from Gergely Orosz | by Gergely Orosz

A perspective I learned about big tech internships when I was a hiring manager: Internships are, fundamentally, a very expensive recruitment exercise that big tech does, to place "holds" on the most promising graduates, before those people graduate and start to look for jobs.

As a hiring manager, your goal is to *get interns to return* 1-2 years later. You pay them top dollar. Do lots of stuff to make them feel great - events+perks new joiners don't have. By the time they'd be really productive, they leave. There's no more expensive way to hire.

So why do companies do it? 1. B/c they believe they will hire the best of the best out of college. 2. Because they want to hire #1 before their competition does. 3. Because they can. They have the money/resources. 4. (Ok, it's great for morale both for the teams and interns)

Internships at big tech vs everywhere else: Big tech: "We pay what it takes to call dibs on the best college grads." Traditional companies: "Yay: cheap workforce! Let's pay them the legal minium. They are lucky to put our company on their resume later, when looking for jobs."

Related: the story of one of my best intern hires. This student was offered an internship at TomTom for €500/month. Wanted to accept but did not have enough savings to supplement and rent a room in Amsterdam. So they applied to Uber. Hired. Made ~€4,500/month. TomTom's loss.

Why does TomTom (and most local, Dutch companies) pay their interns well below the NL minimum wage? Because, legally, they can. So they do. They look at them as cheap workforce. This worked for a long time... until big tech arrived in town, who has a very different mentality.