A lot of people here are being rather unsympathetic. Even if it's not the end of the world, it still sucks. Hopefully you can save some money from not having to move to the Bay Area.
Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
31–40 of 110 posts
Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it would be smarter to not have an internship program right now. Very little of the work from internships contributes to active product roadmap, and you'd better be served by retention than new hiring. Especially of junior engineers. Although it's a generalization, interns are as a group probably better equipped to handle sudden loss of salary. Those with children, mortgages, and healthcare needs are less so.…
It seems as if they want to cancel, but put the onus on interns to make the proper decision. If you were negotiating a job offer, and right as it came time to sign the paperwork, would you take a 50% salary cut? You'd move on to the next company.
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Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
They’re not going to be competing to hire anybody in the near future. A more sensible move would probably be to lay them all off. Internships makes sense for companies when you have labor shortages. During an economic crisis, when unemployment is so high, they’re more of an unnecessary expense.
Probably better to hire a competent intern than some random applicant, even if he comes with an internal recommendation.
Interns are somehow superior candidates to experienced engineers all of a sudden?
Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#34Picking up pennies in front of a steamroller... Does it make sense to cut the salaries of the lowest-paid, zero equity groups? The same group of people you'll be competing to hire from when they graduate.
as a graduate, you'd be extremely lucky to have any job at all, let alone a job at a tech company, let alone one as well known as Lyft. Let's face it, with the current vast oversupply of labor, employers have a lot more bargaining power. Back in my day, after the Tech bubble burst, I was a coder with little experience, and I worked for any start up that would let me, just so i could get more experience. One place, I…
Most software companies aren't hurting - especially those still in the startup phase that may have 0 revenue today but also had 0 revenue before the pandemic.
Additionally, the job market is already insanely skewed toward employers with extremely weak unionizing laws throughout most of the US - while the software market is more balanced than most other markets the value extracted form employees still far outweighs their compensation.
Employees should value their time and labour and I'm sorry you decided to work for no money since, either your labour was worthless or someone made free money off your back.
Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#35Picking up pennies in front of a steamroller... Does it make sense to cut the salaries of the lowest-paid, zero equity groups? The same group of people you'll be competing to hire from when they graduate.
Thanks for the refreshing perspective. I don't think they made this pay cut decision lightly, meaning that the situation is most likely grave. Overall, it really brings doubt into my mind about the future of Lyft and whether it will survive
Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#36[deleted]
Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#37I would guess the chance of finding any other summer work right now, let alone another technical internship, is below 50%. The way you handle this is to take the internship and be happy it didn't get cancelled entirely.
There are several sectors of the economy that haven't been effected by this - med-tech/fin-tech firms in particular should (mostly) be doing fine.
Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#38Lyft employee here: I think part of the motivation for this is that internships are being conducted remotely, so interns do not have Bay Area living expenses. Another part of it obviously is that we're cutting costs due to the downturn (the layoffs and salary reductions for full-time employees were also part of that). This is not ideal, just explaining some of the rationale.
Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#39For the OP, if your are asking what you do as an intern, you do the internship for 8 weeks.
It's an internship, it's something you do for experience and to get on your resume.
Unless you think you can't survive on the resulting internship income, or unless you have a better offer... it would still seem to be in your best interest to do it.
Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#40Levels.fyi shows the rate to be $60/hour for a software internship. If this is accurate, and it's cut to $30/hour, that's actually pretty good money. Many people are living on $15/hour. https://www.levels.fyi/internships/?search=lyft
For comparisons sake also: Internships in germany had been around 700Eur per month 10 years ago. Maybe it's 800 now.
I think even half of an internship salary at one of the US companies is far above that - if not even still above the salaries of full-time employees in other countries. So it doesn't sound that terrible.