The Summer 2022 Internship Quest

SimpleNexus thought I was too slow at coding to get rehired (and I cite, "too low ticket velocity" was the reason I was not rehired). Instead of investing in me, they used weaknesses I disclosed in 1:1s against me (read: ADHD, though not explicitly stated as such from my end), when I thought I was in a supportive environment that would actually try to help me grow as an intern. Well, screw them. I'll find a better company. And when I become an elite programmer with incredible skill, they'll regret not rehiring me. I will make sure of that. 

I really don't want to have to go through the entire internship interview process. I wish I could have a company that would allow me to learn and grow where I'm at now, while I drill myself in CS, math/physics, hardware, and SWE concepts in my off hours, plus working on personal projects (which I never seem to get to due to having a problem with obsessively needing large amounts of intellectual data before actually plunging into any sort of practical endeavor). Sling was like that, but then I got nixed during covizzle and started grad school shortly afterward. BYU ASG is like that, but I'll be taking a challenging load of CS and animation courses during the semester. In fact, BYU ASG will be my backup for all this. So if my internship quest ends up fruitless, I'll be at ASG next summer. I love ASG, but I need more money, future career prospects, and a summer where I never, ever have to put on pants. Because ew, pants. 

This page will chronicle my internship quest. There will be failures. There may be successes. But that's just how life goes. 

Here are the parameters: 

- My first priority is internships in Utah and remote. Remote is great due to the lack of commute, but in-person is better for social interaction and maintaining a high level of focus. Actually, the ideal would be a hybrid structure. Imagine working from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I can go straight to the SCERA pools after work. That would be fun. Then, I could work in-office for Monday/Wednesday/Friday. Also, why Utah? Well, I don't want to deal with moving all my crap, buying additional furniture, paying for rent in two places, not being able to use my season passes as much to Lagoon, Splash Summit, Cowabunga Bay, Cherry Hill, and SCERA, etc. Remote is great especially if it's a company in California or Florida that will let me go in-person once or twice during the summer, then return in-person full-time after graduation. And Southern Utah -- absolutely not. Which brings me to the next bullet point: 

- The second priority is internships in California and Florida. Due to my excessive hate of winter and cold, and my love for amusement parks and water parks, these states are a good target for living in. Arizona doesn't have a beach and has hardly any coasters. Texas would probably be just fine, but the theme park industry isn't as central there. Florida has too many bugs (gators and snakes are awesome and I would not have an issue with them), and California has too many covid restrictions (and lots of traffic in LA, though I could deal with it, and I would only live in the sunny part of the Bay Area, like Mountain View). But in California, I could live with Andrew -- then again, he wants to live in a big city, and I want to live in suburbia (lots of parks) that's near a big city. Regardless, I would accept internships in either state if accepted. And I would still have at least a few weeks at the end to use my season passes, plus I could possibly check out new theme parks and water parks. 

- Barring extreme circumstances, the cost-benefit analysis states that it would be inefficacious to accept an internship that pays less than $19 per hour, as I will be making $17-18 per hour at ASG. With out-of-state internships, the bar is significantly higher -- unless they're my gate into animation or theme park design. The only confounding factor here would, again, be not having to wear pants. 

- Finally, the right internship would cause a break in these rules (i.e. Epic Games in North Carolina), but I highly doubt this scenario would occur. 

- I will be applying for both computer science and animation internships, as before. This will maximize the probability of me having sufficient income to push myself through this next year -- ideally without any debt. 

- Amazon? Absolutely not. I like working normal hours, thank you very much. The only exception is for theme park companies! And we all know how the theme park industry is doing right now (i.e. not well). I'm also probably going to avoid Qualtrics and Lucid due to friends having lots of negative experiences with their application process. Imagine Learning's internship process was also kinda crap last cycle (only 5 minutes to solve an on-the-fly coding problem) so that's probably not worth it. 

COMPANIES: 

- Dropbox (Applied)

- Hulu (Will apply)

- DreamWorks (Will apply)

- Disney (Will apply)

- Pixar (Will apply)

- Universal (Will apply)

- Birket Engineering (Will apply)

- Google (Will apply)

- Blue Sky (Will apply) (Not in target locations but will be worth it)

- Facebook (Will apply)

- Epic Games (Will apply)

- Nvidia (Will apply)

- Avalanche (Will apply)

- Progressive (Will apply)

- Motorola (Will apply)

- Autodesk (Will apply)

- Pluralsight (Will apply)

- Adobe (Will apply)

- Microsoft (Will apply -- Utah and LA locations)

- Goldman Sachs (Will apply)

- Disney Streaming Services (Will apply)

- (I will continue this -- need to look up more small Utah companies)

CS KNOWLEDGE:

- I am currently working through Cracking the Coding Interview. 

- Then, I will start working on Leetcode or maybe attending the Competitive Programming Club. 

~

And no matter what happens in this year's internship grind, my fellow CS majors, NEVER GIVE UP. 

Blue as the sky, sunburnt and lonely...

You're gonna find yourself somewhere, somehow.