Tech talent pool
Startups get creative in recruiting interns as they are competing against household names such as Google and Amazon
Melaney Chen spends most of her day designing 3D models of camera parts that help Uber’s autonomous vehicles see objects on the road. She then sends the specs downstairs to the machine shop, where they’re built and tested.
“I’ll design something today and have a prototype tomorrow or the next day after that,” said Ms. Chen, a rising senior at Cornell University who is completing a mechanical engineering internship on Uber’s hardware team.
With its sleek open-concept space and complimentary coffee bar at the Strip District-based engineering office, startups like Uber can conjure up romanticized images of the Silicon Valley scene.
Realistically, though, “startup culture” is not as homogeneous as you’d imagine and work experiences can vary wildly — even for summer interns. A student at a resource-strapped, early stage startup will have a very different summer from an intern at a company on the verge of going public.
And competition for interns among companies is fierce.
Ride-hailing giant Uber, which is flush with cash, has the ability to hire nearly seven dozen student workers across the country, while smaller, lesser-known companies may not have the bandwidth or reputation to support even one.
“For tech startup hiring, a lot of it depends on funding or what contracts they get,” said Kevin Collins, a senior assistant director at Carnegie Mellon University’s Career and Professional Development Center.
Startup size matters
Although Uber hardly mirrors a startup anymore — the company employs 1,500 across its San Francisco, Toronto and Pittsburgh engineering offices and is valued at $62 billion — the location on 33rd Street still feels like one.
That’s because it’s home to the