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Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process
51–60 of 95 posts
Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process
#52Does anyone know how much one would make in a Finance Internship at a hedge-fund, prop firm and investment bank?
I think an internship in a top tier bank in London pays about 3000 pounds/month for a summer analyst and 5000 pounds/month. My data are outdated though, maybe the salaries have gone down after the crisis, but I doubt it and would rather think they decreased the number of interns.
I've heard the hours are much longer though for that field. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process
#53Can't they atleast hire one person that didn't luck out by being born in a rich/middle class american family to go to ivy league universities. What is such complicated product that Fog Creek makes that it needs graduates from top 10 universities? Serious question.
I just want to point out that Rutgers is a large public state school, namely the state university of NJ.
Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process
#54Can't they atleast hire one person that didn't luck out by being born in a rich/middle class american family to go to ivy league universities. What is such complicated product that Fog Creek makes that it needs graduates from top 10 universities? Serious question.
On their website, they show a bug tracking app, a version control app, and some organizing app. Apart from the money, I don't see anything that would make me excited about working there. Do they work on anything else?
Yes, they make their own (awful) programming language, that spits out VBscript, PHP etc, to write their products in. I kid you not, it's called Wasabi -- though I'm not sure if they use it still.
For all the advice on hiring Joel has given (and its annoying tone for what is, basically, a very simple app company, and not even a very exciting one at that), you'd think they were coding for the space program or something.
Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
> MOST ANNOYING THING A weekend is plenty . You're an intern: there are many, many more of you to choose from. As you pointed out, nobody wants to waste time. The person that offered you the placement wants someone who wants to be there, not someone looking for an backup offer.
This is actually true, nothing smug about it. It's an internship, and a lot of companies look for people who might be interested in working for the company after school's over. If someone has that much to think about that they would need more time, then they clearly have no interest in the company itself- they're just looking to get the most money, regardless of who it's coming from. The differences in compensation a…
Actually, the differences in compensation can be much more substantial than one might think. I spoke to a few interns last year who were entering the job market, and compensation ranged from fully paid housing and nearly 100K (annualized) to numbers less than half that in the same geography. For college students, the difference between earning 10K or 20K in a summer is likely a decision that could require more than a weekend if the 10K comes with external upside.
Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process
#56Can't they atleast hire one person that didn't luck out by being born in a rich/middle class american family to go to ivy league universities. What is such complicated product that Fog Creek makes that it needs graduates from top 10 universities? Serious question.
The phrasing in your second paragraph is a little off target: the truth is if you're doing anything nontrivial you always want better people because they'll get the job done faster and better even if less skilled people could have done it at all. The real question is, why does Fog Creek think it is to its advantage to only hire potlatch participants, when such discrimination is usually irrational as well as unethical…
Side question: in what sense are you saying Ivy league is like a potlatch? Song-and-dance-and-reciprocity? Or conspicuous gift-giving (like "purity potlatch")? Or slave exchange?
Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process
#57Can't they atleast hire one person that didn't luck out by being born in a rich/middle class american family to go to ivy league universities. What is such complicated product that Fog Creek makes that it needs graduates from top 10 universities? Serious question.
The bias in hiring could be more regional than anything else, though they did say they targeted Princeton, Brown and Yale. 5 of the 8 are a few hours drive from NY, and 2 of the 3 that are not local were persistent (applied more than once).
Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process
#58Can't they atleast hire one person that didn't luck out by being born in a rich/middle class american family to go to ivy league universities. What is such complicated product that Fog Creek makes that it needs graduates from top 10 universities? Serious question.
I'm a Fog Creek employee who is also an immigrant and did not go to an Ivy League school.
I also do a fair bit of interviewing at Fog Creek and we don't really care about which school you went to. We look for smart people who get things done. It's as simple as that.
Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process
#59I have to say the pay is by no way "spoiling". It is no where near the top tier pay (for interns) seen in the industry.
It's not that far off the top tier pay for tech companies. Glassdoor compiled their list for 2014, and it's not too inaccurate [1]. Speaking from personal experience, the numbers for SWE undergrads for some of the companies on the list this year: Palantir - 7,500 - 1,200 for housing if you choose Facebook - 6,200 + free housing Salesforce - Varies per year, 34.50/hr for rising junior, housing. Cisco - 22/hr Quora and…
Jane St and a few other finance firms are paying interns ~100k/y annualised. That's the highest I've heard barring grad students with sweetheart deals.
As covi mentioned, Palantir, Quora, Dropbox all pay about roughly the same but are very willing to negotiate and pay more if necessary.
Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process
#60All of this sounds extremely exhausting for a simple internship. About 30 times more effort than I've ever had to put to land a job as a freelancer.
I'll take my standard $50/hour rate and avoid these rat-races. 400 applicants and only 8 hires!? YIKES. Are these fellas going to the moon?