2019 Internship/graduate job recommendation

RoRo979

Hi,

So I have applied everywhere for a good internship for this summer but have not got any strong leads back. Have applied everywhere on indeed, glassdoor, company websites but no joy

I decided that next year I will be more prepared and want to begin building a CV that will easily land me a great graduate job/Internship. My plan is to look at an ideal job description and build my CV over the next year to match it.

Google internships wont suit me as I will be graduating next year. Anyone know of any very good internships for software development?

John_Mc

RoRo979 wrote: »

Hi,

So I have applied everywhere for a good internship for this summer but have not got any strong leads back. Have applied everywhere on indeed, glassdoor, company websites but no joy

I decided that next year I will be more prepared and want to begin building a CV that will easily land me a great graduate job/Internship. My plan is to look at an ideal job description and build my CV over the next year to match it.

Google internships wont suit me as I will be graduating next year. Anyone know of any very good internships for software development?

Internships require a lot of work/mentoring by team leads and team members and there's no guarantee (you might even say very little chance) of getting productivity from the intern. That's why they wouldn't be that common I'd imagine.

You need to demonstrate that you can write clean, reusable and performant code and the best way to do this is to do some projects in your spare time and publish them on Github. You can use this as your main point in any future applications. C.V's and the experience listed therein is really only for HR and the business (rather than technical).

14ned

RoRo979 wrote: »

So I have applied everywhere for a good internship for this summer but have not got any strong leads back. Have applied everywhere on indeed, glassdoor, company websites but no joy

I decided that next year I will be more prepared and want to begin building a CV that will easily land me a great graduate job/Internship. My plan is to look at an ideal job description and build my CV over the next year to match it.

Google internships wont suit me as I will be graduating next year. Anyone know of any very good internships for software development?

You should do https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/. Closing date is very soon. Pays a few thousand for the summer, far more important is getting in and finishing it.

A successful GSoC at a high profile open source org means a bidding war for hiring you by the big multinationals. One of our students at the Boost C++ Libraries went straight to > $200k first job out of uni after a bidding war for him because of getting their library past peer review into Boost, something many of us e.g. mediocre engineers like me take half a decade to achieve.

Niall

RoRo979

John_Mc wrote: »

Internships require a lot of work/mentoring by team leads and team members and there's no guarantee (you might even say very little chance) of getting productivity from the intern. That's why they wouldn't be that common I'd imagine.

You need to demonstrate that you can write clean, reusable and performant code and the best way to do this is to do some projects in your spare time and publish them on Github. You can use this as your main point in any future applications. C.V's and the experience listed therein is really only for HR and the business (rather than technical).

I'm currently doing that at the moment anyway. In the process of building a personal CV website with react, currently on a first class honours grade in Computer Science and Business which should show my work ethic, have freeCodeCamp front end web dev certificate and am regularly positng hackerRank solutions to my github. Have also made a few WordPress websites for clients so I picked up some UX/UI design on the way

Slowly but surely building a portfolio

You should do https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/. Closing date is very soon. Pays a few thousand for the summer, far more important is getting in and finishing it.

A successful GSoC at a high profile open source org means a bidding war for hiring you by the big multinationals. One of our students at the Boost C++ Libraries went straight to > $200k first job out of uni after a bidding war for him because of getting their library past peer review into Boost, something many of us e.g. mediocre engineers like me take half a decade to achieve.

Niall

Cheers Niall, that actually looks solid. Going to give it a good go. Didnt even know about this, cheers

John_Mc

RoRo979 wrote: »

I'm currently doing that at the moment anyway. In the process of building a personal CV website with react, currently on a first class honours grade in Computer Science and Business which should show my work ethic, have freeCodeCamp front end web dev certificate and am regularly positng hackerRank solutions to my github. Have also made a few WordPress websites for clients so I picked up some UX/UI design on the way

Slowly but surely building a portfolio

Well done - you seem to be doing everything you can. Wonder how you're exploiting the benefits of React on a CV/info website

RoRo979

John_Mc wrote: »

Well done - you seem to be doing everything you can. Wonder how you're exploiting the benefits of React on a CV/info website

hahaha could easily have just threw it together using HTML, CSS and bit of JQuery but thought i'd do it in react just to get some react projects up on the github. Think ill make a game or something after in React to show depper use of redux etc.

John_Mc

RoRo979 wrote: »

hahaha could easily have just threw it together using HTML, CSS and bit of JQuery but thought i'd do it in react just to get some react projects up on the github. Think ill make a game or something after in React to show depper use of redux etc.

Yeah combining it with redux would definitely be more impressive.

If you're hoping to get into web dev then Angular (2+) with Typescript is another one you might want to get familiar with

14ned

RoRo979 wrote: »

currently on a first class honours grade in Computer Science and Business which should show my work ethic,

To be honest I've never seen grade count for much amongst the engineers interviewing. Matters to HR and recruiters a lot of course. But the engineers tend to place far more weight on "proof of ability to handle large legacy codebases" and "proof of ability to self direct" than grade.

Part of this is because we've all seen first class honours graduates whose knowledge of compsci is superb, but they can't program. Indeed, in my graduating year, I remember the student who won the prize for highest grade really genuinely could not program, he never wrapped his head around even a two button mouse. He was actually more of a History of Compsci person, Comp Sci academics thought he was just wonderful. He went straight into academia to teach the next generation of graduates. Nice guy, but unhireable outside a university. And a good ten percent of first class honours graduates are similar by my reckoning.

RoRo979 wrote: »

Cheers Niall, that actually looks solid. Going to give it a good go. Didnt even know about this, cheers

The amount it adds to your CV is directly proportional to how famous and widely known the mentoring org is. So, a GSoC from Apache or KDE means often instant hire, sometimes even skipping the intern stage altogether. But equally those orgs are very competitive to get into, at Boost we see some spectacularly good students apply, as in, already far superior to a typical seasoned engineer of thirty years. Anyway, good luck with your application!

Niall

RoRo979

14ned wrote: »

To be honest I've never seen grade count for much amongst the engineers interviewing. Matters to HR and recruiters a lot of course. But the engineers tend to place far more weight on "proof of ability to handle large legacy codebases" and "proof of ability to self direct" than grade.

Part of this is because we've all seen first class honours graduates whose knowledge of compsci is superb, but they can't program. Indeed, in my graduating year, I remember the student who won the prize for highest grade really genuinely could not program, he never wrapped his head around even a two button mouse. He was actually more of a History of Compsci person, Comp Sci academics thought he was just wonderful. He went straight into academia to teach the next generation of graduates. Nice guy, but unhireable outside a university. And a good ten percent of first class honours graduates are similar by my reckoning.



The amount it adds to your CV is directly proportional to how famous and widely known the mentoring org is. So, a GSoC from Apache or KDE means often instant hire, sometimes even skipping the intern stage altogether. But equally those orgs are very competitive to get into, at Boost we see some spectacularly good students apply, as in, already far superior to a typical seasoned engineer of thirty years. Anyway, good luck with your application!

Niall

I can see how one could be very employable after GSOC, the more project ideas I read the more I realise what a terrible programmer I am Still trying to find a project to I could possible complete, dont even understand what the majority are looking for.

I know Java/HTML/CSS/JS relatively well and then C/Haskell to a low enough level. Seems like not enough for most. I'll keep looking anyway, hopefully a nice one pops up

14ned

RoRo979 wrote: »

I can see how one could be very employable after GSOC, the more project ideas I read the more I realise what a terrible programmer I am Still trying to find a project to I could possible complete, dont even understand what the majority are looking for.

It's humbling for me with twenty years under the belt to see how good some of the students are. My student last summer, aged just 24, wrote https://github.com/BoostGSoC17/static-views like water off a duck's back. I would find implementing that quite challenging personally, and mentoring him was tough as he's a better programmer than I am. All I have is experience over him.

RoRo979 wrote: »

I know Java/HTML/CSS/JS relatively well and then C/Haskell to a low enough level. Seems like not enough for most. I'll keep looking anyway, hopefully a nice one pops up

Bear in mind that many open source orgs don't expect the student to finish the project in a summer. If I look through https://github.com/boostorg/boost/wiki/Boost-Google-Summer-of-Code-2018, half of those aren't doable in a single summer. What Boost is looking for is students who will make a solid attempt, rather than students who can realistically finish the project.

(You might then wonder why propose such large amounts of work? Firstly, because Google wouldn't approve us as an org if we didn't, and secondly because very occasionally a student does come along who finishes the whole thing, and then some in a single summer. It's rare though, one student every twenty or so)

So don't be disheartened by the apparent level of ability required. Apply anyway and see how it goes, and of course apply to more than one project and org.

Niall

Buford T Justice

14ned wrote: »

You should do https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/. Closing date is very soon. Pays a few thousand for the summer, far more important is getting in and finishing it.

A successful GSoC at a high profile open source org means a bidding war for hiring you by the big multinationals. One of our students at the Boost C++ Libraries went straight to > $200k first job out of uni after a bidding war for him because of getting their library past peer review into Boost, something many of us e.g. mediocre engineers like me take half a decade to achieve.

Niall

How often would this be the exception rather than the rule I wonder though.... as in someone at that age with that level of skill

14ned

Buford T Justice wrote: »

How often would this be the exception rather than the rule I wonder though.... as in someone at that age with that level of skill

Out of thirty students who did the Boost GSoC in the past five years, I can only think of one or two who didn't become employed almost immediately after graduation, and that was mostly due to reluctance to relocate.

Don't get me wrong, they were already impressive before the GSoC, which is why they got in. They likely would have landed jobs anyway. But they themselves say that the GSoC was crucial, not least as talking about what they did formed a large part of the interview.

You're right though that the student in question was a very rare person. Unique, and correspondingly rewarded with starting salary. He'll be on a half million soon enough, and upwards if he chooses. But perhaps we've had five or so students out of that thirty who were close enough in terms of skill. They mostly got hoovered up by the big financial tech firms for varying starting salaries.

All this is in C++ obviously, and every one of them had to relocate to one of the Western capital cities. If they were unwilling to relocate, there was no work available. C++ is too niche nowadays.

Niall

Dubba

RoRo979 wrote: »

I know Java/HTML/CSS/JS relatively well and then C/Haskell to a low enough level. Seems like not enough for most. I'll keep looking anyway, hopefully a nice one pops up

With the skills you've listed, you could apply do GSoC with TEAMMATES. I contributed to the project last summer (not as a GSoC student) and found it a great learning experience. Should be good for the CV as well.

If you're interested, here's their Instructions for GSoC 2018 Applicants. Loads more info on their github page.