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Interns: Everything you need to know about a summer in the Bay Area in one place

internproject.io

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Re: Interns: Everything you need to know about a summer in the Bay Area in one place

#11

Post by nickbarnwell »

tsunamifury wrote: post #7

Man this housing advice is really pretentious -- only live in Mountain View or SF with an internship salary? Good luck unless you have a trustfund. Get a place in Berkeley or the nicer places in Oakland and you'll have a great experience and can BART into the city in 15 minutes.

It's just as easy to find a two bedroom or one BR+den apartment for 2-2.5k/mo and split it with another intern (or two) and come out well ahead. I know tens of people who did this successfully last summer virtually without issue. The big companies provide generous housing stipends, if not corporate housing, and allocating 20% of your essentially untaxed salary towards housing is well worth it to be a few blocks from work and in the heart of the tech community.

Re: Interns: Everything you need to know about a summer in the Bay Area in one place

#12

Post by AlexeyMK »

tsunamifury wrote: post #7

Man this housing advice is really pretentious -- only live in Mountain View or SF with an internship salary? Good luck unless you have a trustfund. Get a place in Berkeley or the nicer places in Oakland and you'll have a great experience and can BART into the city in 15 minutes.

[author of said advice]

Sounds like you've got some experience with this - are there any particular places you'd recommend? When I was an intern in SF (2011), I lived in Glen Park, which was a half/hour bike ride/couple of BART stops away from work, and I ended up paying slightly over $1,100. I had friends that went and found more distant housing, but we didn't see them all that much/they didn't get nearly as much out of the summer as we did, beyond their company.

A lot (most?) internship salaries include a $1,000 housing stipend, so it ends up being not all that crazy; neither of my internships had more than 25% of income go to housing.

Can you speak to your experience in particular? I haven't met a lot of people who followed your strategy, but I'd love to incorporate the perspective of somebody who did.

Re: Interns: Everything you need to know about a summer in the Bay Area in one place

#13

Post by [deleted] »

tsunamifury wrote: post #7

Man this housing advice is really pretentious -- only live in Mountain View or SF with an internship salary? Good luck unless you have a trustfund. Get a place in Berkeley or the nicer places in Oakland and you'll have a great experience and can BART into the city in 15 minutes.

[deleted]

Re: Interns: Everything you need to know about a summer in the Bay Area in one place

#14

Post by rdouble »

tsunamifury wrote: post #7

Man this housing advice is really pretentious -- only live in Mountain View or SF with an internship salary? Good luck unless you have a trustfund. Get a place in Berkeley or the nicer places in Oakland and you'll have a great experience and can BART into the city in 15 minutes.

The housing advice in the article is correct - those are the ideal areas. However, it fails to mention the extreme costs and competitive nature of finding a place in those areas.

Living in Berkeley is not a good choice if your internship is in the South Bay. Even if your job is accessible by BART, Berkeley near a BART station is not inexpensive. The nice areas of Oakland are similarly expensive and the not-nice areas of Oakland are a few orders of magnitude more dangerous than the rest of the Bay Area. I used to live in an "affordable" part of Berkeley and had to spend about an hour each way getting to work with walking on both sides + BART. Berkeley and parts of Oakland like Rockridge have their charms, but I do not recommend them if you have the option of living closer to work.

Re: Interns: Everything you need to know about a summer in the Bay Area in one place

#15

Post by nickbarnwell »

Just a correction here: http://internproject.io/finding-an-internship/how-to-land-an...

MS actually has the Explore Microsoft internship for underclassmen. [1]

I'd also suggest adding Yegge's Blogpost on "Get That Job at Google" to required interview reading [2]. It's an excellent resource for applying to any company that highly weights core CS topics in their interviews, regardless of whether you're applying for an internship or full-time employ.

---

[1]: http://careers.microsoft.com/careers/en/us/internships-explo...

[2]: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog...

Re: Interns: Everything you need to know about a summer in the Bay Area in one place

#16

Post by nextstep »

AlexeyMK wrote: post #12
tsunamifury wrote: post #7

Man this housing advice is really pretentious -- only live in Mountain View or SF with an internship salary? Good luck unless you have a trustfund. Get a place in Berkeley or the nicer places in Oakland and you'll have a great experience and can BART into the city in 15 minutes.

[author of said advice] Sounds like you've got some experience with this - are there any particular places you'd recommend? When I was an intern in SF (2011), I lived in Glen Park, which was a half/hour bike ride/couple of BART stops away from work, and I ended up paying slightly over $1,100. I had friends that went and found more distant housing, but we didn't see them all that much/they didn't get nearly as much ou…

The price of housing in SF has changed since 2011.

Re: Interns: Everything you need to know about a summer in the Bay Area in one place

#17

Post by dr_doom »

rdouble wrote: post #14
tsunamifury wrote: post #7

Man this housing advice is really pretentious -- only live in Mountain View or SF with an internship salary? Good luck unless you have a trustfund. Get a place in Berkeley or the nicer places in Oakland and you'll have a great experience and can BART into the city in 15 minutes.

The housing advice in the article is correct - those are the ideal areas. However, it fails to mention the extreme costs and competitive nature of finding a place in those areas. Living in Berkeley is not a good choice if your internship is in the South Bay. Even if your job is accessible by BART, Berkeley near a BART station is not inexpensive. The nice areas of Oakland are similarly expensive and the not-nice areas…

Is Oakland really that bad? I really want the most affordable place I can find.

I'm not too scared of crime, I have guns and grew up in a lower class neighborhood, but am worried about theft when I'm not home.

edit: I would basically like to live in a neighborhood like Pilsen in Chicago. Affordable, working class, mexican, and close to transit. Any recommendations?

Re: Interns: Everything you need to know about a summer in the Bay Area in one place

#18

Post by jbkring »

tsunamifury wrote: post #7

Man this housing advice is really pretentious -- only live in Mountain View or SF with an internship salary? Good luck unless you have a trustfund. Get a place in Berkeley or the nicer places in Oakland and you'll have a great experience and can BART into the city in 15 minutes.

Agreed. But more than pretentious, it's downright inaccurate. I work in SOMA and live in Grand Lake (Oakland), and I have a shorter commute than most of my San Francisco-dwelling colleagues.

Re: Interns: Everything you need to know about a summer in the Bay Area in one place

#19

Post by jbkring »

dr_doom wrote: post #17
rdouble wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The housing advice in the article is correct - those are the ideal areas. However, it fails to mention the extreme costs and competitive nature of finding a place in those areas. Living in Berkeley is not a good choice if your internship is in the South Bay. Even if your job is accessible by BART, Berkeley near a BART station is not inexpensive. The nice areas of Oakland are similarly expensive and the not-nice areas…

Is Oakland really that bad? I really want the most affordable place I can find. I'm not too scared of crime, I have guns and grew up in a lower class neighborhood, but am worried about theft when I'm not home. edit: I would basically like to live in a neighborhood like Pilsen in Chicago. Affordable, working class, mexican, and close to transit. Any recommendations?

Oakland is like any other city. There are safe neighborhoods and dangerous neighborhoods. Some of the safer ones are: Temescal, Adam's Point, Grand Lake/Cleveland Heights, Piedmont & Rockridge (not technically Oakland).

Re: Interns: Everything you need to know about a summer in the Bay Area in one place

#20

Post by rdouble »

dr_doom wrote: post #17
rdouble wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The housing advice in the article is correct - those are the ideal areas. However, it fails to mention the extreme costs and competitive nature of finding a place in those areas. Living in Berkeley is not a good choice if your internship is in the South Bay. Even if your job is accessible by BART, Berkeley near a BART station is not inexpensive. The nice areas of Oakland are similarly expensive and the not-nice areas…

Is Oakland really that bad? I really want the most affordable place I can find. I'm not too scared of crime, I have guns and grew up in a lower class neighborhood, but am worried about theft when I'm not home. edit: I would basically like to live in a neighborhood like Pilsen in Chicago. Affordable, working class, mexican, and close to transit. Any recommendations?

Oakland is the only place in the Bay Area I've been held up at gunpoint. Property theft is a problem in both Oakland and San Francisco. Less so in the South Bay. Even if you are not scared of crime, dealing with the aftermath of a robbery or burglary is a headache. Oakland has a lot of boosters but I have never found much compelling about it. I find it similar to southern-midwest cities, whereas SF is a unique place, unlike most other cities in the world.

Edit: it's hard to compare places in the Bay Area to Chicago neighborhoods. There are plenty of hispanic areas near public transport. They aren't like Pilsen, though. The word "affordable" also doesn't mean the same thing.

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