Are Internships worth it?

I am sure you can get a job in EA if you try now.

Competition in Ontario is particularly insane due to the amount of overqualified immigrants from Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Asia.

Most of the guys in my program were white actually, with a couple east and south asian guys thrown in here and there.

Talking to random people in my program I got the feeling that more professors were non-English speaking immigrants, actually.. The students for the most part seemed very Canadian and spoke English reasonably well. I did not come across 1 student who didn't have a solid command of the English language.

The profs on the other hand.. Half of them might as well have been dragged out of some classroom in China, never having spoken English in their lives.

I did see a bunch of non-English speaking Chinese students in other classes.. i.e. people who needed to bring in dictionaries to exams, because their command of English was so poor. But that almost never happened in my program, only electives.
 
I had one unpaid internship. It was great.
Nice. By the way, only paid interns are hired now. Probably should've been that way for awhile. You did some great work that we use a lot.

That said we will have three people under 25 on the team before the end of the year. Someone has to continue the legacy when I bail.
 
It is a basic principle of capitalism that labour is worth money.

It is noteworthy that capitalist economies are increasingly using non-paid labour for profit in a variety of ways. Internships and the astonishing oxymoron of involuntary-voluntary work (workfare) are obvious abusesm and should be banned.
 
Most of the guys in my program were white actually, with a couple east and south asian guys thrown in here and there.

Talking to random people in my program I got the feeling that more professors were non-English speaking immigrants, actually.. The students for the most part seemed very Canadian and spoke English reasonably well. I did not come across 1 student who didn't have a solid command of the English language.

The profs on the other hand.. Half of them might as well have been dragged out of some classroom in China, never having spoken English in their lives.

I did see a bunch of non-English speaking Chinese students in other classes.. i.e. people who needed to bring in dictionaries to exams, because their command of English was so poor. But that almost never happened in my program, only electives.

I am referring to the competition in the job market. At least in the places I work/ed at, the preferred junior developer candidates are experienced devs that have recently immigrated from another country. And usually, they have good English as well and are all qualified to be my bosses.
 
I don't know that I'd so so far as to make it mandatory, but I know that I personally should have gotten an internship or co-op before graduating. (After three and a half years looking for an entry level engineering position after graduation, I'd accept one now too.)

It might be a good idea to require students to at least meet one-on-one with an adviser to discuss the available internship/co-op opportunities, and maybe also require them to research a few internships for which they would consider applying, whether they then chose to pursue them further or not.


If we did not impose arbitrary wage price floors through minimum wage laws, then I doubt there would be very many unpaid internships. It is not a good policy to force employers to choose between paying either nothing at all or more than an arbitrary amount to those who have not yet proven they are worth that amount. In a free market most internships probably would not pay very well initially, but cheap labor is still better than free labor from the laborer's perspective. Salaries would probably at least defray transportation costs and reduce the advantage enjoyed by those with rich families willing to support them.
 
Canadian techies might indeed need to co-op in order to get a feel for the professional world ahead of time. But more importantly, their schools need to step it up to compete on the global market.
 
While I was at university (studying civil engineering), I was able to get a summer job at relevant companies for each of the 3 summers I was there. They were all paid, though not particularly well - and to be honest, I'd have taken them unpaid if they covered my travel expenses. Overall, they were a good experience, and ended up getting a job at one of the companies I'd worked for.
 
In a free market most internships probably would not pay very well initially, but cheap labor is still better than free labor from the laborer's perspective. Salaries would probably at least defray transportation costs and reduce the advantage enjoyed by those with rich families willing to support them.

Practically speaking, I don't think there is THAT much of a difference between making nothing, and making four bucks an hour. You can't support yourself on either, but at least ideally, the guy making nothing is supposed to have some built in protections for his internship that the guy making minimum wage doesn't get.

How often that actually happens? Wellllll....
 
Whether or not an internship is worth it depends on the internship and the industry.

In many professions, internships are a critical and necessary introduction to the industry (law, medicine, and public policy jump immeditely to mind).

In many other industries, interns are unpaid secertaries.

I am very thankful for my internships because those internships followed the rules downtown set out in post #10. To wit: they were about the company working for me rather than the other way around.

Some of my classmates in the same professsion had horrible experiences with their internships. Many who went to work w/ the local clerk of courts did nothing more substaintial than file papers for three months.

The problem for the would-be intern is determining what office is going to give you a good internship experience versus which one will have you shuffle papers and get coffee. That can be real hard to determine.
 
I am referring to the competition in the job market. At least in the places I work/ed at, the preferred junior developer candidates are experienced devs that have recently immigrated from another country. And usually, they have good English as well and are all qualified to be my bosses.

Yeah? Over here my experience has been that people like that are usually decent at theory, but don't really fit into the culture as well. And the whole "work culture" thing is emphasized quite a bit.

I also haven't seen many people like you mentioned getting hired to solid web or software engineering/dev positions. It's usually grads from north america getting those jobs, from what I've seen. Granted a lot of them are immigrants from other countries, but those who finish school here seem to have the upper edge.

Sound like completely different job markets :) Then again though, I haven't had to look for a job for 7-8 years.
 
What BvBPL described is the reason I like simply starting your professional career a semester early rather than interning. The work we give interns is about on the order of fetching everybody else coffee. If I review somebody's resume, I like the intern experience and I will take that over someone who has none, but I like the "real" experience more (yes, I know the intern experience is real, but it's how I perceive it). Plus your entry-level job will pay more than an internship, and put you in line for promotions and raises where the internship does not.
 
Yeah? Over here my experience has been that people like that are usually decent at theory, but don't really fit into the culture as well. And the whole "work culture" thing is emphasized quite a bit.

I also haven't seen many people like you mentioned getting hired to solid web or software engineering/dev positions. It's usually grads from north america getting those jobs, from what I've seen. Granted a lot of them are immigrants from other countries, but those who finish school here seem to have the upper edge.

Sound like completely different job markets :) Then again though, I haven't had to look for a job for 7-8 years.

There you go... last 7-8 years. :)
 
Unpaid internships generally aren't legal, and interns should take their "employers" to court for unpaid wages.

I don't really get the point of "internships" otherwise. When I was in school I just took jobs in my field over the summers. What's the point of labeling it an "internship" other than for lower pay?
They are legal in the US, stupid as it is.
Clearly a way of preventing certain types from getting their foot in the door.
 
Nice. By the way, only paid interns are hired now. Probably should've been that way for awhile. You did some great work that we use a lot.

That said we will have three people under 25 on the team before the end of the year. Someone has to continue the legacy when I bail.
Well shoot, that well brightened my day. :cool:

They are legal in the US, stupid as it is.
Clearly a way of preventing certain types from getting their foot in the door.
I think this became true as more and more industries began expecting unpaid internships. Theoretically they're a net gain for the intern and the employer even unpaid. It allows a potentially (and legally) zero-value-added person to get the experience they need while young and stupid to be a contributor when the time comes. Makes more sense in the job hopping economy we currently have. But as competition goes, it became the norm and a problem.
 
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