Tesla

Even the most boring tasks seem important.

The office is pretty cool; there's a lot of electronics and circuit boards lying everywhere.

The open floor plan is nice, too.

Interns were (heavily persuaded) to help out at the Fremont factory on Model 3 production. Not a lot of people get factory tours, let alone walk past the public viewing areas.

There's no business BS. Everyone is smart and motivated to do interesting things. I accidentally had a bug in my system that spread, and the director and I worked together to fix it. I also saw Elon sleeping at the factory on a yoga mat.

The premise is pretty clean. The janitorial staff is very friendly.

Perks:

• Tesla Brew Coffee
• Cereal/Milk/Orange Juice/Oatmeal

IT turnaround time is very slow; I had to wait a month before I could upgrade RAM on my laptop.

The hours can sometimes suck, especially if you're commuting from far away. Leaving at 6 AM translated to a fifteen-minute car ride, whereas leaving at 8 AM would take about an hour and a half. There's also a lot of work at times and pressure to deliver.

People are constantly moving in and out. Lots of full-time employees were only at Tesla for about a year. Job security is an issue. There was a 10% layoff during my stay.

Cafeteria food sucks, but there are food trucks that come every day. Slightly overpriced and they repeat the same trucks every two weeks, but it's a lot better than the cafeteria food.

When the stock is down, they change the Tesla logo coffee cups to generic paper ones.

Constantly in an internal battle seeing friends at other companies do 1/10 of the work and have 10x more perks. Ultimately, Tesla's cool factor wins out.

Severely understaffed.

Low pay.