Survey says tech giants pay high school interns more than the average US income

Justin Kahn

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Large tech companies frequently take on paid interns at increasing monthly rates. Some, coming straight out of high school, can make the equivalent of $80,000 a year or more along with the benefits of free housing and transportation, according to a Glassdoor survey of tech workers. 

In a detailed analysis of paid interns in the technology field, Bloomberg points out that in many cases these teenage interns are making more than their parents are. All five of the top highest paying tech companies hand out more than $6,000 a month to the young engineers. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that the average monthly income for U.S. households across 2012 was $4,280. 

The highest paying internships come at analytics/artificial intelligence company Palantir, who pays the equivalent of $84,000 a year. Internships like these don't tend to last a full year so these numbers are based on the top ranked monthly wages. 

The top five highest paying companies based on monthly intern wages are Palantir ($7,012), VMWare ($6,966), Twitter ($6,791), LinkedIn ($6230) and Facebook ($6,213). Of the top ten highest paying companies, all but ExxonMobile are tech companies. You'll also find Apple, Google, Microsoft, eBay and Amazon directly below those 5 on the list.

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If they have the skills, why not? I have a friend who's 20 years old, in his third year of college. Google flew him out to California, paid for housing, food, and transportation, as well as $41.00/hr to work for them during the summer. What this article doesn't mention is what the interns do to make that kind of money. Said friend is fluent in 7 programming languages and is a software engineer.
 
If they have the skills, why not? I have a friend who's 20 years old, in his third year of college. Google flew him out to California, paid for housing, food, and transportation, as well as $41.00/hr to work for them during the summer. What this article doesn't mention is what the interns do to make that kind of money. Said friend is fluent in 7 programming languages and is a software engineer.

Oh jeezus, well I have no chance then at 21 I barely know 1.
 
Oh jeezus, well I have no chance then at 21 I barely know 1.
It depends on where you work. There are jobs everywhere that only require knowing a single programming language such as C++ or Java. He does web development, and thus uses HTML, PHP, JS, CSS, Ruby on Rails, and MySQL on a week-to-week basis. The other languages he knows just make him more lucrative, but he doesn't use them at his current job.
 
Twitter's paying that kind of cash yet they wonder why they are barely staying afloat with little to no revenue...

Wish I knew programming languages :/ tons of ideas and no knowledge of how to execute them, tried learning php but I couldnt get my head around it, really into coding html/css sites but php baffles me wish I knew 7 languages soo much I could do :/
 
If they have the skills, why not? I have a friend who's 20 years old, in his third year of college. Google flew him out to California, paid for housing, food, and transportation, as well as $41.00/hr to work for them during the summer. What this article doesn't mention is what the interns do to make that kind of money. Said friend is fluent in 7 programming languages and is a software engineer.

That's impressive for a 20 year old and well done his parents should be proud.
 
I see nothing wrong with this. Creating jobs for smart talented people, and paying them accordingly. I'm just waiting on the 1% hater crowd to way in.
 
It depends on where you work. There are jobs everywhere that only require knowing a single programming language such as C++ or Java. He does web development, and thus uses HTML, PHP, JS, CSS, Ruby on Rails, and MySQL on a week-to-week basis. The other languages he knows just make him more lucrative, but he doesn't use them at his current job.

Exactly what I want to get into. That or App development since currently that is extremely huge market and soon VR added onto it. I am 21 soon, I know non of the languages but I have always had big passion on websites, how they could benefit from the ideas I had, the designs Ive made, the changes the website should have for UI/UX purposes and so forth. Unfortunately programming experience holds me back, that and lazyness of not actually trying to learn it at home instead of playing games in my free time ^^
 
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