Startup Advice - Hire a Summer Intern

Posted by Kevin Merritt on October 24, 2007

Next week I’ll be at the Paul Allen Center at the University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering department at a recruiting event. One of my two objectives is to meet a few top notch computer science students who might want to come work for blist as summer interns next May. To a startup, May 2008 might as well be June 2044. They seem equidistant. Why would the CEO of a fast charging startup take a day from a frenetic schedule to hang out in a conference hall with college students?

The short answer is threefold:

1) They can code
2) They can contribute meaningfully
3) Hiring them as interns may be our best shot to attract them when they graduate

Some of you may have an impression that a 20-year young adult isn’t good for much more than making photocopies, filing, picking up lunch for the team and perhaps click-the-mouse circa 1992 testing. You’re so wrong if that’s your impression. The reality is, a 20-year old computer science student likely has 5 to 7 years of programming experience and at least two years of formal education to reinforce (or relearn) core constructs. Actually, they can probably out-code a lot of professionals in terms of pure coding speed.

But you only get them for four months, right? Four months is a long time in software engineering. At blist, we run 2-week sprints. Typically we work on 50 to 60 projects in two weeks. A summer is plenty of time for an intern to make really meaningful contributions.

Aside from the meaningful contributions and the great energy and enthusiasm interns bring, it’s important to recognize that top students are going to be heavily recruited in their senior year. By engaging them with meaningful work earlier in their academic careers, we’re hopeful these interns will consider blist after they graduate.

If you’re a computer science major at UW or perhaps another school but you plan to spend the summer in Seattle, blist is talking to interns now for next May. Our internships are paid, of course. Drop me a note at kevin.merritt _at_ blist.com if you’re interested.

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3 Responses to “ Startup Advice - Hire a Summer Intern ”

“The reality is, a 20-year old computer science student likely has 5 to 7 years of programming experience and at least two years of formal education to reinforce (or relearn) core constructs.”

Actually, I disagree. I never learned coding until I took the intro programming class at UW. Yes, when I was a 20-year-old computer science major, I only had just over ONE YEAR of programming experience.

But this doesn’t mean that you should discount any student who hasn’t been programming since they were in diapers or whatever. In fact, some of the brightest people I knew in my department were in the same boat as I was. Many of them are at working at the top tech companies, including myself.

So, really, it’s UNLIKELY a 20-year-old computer science student has 5-7 years of computer experience.

Left by Mary on October 31st, 2007


Thanks Mary for sharing your background. I think your experience is a little different than the typical “nerd” programmer. At my first startup MessageRite, I hired a 2nd year CS student named Ryan. He started coding at 14 while in high school and even had a vibrant consultancy through his last two years in high school. When I hired him at 20, he was near expert level at perl, PHP and SQL. My sense is that the code he wrote between 14 and 18 was crude and hard to maintain, but by the time I hired him his code was clean and solid. Ryan’s background is a lot like that of mine and my high school buddies as well. We were all coding actively by sophomore year of high school.

Regardless of when someone starts coding, it’s hard to argue that people are either good at what they’re passionate about or passionate about what they’re good at. Many really good programmers are hackers at heart and many of them start hacking as teens.

Left by Kevin Merritt on October 31st, 2007


[...] I blogged previously, Justin, Matt & I from blist attended the University of Washington Computer Science & [...]

Left by blist blog » Blog Archive » Field Notes from UW Computer Science & Engineering Intern Fair on October 31st, 2007


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