Good programmers can make a fortune with tech firms - even with temporary jobs during the semester breaks. This shows how hard the struggle for talent is. Money is not the only attraction.
Some interns are already glad if their internship is paid at all. In the Silicon Valley, on the other hand, the companies are calling for programmers with top salaries. And they offer even more.
"When I grow up, I become a trainee." A sentence that makes little sense in Germany's chronically underpaid or unpaid trainees. If you are a trainee at a tech company in Silicon Valley, on the other hand. Who spends his summer holidays at Google, for example, in two and a half months can earn a pocket money of about 20,000 dollars.
Sounds crazy. But is so. On US blogs is currently a list of the round with a list of the best paid internship posts. Google offers, for example, 7,000 dollars a month, Amazon 7500 dollars, Apple 6000 dollars or Zynga 8000 dollars. Some companies also pay summer bobsleighs up to 3500 bucks a month.
Of course, a lot is required of the trainees. The horrendous wages only get who is a good programmer. For coffee-making and copying you are not paid princely at tech-groups.
The list was made by Jessica Shu, a 19-year computer science student at the renowned Cornell University in New York. Because she is looking for a suitable internship place for the coming summer, she asked friends and fellow students on the platform Reddit for their experiences.
The sums mentioned are salaries that other students earned from the companies in the summer. Actually, Shu did not want to make a public appearance at all. You just post the list in a Facebook group named Hackathon Hackers. Another student put the collection on Twitter and the US media pounced on the subject.
The enormous traineeships are reflected again, as even large tech corporations are looking for suitable newcomers. An intern at a comparatively low-paying company Apple could theoretically earn the annual US average of 44,000 dollars in just seven months. Apparently, the companies try to bind the programmers of tomorrow early on.
Lastly, the German economy employed more half a million interns. In the last two years, however, the number has declined.
In Silicon Valley, there has been a bitter struggle for the best forces for years. In addition to horrendous salaries, companies like Google, Facebook or Twitter are trying to lure IT experts with a comprehensive, carefree package of laundry, culinary, catering, free shuttle buses, children's day care centers and generous holiday and parental leave arrangements and medical care.
In October, Facebook and Apple provided an unusual action in the fight for the best talents for the headlines: Both corporations participate in the cost of up to 20,000 dollars (16,000 euros) when employees keep their eggs freezing. The social network Facebook has already begun the fertility program recently, with Apple, employees can from January their egg cells at operating costs in the ice box pack.
Because the big corporations have to make such offers in order to find suitable employees, it will become ever more hopeless for start-up companies to grow in Silicon Valley. Many small companies give up their nerves and move their seat to Detroit or Austin.
The IT industry has long warned of the economically negative consequences of the skilled labor force deficit. Compete America, a lobbying group of companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, is actively promoting the immigration regulations for foreign professionals. US President Barack Obama had announced in November a reform of immigration law in the US. For a comprehensive law he lacks the necessary majority in Congress.
The IT industry criticized the law as being too short: "The planned reform of the president will give us some time and keep us afloat, but it does not change the fact that the ship is sinking," says Scott Corley , Chief of Compete America.
