Working as a summer intern in Silicon Valley may not sound all that appealing but you may change your tune once you hear how much the average engineering-focused intern earns.
As Bloomberg notes, former University of California Berkeley student and soon-to-be Yelp intern Rodney Folz recently crunched the numbers and determined that the median monthly base salary at major technology companies is $6,800.
Do the math and you'll realize that works out to $81,600 a year, or dangerously close to double the national average wage of $46,481.52 as of 2014.
Curious to see what his peers were earning, Folz sent out Google surveys to a wide variety of computer science and technology groups. He also solicited reports from friends that already had internships at technology companies.
All said and done, Folz received 503 anonymous replies to his survey from people working internships in software or electrical engineering, product design or management, program management and industrial design at dozens of companies including Apple, Google and Uber, just to name a few.
It's entirely possible that at least a fraction of the data is bad. For example, Folz received surveys from three people that said they'd landed internships at Snapchat with income ranging from $9,000 to $11,000 per month which seems a bit doubtful. Elsewhere, four people said Groupon offered them benefit packages worth $13,000, data Folz said was also met with skepticism among his peers.
The data isn't all fluff, however, as several big companies offer additional benefits to cover things like housing and travel in addition to income.
While $6,800 might seem like a lot, one has to remember that the cost of living in and around Silicon Valley is much higher than most parts of the country. Without a housing stipend or other benefits, one could easily struggle to get by with such an income.
Lead image courtesy Kleiner Perkins