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Comment by trishume | Hacker News Reader

> Few businesses give interns real coding assignments or support them adequately. Many can’t or won’t pay interns, which erects a privilege barrier by excluding anyone who doesn’t have savings to weather working for nothing for a few months.

I'm a university student in a co-op CS program and most of my classmates, many with no previous programming experience, found good jobs that pay well where they get real experience after 1 year of school. This paragraph doesn't seem true to me at all. Demand is extremely high for CS interns, many even make it to earning $100k+ before graduating. These internships can also easily pay your entire tuition, you can even end up with tens of thousands of savings after you finish your degree.

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Can confirm, I don't know a single person who studied CS at Waterloo and graduated with $1 of debt. Most had cars and hefty savings accounts along with job offers by senior year.

My company aggressively hires interns and new grads out of Waterloo.

I wish more CS programs would follow their model.

For those that don't know, the CS program at Waterloo is 5 years long. 4 years for the traditional education but there's also a requirement that the student complete FIVE internships at different companies(thus the extra year).

It's a great combination of learning and on the job training, and they get paid for their work.

University of Cincinnati has a very similar program (or, at least did ~5 years ago.)

The requirement says 5 internships to graduate, but that's just in case you can't find one your first work term. There are 6 work terms in the schedule and almost everyone does all 6 internships.

Well, not all universities are Waterloo.

The shortage comes from all companies only wanting Waterloo/MIT/Stanford/etc-like grads, but there's only so many.

The cost to attend college in Canada is nothing compared to the US.

It was a little over $13,000 USD a year in tuition while I was there. Roughly comparable to in-state tuition at a good public school like Berkeley.

Now with the Canadian dollar tanking it's more like $10,000 USD. Lucky kids (the internships are overwhelmingly in the US and paid in USD).

I don't understand how, as a student in a (miraculously) high paying internship for (miraculously) 4+ years straight, you could save up the $30k-$100k needed in the US to pay off a degree after dealing with rent, food, insurance, and other bills for those years. Our dorms at UT Austin were nearly as much as rent nearby, and while rent was barely cheaper if you commute, there's the added cost of having to use a car. Regardless of commuter status, you'll need a car to get to work in most cities in this country, and if you stay on campus, the parking passes make up for the savings you had living in a dorm. Luckily our yearly tuition was "only" 7-8.5k per year throughout my education -- yes, it increased by 15% through my stay, which nothing compared to the rent increases caused by West Coast migrants driving up prices. Now that I'm in a "real city", the cost of tuition every is at least five times the amount I used to pay, and don't get me started on the other costs.

I was very fortunate in how quickly I was able to pay off my debt, but anyone who graduates without debt in the US today is either getting a lot of outside help or outright lying about how much help they're getting.

If you don't understand how then you must have not tried to do an internship while you were in college. It's not very hard, especially somewhere like Austin.

For students going to UT, I highly recommend an internship somewhere like RetailMeNot downtown. You could easily pay for your education and living expenses during school and have a job after. When I was there we were recruiting interns like crazy and paying up to $10k for relocation alone. They were very hands-on and had to learn a ton of practical skills. There are similar programs all over town -- you just need to have something (anything!) to demonstrate some basic skills.

If you don't understand how then you must have not tried to do an internship while you were in college. It's not very hard, especially somewhere like Austin. It is not a miracle. I see close to 100 openings for interns at HireUTexas (hosted by UT) and over 200 postings on Indeed.

(I'm assuming you are a Canadian student due to referring to the work as "Co-op")

In general, Canadian labour laws prohibit what are typically considered unpaid internships, although it varies slightly by province.[1][2] My understanding is that this is not the case across most of the United States.

[1]: http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/pubs/internships.php [2]: https://www.labour.gov.bc.ca/esb/igm/esa-part-1/igm-esa-s1-w...

Where and what are these schools? What about your average state school outside of the tech areas?

Yeah, that's what I thought too. I don't mean to sound rude but it's easy to not see any issues with the industry's hiring when you go to Waterloo/MIT/Stanford/etc.

That's definitely true, in the bubble you are currently in. This is an exceptional situation, not the norm. I do think it's a very successful model though, and it should be copied.

I doubt there is a shortage but if there was one I'd think it's simulated by non-coders hiring coders.

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