Summer internship: Think beyond Apple and Google

Computer science and engineering students are hot properties in Silicon Valley. The demand for tech talent is huge and this results in tech companies rolling out the red carpet for talented, often in the form of incredibly generous salaries and subsidized housing.

The current University session is coming to an end and it would be time for summer internship for many engineering students. Though many of them would like to make it to Apple or Google for the training, we would like to brief you about some factual bit here before you take your call.

General perception says that tech titans like Apple and Google offer the most competitive compensation packages, it turns out that they’re not even close to being at the top. In a way, this isn’t surprising. After all, companies like Apple or even Oracle are established entities; they don’t need to offer the most money to recruit top students. Its the lesser known or emerging companies that need to go above and beyond in the never-ending battle for tech talent.

Recently, a UC Berkeley student named Rodney Folz did a bit of crowd-sourcing and compiled a list which details what type of compensation packages tech companies are offering to summer 2016 interns.

Apple, Google and Amazon of course make it to the list but in bottom seven. The top eight companies with the most generous compensation packages are Two Sigma, Snapchat, Pinterest, Twitter, Quora, Facebook, Slack and Groupon.

If you haven’t heard of Two Sigma, they’re a hedge fund “founded with the goal of applying cutting-edge technology to the data-rich world of finance.”

💰 state of top tech internship offers, 2016 #talkpaypic.twitter.com/Mkp5XWQyuE

— Rodney Folz (@rodneyfolz) April 26, 2016