Does Amazon SA hire interns?

[cguy]

$5000 is a lot for an intern by any measure anywhere even the US. I don't think even professional make that much starting out

$5k for a SW dev internship at one of the big tech companies in the USA is actually pretty low. I've never had an intern work for less than $7k/m, and have had ones that earn up to $9k/m (this is the Silicon Valley area). I expect that internships could pay a little less at Amazon since there are no state income taxes in Washington State. Starting at $5k/m is pretty bad for a full time starting salary. Obviously, it depends on where you work and what type of SW dev you do (e.g., game developers tend to earn less than others), but $8k/m would be barely ok in SV/NY, and hopefully the starting salary would be a lot more at any of the top tech companies. There are a bunch of really small towns and cities that bring down the averages (~$90k/y overall average for experienced and new developers, for the country last I looked) quite a bit, but those are places that also have a really low cost of living, so it's still a pretty good standard of living.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-20-richest-interns-in-tech-2013-1?op=1

Nice link - something to notice is that they list just "interns" - there are a wide variety of interns from marketing, to legal, to finance, to QA (often a lot of QA), some of which will bring down the average below that of an average SW Dev Intern in such a company. Also, a lot of these companies give additional stipends for rental or food (or food may often even provided on the job for all employees).

Anyway, my suggestion is to try get an internship overseas if you can - it's a great way to pay for your studies. I know a bunch of people who have done it.

 

[waveparticle]

$5k for a SW dev internship at one of the big tech companies in the USA is actually pretty low. I've never had an intern work for less than $7k/m, and have had ones that earn up to $9k/m (this is the Silicon Valley area). I expect that internships could pay a little less at Amazon since there are no state income taxes in Washington State. Starting at $5k/m is pretty bad for a full time starting salary. Obviously, it depends on where you work and what type of SW dev you do (e.g., game developers tend to earn less than others), but $8k/m would be barely ok in SV/NY, and hopefully the starting salary would be a lot more at any of the top tech companies. There are a bunch of really small towns and cities that bring down the averages (~$90k/y overall average for experienced and new developers, for the country last I looked) quite a bit, but those are places that also have a really low cost of living, so it's still a pretty good standard of living.



Nice link - something to notice is that they list just "interns" - there are a wide variety of interns from marketing, to legal, to finance, to QA (often a lot of QA), some of which will bring down the average below that of an average SW Dev Intern in such a company. Also, a lot of these companies give additional stipends for rental or food (or food may often even provided on the job for all employees).

Anyway, my suggestion is to try get an internship overseas if you can - it's a great way to pay for your studies. I know a bunch of people who have done it.

Wow. I heard Silicon Valley pays interns a lot, but $7k+ is just wow! Considering the high cost of living there it's a really good salary.
But I also heard that SV hires mostly from Ivy Leagues which can be harder for international(you would be in a better position to give us more details here ).

Interning at a international company sounds cool, but for an undergrad, it will be hard to go abroad and find work just for holidays, considering cost of flight, hotel/apartment etc.

Does the US hires S.A fresh grads(with honors) by any chance? If so, what's the hiring rate for internationals in general? From what I read, graduate schools consider applicants from S.A who have done honors.

Having some experience under my belt when I finish graduating, this could potentially help me get a job easier or even a permanent job from the interning company, from what I heard.

 

[cguy]

Wow. I heard Silicon Valley pays interns a lot, but $7k+ is just wow! Considering the high cost of living there it's a really good salary.
But I also heard that SV hires mostly from Ivy Leagues which can be harder for international(you would be in a better position to give us more details here ).

Actually, Ivy Leagues are almost a no-show in SV. If you are actually referring to just top US universities, Stanford, Berkley, CMU, Caltech, etc. are well respected, but are far from large enough to fill the demand - there really are people there from all over the world, and it is far more about how you interview than anything else. To get noticed, you would want to have something on your CV (personal projects, ACM/IOI/TopCoder competition placement, etc.)

Interning at a international company sounds cool, but for an undergrad, it will be hard to go abroad and find work just for holidays, considering cost of flight, hotel/apartment etc.

Unless you are a citizen, you definitely wouldn't be able to fly in to almost any country and find work. You would have to apply from SA, and do some phone screens with the company. If they want you, they will organize a visa for you and fly you over at their cost. Living expenses may be paid for by a stipend they give.

Does the US hires S.A fresh grads(with honors) by any chance? If so, what's the hiring rate for internationals in general? From what I read, graduate schools consider applicants from S.A who have done honors.

My previous company would hire anyone who was good enough, from exceptional 2nd year students (did happen at least once), to honours students, MSc students and PhD students. Generally, you have to be registered as a student for an internship. It may be possible to get one very shortly after graduating.

Having some experience under my belt when I finish graduating, this could potentially help me get a job easier or even a permanent job from the interning company, from what I heard.

The company that offers you an internship will evaluate you almost entirely on how well you do during your internship, and won't really care about anything else (as long as you finish the degree you are working on - even then, not always in the case of a post-grad degree).

Experience is fine, but the bar for experienced non-intern employees, even new graduates, is much higher than for interns. If the experience gives you the relevant skills you need to get through the company's hiring process, then great, but unless you actually have directly relevant experience (very unlikely), it will be all about how well you interview.

BTW, the best way to get an internship is to get an internal referral from other students that have done internships, or graduates that have been hired directly into the company. The lecturers/professors are often good at pairing you up with such people, although some will want you to stand out academically before they vouch for you.

 

[waveparticle]

Actually, Ivy Leagues are almost a no-show in SV. If you are actually referring to just top US universities, Stanford, Berkley, CMU, Caltech, etc. are well respected, but are far from large enough to fill the demand - there really are people there from all over the world, and it is far more about how you interview than anything else. To get noticed, you would want to have something on your CV (personal projects, ACM/IOI/TopCoder competition placement, etc.)



Unless you are a citizen, you definitely wouldn't be able to fly in to almost any country and find work. You would have to apply from SA, and do some phone screens with the company. If they want you, they will organize a visa for you and fly you over at their cost. Living expenses may be paid for by a stipend they give.



My previous company would hire anyone who was good enough, from exceptional 2nd year students (did happen at least once), to honours students, MSc students and PhD students. Generally, you have to be registered as a student for an internship. It may be possible to get one very shortly after graduating.



The company that offers you an internship will evaluate you almost entirely on how well you do during your internship, and won't really care about anything else (as long as you finish the degree you are working on - even then, not always in the case of a post-grad degree).

Experience is fine, but the bar for experienced non-intern employees, even new graduates, is much higher than for interns. If the experience gives you the relevant skills you need to get through the company's hiring process, then great, but unless you actually have directly relevant experience (very unlikely), it will be all about how well you interview.

BTW, the best way to get an internship is to get an internal referral from other students that have done internships, or graduates that have been hired directly into the company. The lecturers/professors are often good at pairing you up with such people, although some will want you to stand out academically before they vouch for you.

That's some great information and advice here. When you talk about personal projects in a CV, does it matter if it was made just for fun, not released? Someone advised me to get a github account and make some open source software. But how are these checked? Let's say I make a github account with a random username and post some personal projects, how are these verified?

 

[Lord Nikon6]

I have a question

What would the chances be for one of these companies to ever hire a developer that does not have a degree, but experience and skill to show?

 

[cguy]

That's some great information and advice here. When you talk about personal projects in a CV, does it matter if it was made just for fun, not released? Someone advised me to get a github account and make some open source software. But how are these checked? Let's say I make a github account with a random username and post some personal projects, how are these verified?

Either for fun or released is fine. They're generally not verified very strictly, but you may get questions about it, and although it may help catch an potential hiring manager's eye, it's how you do in the likely very technical interview that counts.

 

[cguy]

I have a question

What would the chances be for one of these companies to ever hire a developer that does not have a degree, but experience and skill to show?

This definitely happens. I have a good friend from SA that got hired (by one of the companies in _kabal_'s link) without having any degree, about 3 years ago.

It is a bit trickier - the USA credits 3 years exp for 1 year of studying, so they will generally require at least 12 years of verifiable relevant experience. This means that you will likely have to get letters saying what your position was (possibly job description too), and how long you were there from a bunch of previous employers. Things get really tricky if previous employers have shut down, etc. Things also get tricky if you were self employed or contracting. YMMV of course, but "relevant" usually just means "writing software" - I don't think immigration will turn around and complain about a discrepancy in programming languages or such.

 

[Gnome]

I have a question

What would the chances be for one of these companies to ever hire a developer that does not have a degree, but experience and skill to show?

Have heard a little bit about the interview process from people, so I have to agree with cguy.

Getting contacted doesn't really mean they will hire you. The interviews is where they decide if they want to hire you, regardless of how good you claim to be or what degrees you have.

Based on Glassdoor.com you write a program test, 2x 1 hour telephone technical interviews and 5 x 1 hour interviews with white board coding at the offices.

Google, Amazon, Microsoft all have very much the same process:
Get many technical interviews and then they decide if they'll hire you by voting on how good you are.

 

[gkm]

That's some great information and advice here. When you talk about personal projects in a CV, does it matter if it was made just for fun, not released? Someone advised me to get a github account and make some open source software. But how are these checked? Let's say I make a github account with a random username and post some personal projects, how are these verified?

I agree with cguy. This will only have a very small impact in most cases, if any. Actual work experience will count for more. And if you want to intern, good grades will be one of the biggest factors to get an interview. Then you obviously have to do well in the interview also.

 

[cguy]

Based on Glassdoor.com you write a program test, 2x 1 hour telephone technical interviews and 5 x 1 hour interviews with white board coding at the offices.

Yeah, that is fairly typical. For an intern the process is usually 1-3 phone screens, and then a decision is made, usually 1-2 phone screen for a local hire, and 2-3 for a foreign hire, since there is a higher up front cost (visas, lawyers, international flights, wait time, etc.). If the interviewer is senior enough, he/she can usually just make the whole decision.

For full time positions, there are also usually a series of 1-2 phone screens for local hires and 2-3 phone screens for foreign hires. The reason here, is that if they're interested, they will organize a visa, and fly you up for an on site interview. The on-site interview can involve any combination of coding, technical white boarding, committee interviews (for one company I had to give a presentation to ~20 executives), informal discussions, a "lunch interrogation", etc. If the on-site interview goes well, the company will usually relocate your entire family, ship your belongings, put you up for 1-3 months, give you a cheque for unaccounted for expenses and rent you a car, so they try to be sure they hire the right candidates.

The internship and full time position interview process is sometimes dragged out a bit if one of the interviewers thinks that the candidate is better suited for another group -- the whole process may be restarted with the other group.

Obviously, I'm generalizing the above based on my experiences, and the many stories I've heard from friends.

It's actually quite a fun process sometimes. Doing a quick count, I've been to 9 interviews in the US, and have been offered a job at 7 of them (and have taken 2 offers up). I have been really impressed with how thorough they tend to be on average.

 

[noxibox]

At the bottom end are suppliers like 4Home, who employ just about anybody, and you can tell that from the typos, spelling mistakes and bad grammar on their website

It doesn't reflect well if they can't even hire someone decent to write the copy on their site.

Also know some folks there and they claim to be getting paid pretty well comparatively, but then they also work very strange and taxing hours so for all that I know the hourly rate overly isn't all that glamorous.

They were paying for the hours, but did seem to be losing people and having trouble finding sufficient staff.

 

[Lord Nikon6]

wow, so it is quite a process then. Thanks for all the info.

 

[CrazYmonkeY159]

I was an Amazon AWS intern last year for 3 months. They pay well. The work is hard.

 

[morosemanatee]

EC2 (Amazon Web Services) in Cape Town definitely does take SDE (Software Development Engineer) and System Engineering interns. There are about 5-10 in the office at the moment.

AWS has nothing to do with retail except that the retail platform is a customer of AWS and EC2 in particular. They are rather selective in who they take. You would need to meet the tech bar for an entry level position but you obviously don't need the experience or to have completed your degree yet. You are expected to have a good knowledge of Computer Science fundamentals (data structures, algorithms etc.). You will also be expected to be able to code up solutions to problems on a white board (in any programming language).

Please contact Angela Visser ([email protected]) who is one of the recruiters at AWS for further details.

The other side of Amazon in Cape Town is the Customer Services division for the retail site. They have a number of entry level positions but I don't know much about that side.