Internships in the Software Industry

I'm currently a grad student at MIT majoring in computer science and electrical engineering. I've spent my summers interning at a variety of software-related companies, from Electronic Arts in California to Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Below is my personal ranking of these internship experiences.

Software Internship Rankings

Software Internship Ranking

	Electronic Arts	Morgan Stanley	Sandia National Laboratories
Location	Redwood City, CA	New York, NY	Albuquerque, NM
Date	Summer 2005	Summer 2004	Summer 2003
Job Title	Software Engineer	Network Engineer	Software Engineer
Tasks	Developed features for a yet unannounced title in the Sims series Integrated a particle system into a game engine Investigated an open-source library for use as a scripting system	Monitored performance of certain features of Microsoft Outlook software Developed scripts to automate network probe administration	Developed code to test for vulnerabilities in the MPLS protocol Worked on a team to research ways to detect adversarial network activity
The Good	Working on entertainment software Extremely intelligent and friendly coworkers Working on software used by millions of people Creative environment Battlefield 2 after work	New York City Beautiful, tall buildings My manager and mentor were great Mentor encouraged me to take a wine tasting class	Brilliant coworkers Manager encouraged me to earn my CCNA Taking tours of nuclear reactors was fun The Southwest is beautiful
The Bad	Gaming industry might not appeal to everyone Potential for long hours during crunch	Technology took second seat to business needs Work could have been more challenging Conversations tended to focus solely on finance	Government contractor Requiring an escort while working in secured areas decreased productivity
Overall	A	B-	B+
Links	My Summer Internship at EA Pictures from the EA Campus Pictures from California Electronic Arts web site	Pictures from New York City Morgan Stanley web site	My Life in Albuquerque Pictures from my Arizona road trip Sandia National Laboratories web site

Finding Software Internships

All of my internships were found on-campus at MIT through the career services center. MIT uses MonsterTrak to schedule on-campus interviews with various companies.

MIT also has a great program for sophomores during January called the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program (UPOP). This program helped me find my first internship at Sandia National Laboratories.

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