Cisco

Good people to work with and learn from. Everyone I worked with was willing to stop what they were doing to give me a hand, which is rare in an organization. The engineers are definitely top-class people.

Good managers and leaders who took time to talk, at least on the level that we were exposed to (more towards the bottom of the chain).

Get put on real work that matters and is not just an "intern project".

Projects are also "doable" and not death marches. They still require quite a bit of hard work, but you are not being set up to fail.

Social events and intern activities for the interns, including FaceTime with senior management.

The best place to be if you are a hardware person, especially in networking.

• Placement is made for the benefit of the company, and not really the benefit of the employee. It's more of what the company needs and less of what would help the intern grow in the long run.

• There are no perks (except for a few intern events). This is not the magical Silicon Valley internship; this is a practical internship for a no-frills company. You're going to hate those Google intern jerks and their stupid bus and meals and paid housing when you have to walk past them every day going to work and feel like some sort of second-class intern. It just depends if that matters to you.

Communicate more. The interns heard about the restructuring, but we were told, "We don't think it will come to layoffs." That was totally wrong.

If you want to compete with the other companies in the valley for top interns, you're going to have to start treating your interns like everyone else does. We do talk to each other and know when we're getting the short end of the stick.