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Are you going to have an internship? This is my opinion

Software Development Engineer In Test (SDET)
Former Employee
Worked at Microsoft for less than 1 year
June 12, 2008
Redmond, Washington
4.0
RecommendsNo CEO Opinion
Pros

Pros: As an intern, there were great benefits geared towards college students, which basically meant free stuff like mini fridges, shirts, Zunes, etc. As far as DevDiv (Developer Division) is concerned, I was very happy with how my team worked and treated interns. They did their best to help you learn, such as even sending interns to conferences, which I was quite surprised about. If I had to do it again, I would definitely accept the offer. What was really awesome was working on a project that would actually get released to millions of users, which is something that can't usually be said for most places. The random events that they host for interns is the best part. Make sure to go to as many as you can.

Cons

Cons:

Hide what it is really like to interns (which makes sense, but still...). Horror stories are heard about teams who treat their interns badly or give them projects that are basically useless. Also, they pressure you about taking an offer at the end of the internship (which you want to be paid $10,000 less is not a very good idea). Also prevalent is an email discussion list that was made to distract interns from doing work. Kind of backstabby in my opinion. Not very impressed with the idea. If they would fix a lot of these issues, it would be much better.

Advice to Management

I would tell them to spread out from just the Redmond campus. Get some Seattle presence, etc.

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