you take other things into consideration such as free housing, free food, free laptop, etc. actually get more than many employees of these companies - and I'm saying engineers.
interning there is a great, great deal.
JavaScript (Score:2)
Ah, that helps explain why so many Big Tech websites are slow as molasses on a two-year-old phone. I bet none of the interns is running a $40 SoC Android device from Walmart.
n.b.: lots of your potential customers* are buying those devices right now.
* you may know 'customers' by the more familiar term 'eyeballs' /s
Same goes for law firm summer associates (Score:4, Insightful)
These are arguably in the top 5 of companies at the center of a massive Second Dotcom Bubble. Of course they're going to pay their interns a lot:
- Cost of living in SV, even temporarily, is more than just about anywhere else in the country
- Google and Facebook do most of their hiring from Stanford and other top 10 private-school computer science and engineering departments. People who can afford to go there on their own will expect at least what an investment bank or management consultancy is willing to pay them for an internship. People who are smart enough to get into a private school on an academic scholarship are also probably worth paying that kind of money for.
Two other industries, law and investment banking, are famous for internships that pay handsomely.
- Big law firms will recruit interns from the top of the class of only the Top 14 law schools in the country. They put them up in New York City, pay them a comparatively large salary, and basically spend the summer shuttling them between parties and events while giving them some token work to do. And if they find they like you, starting salary is $180K nowadays. Too bad you have to be at the top of your class at Harvard, Yale or Stanford to get "drafted" like this.
- Investment banks take on "associates" either while they're getting their MBA or just after. Again, only the top business school grads need apply. The difference is that they work their associates 100-hour weeks doing menial processing tasks for years. If you work out you're in the "cannot fail" club for life, but the route there is quite different from the law firm crowd.
So, I wouldn't get too bent out of shape over this. Plum internships at hot companies aren't the norm. Media and publishing interns often get _nothing_ for a huge amount of very menial work.
76% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck (Score:2)
Required Internship == Low Pay (Score:2)
Many degrees require an internship -> Look at education majors. This makes internships very competitive, if you don't get one you don't graduate. That means the employer has all the power in the transaction, oh you want to make minimum wage - we have another applicant that will take the job for free, you want to work for free, we have an applicant that will pay us to train them.
Many degrees require an internship -> Look at education majors. This makes internships very competitive, if you don't get o
Oiks (Score:2)
Do people actually talk like that?
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Cost of Living (Score:2)
This doesn't take into account the differences in cost-of-living based on location, so it's a bit skewed.
cost of living (Score:2)
cost of living in the bay area is high. tax brackets and AMT and benefit qualifications do not take cost of living in to account.
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tax brackets and AMT and benefit qualifications do not take cost of living in to account.
No matter how much you earn, if you only work for 3 months out of the year, that puts you below the poverty level. At most you'll be paying maybe $100 in taxes.
Not "really" that much is it? (Score:2)
Re:This is why they need H1b (Score:5, Interesting)
Internships are really extended multi-month job interviews. That is how my company sees them, and that is how interns should see them. We never offer an internship to someone that we would not want to hire as a permanent employee. After graduation, we offer jobs to about 60% of our former interns, and most of them accept. We make NO job offers to any other graduates.
So the competition for the best interns is really a competition for the best future employees. The competition is fierce, and the best students usually have multiple internship offers.
Students that don't intern, and expect to just magically find a job after they graduate, are idiots.
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If I had mod points, I'd mod your post up. Instead, I'll reply!
Yes, I came here to say exactly this. Also, this story is going to blow up or go viral or whatever, and for no good reason, IMHO. Sure, $8k/mo is pretty good money, but this is an internship. How long do they work? 3-4 months at the most? Keep in mind, that cost of living for those internship months are going to be pretty high, being in San Francisco (-ish).
Re:This is why they need H1b (Score:4, Insightful)
This is hardly a new thing in the tech industry. It was certainly the case in the late Nineties. We do real work, even as interns, and get paid real money.
It's political (lobbyists, canvassers, whathaveyou...) interneships that were unpaid, and as far as I know still are. They learn vital skills like trading semi-legal favors, selling the common good to the highest bidder, etc. Paying them would be counterproductive - poor people may get in... better keep those open for people who have rich, connected parents, and can spend the Summer without income.
Re:This is why they need H1b (Score:4, Insightful)
Students that don't intern, and expect to just magically find a job after they graduate, are idiots.
I wouldn't call them idiots necessarily. Depending upon the circumstances, some students just don't know. I'm old enough to have been from the age when college was still seen as a place for learning rather than a trade school. I had to work crap jobs during college, and was only vaguely aware that well-paying internships even existed. Or at least, they were for kids with better grades than myself.
All that said, I know some college students who are doing much better these days. The pressure seems positively enormous. I really feel for these kids today.
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college was still seen as a place for learning rather than a trade school.
It should be both. Should you study history and literature in college? Sure. Should you MAJOR in history or English literature? Not unless you have rich parents.
When I was in college, I took a (mandatory) class called "Great Books of Western Literature". It was a good class with a great professor, and I enjoyed it very much. I also took classes in sociology, history, and art. But my major was engineering. So I left college with a broad general education, specific useful skills, and a well paying job
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Me ex majored in English Literature like her mother but taught at a state university instead of a high school. I studied applied arts but left teaching to work for Ma Bell. I've contracted with 3 of the companies on that list.
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I studied applied arts but left teaching to work for Ma Bell.
If I can infer from your invocation of "Ma Bell", you probably got your job back when there wasn't a horde of low-cost H1Bs with STEM degrees competing for jobs at high-tech companies...
Today, studying applied arts probably isn't going to give you the same opportunities as getting a STEM degree. Just say'n...
Full disclosure, I'm of the same vintage and they certainly didn't have a big computer scientist degree-ed hiring pool available back when "Ma Bell" existed. (not zero, but not big either). It probabl
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Should you MAJOR in history or English literature? Not unless you have rich parents.
I graduated with a B.A. in English, and now I'm an enterprise architect. Uninformed comments like this make engineers look foolish.
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Genuine question, what's an enterprise architect?
They design starships, except during rush hour when they drive for Uber.
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That's how law has worked for years. The biggest stress point was where you'd intern while in law school because that largely determined where you'd get a job. Once you have an offer for an internship, you were on easy street. High tech is just now catching up.
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Students that don't intern, and expect to just magically find a job after they graduate, are idiots.
And during the great recession the sources of interships dried up so bad that a lot of fellow engineering students (including myself) took months if not a year to find their first job in their chose field after leaving college. Some never did get into their field as they were out of school for too long and seen as "untouchable." Of course some of us got blamed by professors for being "lazy" but the truth was that there simply were not enough internships and co-ops to go around for all of us during those yea
You know what's nice about that (Score:2)
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Internships are really extended multi-month job interviews. That is how my company sees them, and that is how interns should see them. We never offer an internship to someone that we would not want to hire as a permanent employee. After graduation, we offer jobs to about 60% of our former interns, and most of them accept. We make NO job offers to any other graduates.
So the competition for the best interns is really a competition for the best future employees. The competition is fierce, and the best students usually have multiple internship offers.
Students that don't intern, and expect to just magically find a job after they graduate, are idiots.
That is a stupid way of looking at things. Quite a large number of qualified students simply cannot take internships for a variety of reasons. Additionally, that does not preclude them from finding good jobs when they graduate. Evidence from real life says you are wrong on that account.
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This is how things worked out for me many years ago. I interned at a local tech company that sadly was past their peak and headed downward. After I graduated one of the managers I asked to offer a reference offered a job instead in a new division at another company. I didn't spend long out of college before I landed a job. As an intern I was doing some fairly sophisticated work, working on a lot of MS DOS TSRs as well as BIOS for at the time state of the art hardware. At the time I earned a decent salary, e
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big banks have had internships that pay the same as a starting analyst for years (and starting analysts at banks make more than the average american for most of that time).
frankly, when you are getting paid 5-6k a month, if you cant' find monthly accommodations that are sufficient for your needs and well within your budget, you have some pretty severe financial management problems. Our London based internships brought in folks from all across the EU and no one had an issue finding a room to rent, similar i
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H1Bs can be looked upon as internships only for people with degrees but missing the local cultural context. By the time they get their Greencards they have the cultural context as well. So the lower pay during H1-GC process is just another kind of intern pay