Skylines, Sushi, and … Spas? Retelling my SWE Internship Journey: Part 3

Closing up my offers

Something that I wanted to do as I decided to wrap up my junior year recruiting, was to get more comfortable negotiating. I know that negotiating is an important skill to be comfortable as I continue on to full time recruiting the following fall, and I wanted to make use of this opportunity to practice.

As an intern though, I don’t there’s a lot to negotiate given how much I was already being given.

My (initial) offers

Intuit: $40/hr (with 1.5x overtime compensation)+ corporate housing in SF/South Bay

Microsoft: $7250/mo stipend + corporate housing in Redmond, Bellevue, or Seattle or housing stipend

Facebook: $8000/mo stipend + corporate housing in SF/South Bay

Fin: $8000/mo stipend, no housing assistance

Pretty fucking insane.

So I wanted to be more creative in my negotiating process, as monetary compensation clearly is not a concern.

I settled on the following items to discuss to try to create a more fulfilling internship experience:

• Mentorship: Could I shadow or have one on one time with some of the top executives or “face of the company/directive/group” type people?
• Exposure to other technical roles: Could I have time allocated to working within the product management realm or data scientist positions?
• Team placement/specific tech area: Could I be placed on a specific team or group that I’m excited about?

Of course I would also try to bring up matching salaries for the applicable places as well.

In order to execute this to the best of my abilities, I had to put in time to research specific people, teams, and roles that I would want to get time with. I’m still in the process of having these conversations, so I’ll update this when I get there!

Even if I didn’t get a positive response, I would at least have gotten on the phone and talked about it. That’s valuable experience in and of itself.

Final Takeaways:

At the end of the day, what are the most important things I’ve learned?

Getting interviews

• Being a junior is yuuuuuge
• Don’t be shy to ask people you don’t know well for a foot in the door. Cold emailing recruiters and asking for contacts is normal. Once you get the first response, you are golden.

Preparing

• Practice. Be organized in your practice to help yourself stay committed. Find how you best and what materials you learn the most from.

Companies

• Have fun! Have a great attitude and energy — your interviewers will appreciate it!
• Take your interviews as an opportunity to interview the company. Learning about what life is like and who the people are is just important as you showing your capabilities.
• Palantir: Incredible scope of impact. Incredible amount of ownership and responsibility. Maybe caught up in maintaining their image of being too cool. Non-supportive culture and little care for candidates.
• Intuit: Warm, supportive people. Content.
• Microsoft: You need to find your own connection to what it is you’re doing, because it’s not readily available.
• Fin/Startups: Chance to make meaningful contributions even as an intern, but also your work could be all over the place. The bottom line is how much do you appreciate the vision and product you’re working towards. Is it worth taking on numerous risks for something you don’t wake up everyday wanting to be a part of?
• Facebook: Incredible people, culture, and not sipping on their own Kool-Aid. Real appreciation for the mission and products. If you want to be a part a well-established organization, work on those platforms and products, enjoy the younger targeted atmosphere, this is an exciting place to be.

Post offer:

• This is an opportunity to practice your negotiation skills. Don’t pass it up just because compensation is likely locked down!

So where are things headed for me? Out of all my SWE offers, Facebook definitely ends up on top (if you haven’t noticed already). Right now I’m in the interviewing process with Google for the APM internship program. I haven’t determined if software is the role where I’ll best be able to create the most value and use my passions and skills to the max. I’m looking forwards to whatever the future may hold, if its in software or elsewhere regardless!

Finally, thanks to all my friends, family, and special people who have been there with me! It really has been my communities that have built me to where I stand today.

I’ll be writing about that my thought process transitioning over to product management soon. Follow me if you’re interested in keeping up to date with my journey beyond software engineering!