I am currently a Teaching Assistant for SENG 301 (Analysis and Design of Large Scale Systems), a second or third year Computer Science course, depending on the student.
This is the third time that I have been involved with this course, and it seems that each year around this time I get questions from my students about jobs, internships, etc. I can only offer them up my experience, which unfortunately is limited, because I found that I couldn’t do an internship until I had 3 courses left, due to department suggestions on what courses that you should have before doing an internship, and the fact that I hadn’t started planning to do one until the beginning of my 3rd year. I can also share my experiences about the application process, as I have applied to both Google and Microsoft.
What I really lack however is the first hand knowledge that is gained from either starting an entry level software development position, a software development internship, or having worked first had with someone along these lines. This is where I’d like to get feedback from my community. What are your experiences with internships? Would you recommend them to a 2-3 year computer science student? If so, why? If not, why not? What are the benefits or drawbacks from your point of view?
Updates
This is where I will put feedback that is given to me though other sources
- One benefit is that a lot of places offer their interns jobs afterwards. (Thanks T.H., forgot about that)