7 ms·

Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process

92 points by dodger 12y ago

covi 12y ago
I have to say the pay is by no way "spoiling". It is no where near the top tier pay (for interns) seen in the industry.
- dangrossman 12y ago
  A furnished apartment in NYC probably adds a lot to that salary. The unfortunate part is that the cost of that benefit is also considered income and the taxes for it would come out of the $6K. I interned at Microsoft years ago with similar benefits (good salary, furnished apartment, prepaid rental car, relocation costs & 2 gym memberships) but they paid extra cash to cover the taxes on the non-monetary benefits. There's no way I would've turned down the Fog Creek opportunity back then, though, it sounds like a very well planned program at an awesome company. There were many internships in the Philadelphia area, for developers, that paid half that salary with no perks on top of the pay at all. On the other hand, the interview process at nearly all the companies consisted of sending a resume and sitting down for 30 minutes to talk about past experience. I interviewed at 4-6 companies a year to get my 3 internships, with a ~75% acceptance rate (offered the internship), and not one involved multiple interviews or a single code screen. The west coast interview process just doesn't exist out here.
  - jc4p 12y ago
    I lived in the same place they put their interns for a summer, it's decent and costs ~4,000 for the entire summer, which definitely adds to the cost.
  - crazypyro 12y ago
    I had the exact same experience with interviews in the Midwest. Nothing rigorous at all, very high offer rate, and about half the compensation. I made a more in-depth comment, but just wanted to note that.
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  How's the cost of living in new york? I'm an intern in michigan and I'm getting way less than 6k a month but I definitely feel spoiled.
  - mh_yam 12y ago
    (Manhattan prices) A good studio apartment will be $2000-2500 a month. A one bedroom would be $3000+.
    - Igglyboo 12y ago
      Wow, yea now I see why they get payed so much. A solid 2 bedroom around me is like 500-800.
      - crazypyro 12y ago
        How much are you making if you don't mind me asking? I just accepted an internship in STL and curious where the compensation is around there.
      - gecko 12y ago
        Please do note that Fog Creek provides an apartment to interns for exactly that reason. You would not being paying New York rent as a student.
    - cm2012 12y ago
      Manhattan prices may $2k -$3k +, but you can get a reasonable apartment and commute for $1300 or less depending how far you want to commute daily
  - tylerkahn 12y ago
    NYU has a program where college students doing internships in NYC can live in an NYU dorm for ~$360/week. I didn't find the groceries/food to be all that expensive.
- cjbarber 12y ago
  You're correct. While not common, top interns at Amazon A9 can pull ~$35k for the summer.
  - test_ignore 12y ago
    Are you including the housing stipend in that math? That seems awfully high. I'm @ amazon, getting 6700 / mo, plus 2.5k / mo housing stipend and suddenly feel insecure :-p.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- 1a2a3a4a 12y ago
  It's not that far off the top tier pay for tech companies. Glassdoor compiled their list for 2014, and it's not too inaccurate [1]. Speaking from personal experience, the numbers for SWE undergrads for some of the companies on the list this year: Palantir - 7,500 - 1,200 for housing if you choose Facebook - 6,200 + free housing Salesforce - Varies per year, 34.50/hr for rising junior, housing. Cisco - 22/hr Quora and Dropbox are both missing from this list but they both have higher salaries than Palantir, but not by too much. [1] http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/25-highest-paying-companies-interns-2014-interns-earn-7000-month/ http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/25-highest-paying-companies-in...
  - covi 12y ago
    I'd say Quora and Dropbox can pay much higher, from my personal experience. Also, there are other places in the industry that pay even higher. But I'd include those with Quora and Dropbox as Tier 1. In short, Fog Creek is at most Tier 2, along with Google / Facebook, etc.
  - nickbarnwell 12y ago
    Jane St and a few other finance firms are paying interns ~100k/y annualised. That's the highest I've heard barring grad students with sweetheart deals. As covi mentioned, Palantir, Quora, Dropbox all pay about roughly the same but are very willing to negotiate and pay more if necessary.
    - covi 12y ago
      Yes, that figure is about right for the few finance technology films.
  - shubb 12y ago
    Wow... this sounds kind of irrational. I mean, these are close to senior salaries annualized - Sales force is around 70K, while a senior gets about 100K across most of the US. Are 4 interns really more useful than 3 seniors? Really?
    - 12y ago
crazypyro 12y ago
As someone who just went through the internship process with a few different companies, I find this fascinating. This is pretty much what I expected going into the experience (multiple interviews, at least 1-2 coding questions/examples to do, a test maybe). Out of the few companies I interviewed from, I had nothing as intense as this. The majority of them didn't even test coding/theory knowledge at all. They were just simple interviews that lasted 2-5 hours. The hardest part of any interview was a freaking mental acuity standardized test I took at the company who I'll be working for that wasn't hard, so take the term "hardest" lightly. Good news is I accepted an offer at that smaller engineering company! A good portion of my interviews were for engineering companies because of the employers my university attracts, so that could also have affected the technical parts of the interview. I'm not sure how I feel about how many interviews and how long this process is. I know some of my fellow students would be completely blindsided by such a long process unless it was clearly laid out. The compensation seems nice from the companies that hire around here (I go to a predominately STEM university in the Mid-West and all the companies I interviewed with came to our career fair in February, which is pretty late in the process). I'll make just over half that much monthly, but it'll be June-December and in STL. The highest I've heard from my classmates is 7k/month, but that was from Exxon Mobile and there was very little technical parts of the interview. He did have to take a hair test for drugs though. Ideally, I believe most of the larger corporations, like Boeing, Monsanto, etc, (like the article said) start interviews after the fall career fair. Another side note about compensation: Seems to be pretty wide spread between 13-30/hr (without adding in housing) at companies around the Midwest. I don't exactly have the greatest academic credentials though (3.0 gpa), so some of the more selective companies may pay more, especially for graduating seniors. Exxon-Mobile being the highest, Boeing right in the middle of that range, and a local ISP looking for a non-coding cs major on the low end for the curious. edit: Just adding in details as I get time. FORGOT THE MOST ANNOYING THING I was given the offer on Friday and he needed an answer on Monday, else he was going to extend the offer to other candidates. This was pretty obnoxious to me, but I ended up taking the offer because I was interested in it more than my other potential offers, but seriously, recruiters, a weekend is not enough time to get back to you with an offer, especially when other companies are asking you to keep them notified with enough time that they can either speed things up or not waste time on a candidate.
inconshreveable 12y ago
As a former Fog Creek intern (2010), I can tell you that Fog Creek's internship program is one of the best built out programs I've seen in the industry. It rivals and exceeds those of software firms with 10-100x resources. The talent they attract is top-notch too.
ultimoo 12y ago
As someone who did a summer internship last year at an amazing SF company, the pay-scale at fogcreek sounds pretty competitive (read amazing). $6,000 a month comes to a shade less than $40/hour. Bear in mind that most full time students work only in summers so although considerable federal tax is deducted from this amount, the intern is likely to receive most of it back when filing taxes next year. Also, catered lunches plus an apartment in NYC plus two amazing events in twice a week (which likely include dinner) means that the only money that needs to be spent is a handful of weekday dinners plus weekend fun, and I haven't even gotten to the thousand dollar signing bonus yet! Being in college, I knew about 10-12 others who interned last summer in the Bay Area. With most companies in the SF Bay Area you're looking at about $27 to $34 at most large companies in the south bay and $35 to $40 in SF. Plus an hourly pay scale means that interns don't get paid on holidays like 4th of July, Labor Day, or when they get sick (didn't know anyone who got paid monthly instead of hourly in the Bay Area). I haven't heard of housing benefits in the south bay much and heard of only one company in SF that threw in free housing. (Sorry about a long comment focusing only on the financial aspects of an internship program but it is an important factor that debt-ridden students take into account).
- xyzzyz 12y ago
  Google and Facebook both hire their interns on exempt positions, so they aren't hourly. They also pay around $6800-$7000/mo, not including benefits.
- yen223 12y ago
  $6000 a month is more than what most senior software engineers earn here, before considering currency conversions. You guys are lucky man.
- ConnorBoyd 12y ago
  I did an hourly internship last summer and got 4th of July off, paid. It must depend on the company.
bcaine 12y ago
This sounds like a great program, I just wish it was offered year-round. Even though I think Northeastern University and Waterloo are the only schools with a completely integrated, well defined Co-op program, it seems like its a growing trend. I'd assume having year round interns and a continuous recruitment process would be less disruptive to the team's work velocity and give you a bit bigger reach for students too. Plus, I'm a bit jealous of some of the summer-only internships at a lot of interesting companies. Can't complain about graduating with 18+ months of interesting work experience pretty much guaranteed though.
- Oculus 12y ago
  Second this - I think companies that offer year-round internships set themselves way ahead of the pack and get to choose from a very qualified and talented pool.
- CocaKoala 12y ago
  I didn't attend the Rochester Institute of Technology, but friends of mine who go there tell me that co-ops are a mandatory part of the CS program there.
  - acchow 12y ago
    Waterloo's "co-op" system is quite different. The whole undergraduate co-op program lasts about 5 years, and you alternate between 4 months in school and 4 months working throughout (i.e., you don't get summers "off"). This allows the students to try many different companies of varying size and culture.
- crazypyro 12y ago
  At my university, we get a lot of co-ops because of the engineering nature of majority of the students. I've found that engineering companies that make physical things are more likely to do co-ops and companies that focus on a completely coded product/companies that have a traditionally CS focus tend to do interns. Just my experience here though.
- thedufer 12y ago
jonheller 12y ago
There was a whole movie about interns at Fog Creek. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRL7YsXjSg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRL7YsXjSg I admit it could have been edited a bit better (read: more interesting), but it was still fun to get a bit more of an inside view of a process like this.
asselinpaul 12y ago
Does anyone know how much one would make in a Finance Internship at a hedge-fund, prop firm and investment bank?
- S4M 12y ago
  I think an internship in a top tier bank in London pays about 3000 pounds/month for a summer analyst and 5000 pounds/month. My data are outdated though, maybe the salaries have gone down after the crisis, but I doubt it and would rather think they decreased the number of interns.
  - robotcookies 12y ago
    I've heard the hours are much longer though for that field. Correct me if I'm wrong.
dominotw 12y ago
Can't they atleast hire one person that didn't luck out by being born in a rich/middle class american family to go to ivy league universities. What is such complicated product that Fog Creek makes that it needs graduates from top 10 universities? Serious question.
- josegonzalez 12y ago
  Not that I went to anything approaching an Ivy League school, but I understand why they limited their search to that subset. They are more likely to find good matches, and given the low amount of time they probably allocated to this, it wouldn't make sense to canvas hundreds of universities. I doubt that they met all of their applications at the Job fairs, and even if they did, it appears that Fog Creek also attended the SBU CS Fair (which is decidedly not an Ivy League).
- HerokuMan 12y ago
  Jews that went to Ivy League schools tend to hire other jews that go to Ivy League schools
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - fredgrott 12y ago
    that style of bigotry does not belong here
    - HerokuMan 12y ago
      Tell me more
  - ProAm 12y ago
    Oh go be a racist-troll somewhere else.
    - HerokuMan 12y ago
sbuccini 12y ago
On behalf of a student who just finished up the internship search: Companies/recruiters, please note the advice put forth here. A couple of points I'd like to touch on: * Be sure to provide your interns with a ton of guidance, and promote this in during your recruitment process. Many of my fellow students are turned off by the bigger companies since they feel like they won't be able to make an impact. As a smaller company, this is your ace in the hole. Use it to your advantage. * Personally, exploding offers leave a bad taste in my mouth. Everyone knows how long the recruitment process takes, and you should give the intern the common courtesy to make an informed decision. The last thing you want is a disgruntled intern on your payroll for a few months. * You should consider internships as an investment. Build a relationship with your intern, and it will pay numerous dividends in the long run. They might return for a full-time position or they may refer a friend that they respect. A good way to support your intern during the school year is to sponsor a hackathon or an interview workshop at their school. This gets you face-to-face with some of the most motivated hackers at any school, where you can begin the courting process. Just some quick thoughts from the student's side of the table.
sscalia 12y ago
Am I the only one flabbergasted by the comp #'s thrown around in the article and in these threads?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
sergiotapia 12y ago
All of this sounds extremely exhausting for a simple internship. About 30 times more effort than I've ever had to put to land a job as a freelancer. I'll take my standard $50/hour rate and avoid these rat-races. 400 applicants and only 8 hires!? YIKES. Are these fellas going to the moon?
LukeWalsh 12y ago
> If you don’t know where to begin here’s a good rule: only target colleges that admit less than 30% of applicants. That will give you a head start on being selective, especially if you have limited spots available in your program. I personally think this is silly. If you want to be selective just focus on applicants who actually build things. If you look at collegiate hackathons at places like university of michigan, UIUC, or Purdue it's clear that there is a lot of talent in the midwest. Just because someone wasn't born on a coast or with a connection to an ivy league school doesn't mean they don't make a cut for selectiveness.
- dodger 12y ago
  Fog Creek dev, here - we, too, have had absolutely great hires from less-selective colleges and with not-so-great resumes. But if you're pressed for time and resources and you have to use a heuristic for where to put recruiting efforts, this can be a good one.
- Harimwakairi 12y ago
  Upvoted. There are tons of hardworking poor kids at less prestigious schools, and tons of grade-grubbing slacks and practice field All-Americans at the selective ones. If you have zero time to weed a large pile down to a small one and thus no other choice, I can see this being a logical step. However, if you're hiring for any engineering position and the application form doesn't ask for a link to something the candidate has built (be it on Github, Sourceforge, or just on the web in general), you're likely missing out on the most important metric.
- sadfnjksdf 12y ago
  I never thought of Fog Creek that way before. In fact, I've always gotten the impression they were down-to-earth. But, that one shot of a spreadsheet in this post listing Brown, Rutgers, Princeton, Yale, etc. changed my mind. The other turnoff in this was the weeding out of candidates based on resumes. We hired an excellent employee out of a batch of horrid resumes- what a great hire, though.
  - dlp211 12y ago
mathattack 12y ago
Remember that this is New York City. $6000 is great money to begin with. Add $2000/month minimum for rent. (And imagine digging up a security deposit too...) This is investment banking money for a software firm with a much more respectable work-life balance. (I have no connection to the firm, though I have read pretty much everything that Joel has written)

92 points by dodger 12y ago

covi 12y ago

I have to say the pay is by no way "spoiling". It is no where near the top tier pay (for interns) seen in the industry.

dangrossman 12y ago
A furnished apartment in NYC probably adds a lot to that salary. The unfortunate part is that the cost of that benefit is also considered income and the taxes for it would come out of the $6K. I interned at Microsoft years ago with similar benefits (good salary, furnished apartment, prepaid rental car, relocation costs & 2 gym memberships) but they paid extra cash to cover the taxes on the non-monetary benefits. There's no way I would've turned down the Fog Creek opportunity back then, though, it sounds like a very well planned program at an awesome company. There were many internships in the Philadelphia area, for developers, that paid half that salary with no perks on top of the pay at all. On the other hand, the interview process at nearly all the companies consisted of sending a resume and sitting down for 30 minutes to talk about past experience. I interviewed at 4-6 companies a year to get my 3 internships, with a ~75% acceptance rate (offered the internship), and not one involved multiple interviews or a single code screen. The west coast interview process just doesn't exist out here.
- jc4p 12y ago
  I lived in the same place they put their interns for a summer, it's decent and costs ~4,000 for the entire summer, which definitely adds to the cost.
- crazypyro 12y ago
  I had the exact same experience with interviews in the Midwest. Nothing rigorous at all, very high offer rate, and about half the compensation. I made a more in-depth comment, but just wanted to note that.
Igglyboo 12y ago
How's the cost of living in new york? I'm an intern in michigan and I'm getting way less than 6k a month but I definitely feel spoiled.
- mh_yam 12y ago
  (Manhattan prices) A good studio apartment will be $2000-2500 a month. A one bedroom would be $3000+.
  - Igglyboo 12y ago
    Wow, yea now I see why they get payed so much. A solid 2 bedroom around me is like 500-800.
    - crazypyro 12y ago
      How much are you making if you don't mind me asking? I just accepted an internship in STL and curious where the compensation is around there.
    - gecko 12y ago
      Please do note that Fog Creek provides an apartment to interns for exactly that reason. You would not being paying New York rent as a student.
  - cm2012 12y ago
    Manhattan prices may $2k -$3k +, but you can get a reasonable apartment and commute for $1300 or less depending how far you want to commute daily
- tylerkahn 12y ago
  NYU has a program where college students doing internships in NYC can live in an NYU dorm for ~$360/week. I didn't find the groceries/food to be all that expensive.
cjbarber 12y ago
You're correct. While not common, top interns at Amazon A9 can pull ~$35k for the summer.
- test_ignore 12y ago
  Are you including the housing stipend in that math? That seems awfully high. I'm @ amazon, getting 6700 / mo, plus 2.5k / mo housing stipend and suddenly feel insecure :-p.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
1a2a3a4a 12y ago
It's not that far off the top tier pay for tech companies. Glassdoor compiled their list for 2014, and it's not too inaccurate [1]. Speaking from personal experience, the numbers for SWE undergrads for some of the companies on the list this year: Palantir - 7,500 - 1,200 for housing if you choose Facebook - 6,200 + free housing Salesforce - Varies per year, 34.50/hr for rising junior, housing. Cisco - 22/hr Quora and Dropbox are both missing from this list but they both have higher salaries than Palantir, but not by too much. [1] http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/25-highest-paying-companies-interns-2014-interns-earn-7000-month/ http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/25-highest-paying-companies-in...
- covi 12y ago
  I'd say Quora and Dropbox can pay much higher, from my personal experience. Also, there are other places in the industry that pay even higher. But I'd include those with Quora and Dropbox as Tier 1. In short, Fog Creek is at most Tier 2, along with Google / Facebook, etc.
- nickbarnwell 12y ago
  Jane St and a few other finance firms are paying interns ~100k/y annualised. That's the highest I've heard barring grad students with sweetheart deals. As covi mentioned, Palantir, Quora, Dropbox all pay about roughly the same but are very willing to negotiate and pay more if necessary.
  - covi 12y ago
    Yes, that figure is about right for the few finance technology films.
- shubb 12y ago
  Wow... this sounds kind of irrational. I mean, these are close to senior salaries annualized - Sales force is around 70K, while a senior gets about 100K across most of the US. Are 4 interns really more useful than 3 seniors? Really?
  - 12y ago

crazypyro 12y ago

As someone who just went through the internship process with a few different companies, I find this fascinating. This is pretty much what I expected going into the experience (multiple interviews, at least 1-2 coding questions/examples to do, a test maybe). Out of the few companies I interviewed from, I had nothing as intense as this. The majority of them didn't even test coding/theory knowledge at all. They were just simple interviews that lasted 2-5 hours. The hardest part of any interview was a freaking mental acuity standardized test I took at the company who I'll be working for that wasn't hard, so take the term "hardest" lightly. Good news is I accepted an offer at that smaller engineering company! A good portion of my interviews were for engineering companies because of the employers my university attracts, so that could also have affected the technical parts of the interview. I'm not sure how I feel about how many interviews and how long this process is. I know some of my fellow students would be completely blindsided by such a long process unless it was clearly laid out. The compensation seems nice from the companies that hire around here (I go to a predominately STEM university in the Mid-West and all the companies I interviewed with came to our career fair in February, which is pretty late in the process). I'll make just over half that much monthly, but it'll be June-December and in STL. The highest I've heard from my classmates is 7k/month, but that was from Exxon Mobile and there was very little technical parts of the interview. He did have to take a hair test for drugs though. Ideally, I believe most of the larger corporations, like Boeing, Monsanto, etc, (like the article said) start interviews after the fall career fair. Another side note about compensation: Seems to be pretty wide spread between 13-30/hr (without adding in housing) at companies around the Midwest. I don't exactly have the greatest academic credentials though (3.0 gpa), so some of the more selective companies may pay more, especially for graduating seniors. Exxon-Mobile being the highest, Boeing right in the middle of that range, and a local ISP looking for a non-coding cs major on the low end for the curious. edit: Just adding in details as I get time. FORGOT THE MOST ANNOYING THING I was given the offer on Friday and he needed an answer on Monday, else he was going to extend the offer to other candidates. This was pretty obnoxious to me, but I ended up taking the offer because I was interested in it more than my other potential offers, but seriously, recruiters, a weekend is not enough time to get back to you with an offer, especially when other companies are asking you to keep them notified with enough time that they can either speed things up or not waste time on a candidate.

inconshreveable 12y ago

As a former Fog Creek intern (2010), I can tell you that Fog Creek's internship program is one of the best built out programs I've seen in the industry. It rivals and exceeds those of software firms with 10-100x resources. The talent they attract is top-notch too.

ultimoo 12y ago

As someone who did a summer internship last year at an amazing SF company, the pay-scale at fogcreek sounds pretty competitive (read amazing). $6,000 a month comes to a shade less than $40/hour. Bear in mind that most full time students work only in summers so although considerable federal tax is deducted from this amount, the intern is likely to receive most of it back when filing taxes next year. Also, catered lunches plus an apartment in NYC plus two amazing events in twice a week (which likely include dinner) means that the only money that needs to be spent is a handful of weekday dinners plus weekend fun, and I haven't even gotten to the thousand dollar signing bonus yet! Being in college, I knew about 10-12 others who interned last summer in the Bay Area. With most companies in the SF Bay Area you're looking at about $27 to $34 at most large companies in the south bay and $35 to $40 in SF. Plus an hourly pay scale means that interns don't get paid on holidays like 4th of July, Labor Day, or when they get sick (didn't know anyone who got paid monthly instead of hourly in the Bay Area). I haven't heard of housing benefits in the south bay much and heard of only one company in SF that threw in free housing. (Sorry about a long comment focusing only on the financial aspects of an internship program but it is an important factor that debt-ridden students take into account).

xyzzyz 12y ago
Google and Facebook both hire their interns on exempt positions, so they aren't hourly. They also pay around $6800-$7000/mo, not including benefits.
yen223 12y ago
$6000 a month is more than what most senior software engineers earn here, before considering currency conversions. You guys are lucky man.
ConnorBoyd 12y ago
I did an hourly internship last summer and got 4th of July off, paid. It must depend on the company.

bcaine 12y ago

This sounds like a great program, I just wish it was offered year-round. Even though I think Northeastern University and Waterloo are the only schools with a completely integrated, well defined Co-op program, it seems like its a growing trend. I'd assume having year round interns and a continuous recruitment process would be less disruptive to the team's work velocity and give you a bit bigger reach for students too. Plus, I'm a bit jealous of some of the summer-only internships at a lot of interesting companies. Can't complain about graduating with 18+ months of interesting work experience pretty much guaranteed though.

Oculus 12y ago
Second this - I think companies that offer year-round internships set themselves way ahead of the pack and get to choose from a very qualified and talented pool.
CocaKoala 12y ago
I didn't attend the Rochester Institute of Technology, but friends of mine who go there tell me that co-ops are a mandatory part of the CS program there.
- acchow 12y ago
  Waterloo's "co-op" system is quite different. The whole undergraduate co-op program lasts about 5 years, and you alternate between 4 months in school and 4 months working throughout (i.e., you don't get summers "off"). This allows the students to try many different companies of varying size and culture.
crazypyro 12y ago
At my university, we get a lot of co-ops because of the engineering nature of majority of the students. I've found that engineering companies that make physical things are more likely to do co-ops and companies that focus on a completely coded product/companies that have a traditionally CS focus tend to do interns. Just my experience here though.
thedufer 12y ago

jonheller 12y ago

There was a whole movie about interns at Fog Creek. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRL7YsXjSg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRL7YsXjSg I admit it could have been edited a bit better (read: more interesting), but it was still fun to get a bit more of an inside view of a process like this.

asselinpaul 12y ago

Does anyone know how much one would make in a Finance Internship at a hedge-fund, prop firm and investment bank?

S4M 12y ago
I think an internship in a top tier bank in London pays about 3000 pounds/month for a summer analyst and 5000 pounds/month. My data are outdated though, maybe the salaries have gone down after the crisis, but I doubt it and would rather think they decreased the number of interns.
- robotcookies 12y ago
  I've heard the hours are much longer though for that field. Correct me if I'm wrong.

dominotw 12y ago

Can't they atleast hire one person that didn't luck out by being born in a rich/middle class american family to go to ivy league universities. What is such complicated product that Fog Creek makes that it needs graduates from top 10 universities? Serious question.

josegonzalez 12y ago
Not that I went to anything approaching an Ivy League school, but I understand why they limited their search to that subset. They are more likely to find good matches, and given the low amount of time they probably allocated to this, it wouldn't make sense to canvas hundreds of universities. I doubt that they met all of their applications at the Job fairs, and even if they did, it appears that Fog Creek also attended the SBU CS Fair (which is decidedly not an Ivy League).
HerokuMan 12y ago
Jews that went to Ivy League schools tend to hire other jews that go to Ivy League schools
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- fredgrott 12y ago
  that style of bigotry does not belong here
  - HerokuMan 12y ago
    Tell me more
- ProAm 12y ago
  Oh go be a racist-troll somewhere else.
  - HerokuMan 12y ago

sbuccini 12y ago

On behalf of a student who just finished up the internship search: Companies/recruiters, please note the advice put forth here. A couple of points I'd like to touch on: * Be sure to provide your interns with a ton of guidance, and promote this in during your recruitment process. Many of my fellow students are turned off by the bigger companies since they feel like they won't be able to make an impact. As a smaller company, this is your ace in the hole. Use it to your advantage. * Personally, exploding offers leave a bad taste in my mouth. Everyone knows how long the recruitment process takes, and you should give the intern the common courtesy to make an informed decision. The last thing you want is a disgruntled intern on your payroll for a few months. * You should consider internships as an investment. Build a relationship with your intern, and it will pay numerous dividends in the long run. They might return for a full-time position or they may refer a friend that they respect. A good way to support your intern during the school year is to sponsor a hackathon or an interview workshop at their school. This gets you face-to-face with some of the most motivated hackers at any school, where you can begin the courting process. Just some quick thoughts from the student's side of the table.

sscalia 12y ago

Am I the only one flabbergasted by the comp #'s thrown around in the article and in these threads?

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

sergiotapia 12y ago

All of this sounds extremely exhausting for a simple internship. About 30 times more effort than I've ever had to put to land a job as a freelancer. I'll take my standard $50/hour rate and avoid these rat-races. 400 applicants and only 8 hires!? YIKES. Are these fellas going to the moon?

LukeWalsh 12y ago

> If you don’t know where to begin here’s a good rule: only target colleges that admit less than 30% of applicants. That will give you a head start on being selective, especially if you have limited spots available in your program. I personally think this is silly. If you want to be selective just focus on applicants who actually build things. If you look at collegiate hackathons at places like university of michigan, UIUC, or Purdue it's clear that there is a lot of talent in the midwest. Just because someone wasn't born on a coast or with a connection to an ivy league school doesn't mean they don't make a cut for selectiveness.

dodger 12y ago
Fog Creek dev, here - we, too, have had absolutely great hires from less-selective colleges and with not-so-great resumes. But if you're pressed for time and resources and you have to use a heuristic for where to put recruiting efforts, this can be a good one.
Harimwakairi 12y ago
Upvoted. There are tons of hardworking poor kids at less prestigious schools, and tons of grade-grubbing slacks and practice field All-Americans at the selective ones. If you have zero time to weed a large pile down to a small one and thus no other choice, I can see this being a logical step. However, if you're hiring for any engineering position and the application form doesn't ask for a link to something the candidate has built (be it on Github, Sourceforge, or just on the web in general), you're likely missing out on the most important metric.
sadfnjksdf 12y ago
I never thought of Fog Creek that way before. In fact, I've always gotten the impression they were down-to-earth. But, that one shot of a spreadsheet in this post listing Brown, Rutgers, Princeton, Yale, etc. changed my mind. The other turnoff in this was the weeding out of candidates based on resumes. We hired an excellent employee out of a batch of horrid resumes- what a great hire, though.
- dlp211 12y ago

mathattack 12y ago

Remember that this is New York City. $6000 is great money to begin with. Add $2000/month minimum for rent. (And imagine digging up a security deposit too...) This is investment banking money for a software firm with a much more respectable work-life balance. (I have no connection to the firm, though I have read pretty much everything that Joel has written)