Ask HN: Turned down an internship, did I make a mistake?
I haven't had much luck getting internship interviews in lower years (doing bachelor's degree). But this (academic) year I got a few interviews in the fall and I was happily surprised.
Most postings happen in the upcoming months (winter), but there are a few in the fall. Perhaps this is just my school or my maybe that's how it is, I hadn't started applying this early the previous year.
During that busy season the number of postings is suppose to double/triple of what it is right now, ofcourse more people apply during that time as well.
Right now I have an offer, company is good (7/10 IMHO), offer itself is good. But I feel I would be doing more testing/debugging/QA that actual development, at least for the first half (offer is much longer than 4 months).
Do I accept it? Or do I decline and interview some more (gain interviewing skills and get more practice) and hope a more interesting position/company's offer comes my way?
(Back to the present)
I declined the offer. Did I make a mistake? I feel as if I made a huge mistake and I'm now going to be competing with 2 to 3 times as many people (students) for the same pool of internships (albeit a 2 to 3 times larger pool) and maybe end up with no offer and spend rest of spring/summer hoping to find something or failing and going back to school the following fall.
Had I accepted I could basically lay back, finish up the school year knowing I had a internship secured.
But now I also have the motivation to apply more of what I have learned in the past few months during the upcoming holidays and building something bigger/better than anything I currently have on my resume/portfolio. As well as honing my interviewing skills as best as I can based on my first set of tech interviews.