how much to pay interns for a Summer job?

[Pam]

Summer interns also usually NEED to make money. If there's competition for interns the good ones will go where money is significantly better. Even they will realize there's a tradeoff between what they can potentially learn and wages, but wages do matter. This idea of working for free in exchange for experience sounds good, but in reality it's not at all fair to the student.

[cbelt3]

Pam wrote:
Summer interns also usually NEED to make money. If there's competition for interns the good ones will go where money is significantly better. Even they will realize there's a tradeoff between what they can potentially learn and wages, but wages do matter. This idea of working for free in exchange for experience sounds good, but in reality it's not at all fair to the student.

Pam- Agreed whole heartedly. The medieval practice of "Apprenticeship" is long gone, but 'unpaid intern' still exists in some industries. And what's worse.. unpaid interns rarely get mentoring or 'learn' much.

[mattkime]

sounds like you're going about it the right way.

[JoeH]

I put down $14-16 as I know what engineering students here at the university are getting for internships these days. Some are getting a bit more, especially ones interning between their junior and senior years. Remember as graduates most will be going into fields where the starting pay is the equivalent of $30+ an hour.

[PeterB]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say: $0.

I think it all really boils down to what you want them to get out of it. Unfortunately, nowadays, that's how a lot of students think: "what am I going to get out of this?" ... they just care about the bottom line, and if they feel they're not going to get something out of something, they won't bother with it. If you make it expressly clear from the get-go that they should be doing this for the experience and not the money, then you will weed out the applicants for whom the desire is mostly to get paid. You can always reward those who are willing to do it for $0 with some sort of stipend or bonus at the end... but you want to make sure the motivation (and therefore incentive) for working with you is the right one. (If they really want to do it but cannot afford to be working full-time without pay because they're not living with their parents or something similar, you can always negotiate something with them... you just want to make sure that their desire to work with you is an honest one.)

Edit: oh and someone mentioned mentorship. That's precisely what the students should be getting out of it, IMHO.

[bhaveshp]

SW & HW engineering interns are getting paid $30+ an hour here in SF/Valley. Not just Google / FB / Intel, but even smaller startups.

Of course, they are all looking to hire top talent for six-figure starting pay jobs.

The hard part is finding affordable shared housing (or living with the parents).

[Acer]

PeterB wrote:
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say: $0.

I think it all really boils down to what you want them to get out of it. Unfortunately, nowadays, that's how a lot of students think: "what am I going to get out of this?" ... they just care about the bottom line, and if they feel they're not going to get something out of something, they won't bother with it. If you make it expressly clear from the get-go that they should be doing this for the experience and not the money, then you will weed out the applicants for whom the desire is mostly to get paid. You can always reward those who are willing to do it for $0 with some sort of stipend or bonus at the end... but you want to make sure the motivation (and therefore incentive) for working with you is the right one. (If they really want to do it but cannot afford to be working full-time without pay because they're not living with their parents or something similar, you can always negotiate something with them... you just want to make sure that their desire to work with you is an honest one.)

Edit: oh and someone mentioned mentorship. That's precisely what the students should be getting out of it, IMHO.

The feds have something to say about this. If interns perform real work, you owe them at least minimum wage. Unpaid internships are for observing and learning, not producing. S-T's interns will be doing real work.

http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm

[PeterB]

Acer wrote:
[quote=PeterB]
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say: $0.

I think it all really boils down to what you want them to get out of it. Unfortunately, nowadays, that's how a lot of students think: "what am I going to get out of this?" ... they just care about the bottom line, and if they feel they're not going to get something out of something, they won't bother with it. If you make it expressly clear from the get-go that they should be doing this for the experience and not the money, then you will weed out the applicants for whom the desire is mostly to get paid. You can always reward those who are willing to do it for $0 with some sort of stipend or bonus at the end... but you want to make sure the motivation (and therefore incentive) for working with you is the right one. (If they really want to do it but cannot afford to be working full-time without pay because they're not living with their parents or something similar, you can always negotiate something with them... you just want to make sure that their desire to work with you is an honest one.)

Edit: oh and someone mentioned mentorship. That's precisely what the students should be getting out of it, IMHO.

The feds have something to say about this. If interns perform real work, you owe them at least minimum wage. Unpaid internships are for observing and learning, not producing. S-T's interns will be doing real work.

http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm
Ah, true. I was thinking mostly from the perspective of an educational environment (college or university), which is what I'm primarily dealing with.

[RAMd®d]

... they just care about the bottom line, and if they feel they're not going to get something out of something, they won't bother with it.

As they should.

That would be the point of an internship, to get something out of something. Would anyone who didn't care about that even be worth hiring?

If an applicant looks at this as just a summer job, that might not be the kind of applicant one would want, if they're offering a genuine internship.

IF it's going to be an internship, there should definitely be mentoring, and that's worth money.

And *not* paying interns or summer jobbers the same as new hires should also be considered. At least, I assume it takes more or greater qualifications to get a job than to be an intern. Pay should be commensurate.

[NewtonMP2100]

blood.....sweat.....and.....tears.......????