Glassdoor’s 25 highest paying companies for interns

An internship can be a rewarding experience for young talent looking to enter the workforce. But according to a recent study, that experience can be even more financially rewarding than some full-time jobs. A new report by the career company Glassdoor lists the 25 Highest Paying Companies for Interns. Glassdoor found the average intern can earn between $2,400 and $3,100 per month at some companies. In some cases, interns could even earn a salary of more than $75,000 if they worked the full year. Compare that to the median household income of $53,046, according to the US Census Bureau.See which companies offer the best salaries for interns and what the candidates had to say about the experience.

25. Schlumberger, Houston

Average monthly base pay for interns: $4,634Recent intern feedback by:Schlumberger Intern (Lawrence , Kan.)Pros: “They hire some of the best minds and nicest people in the business. The hours are very flexible. The pay is competitive.’’Cons: “The company runs on a standard corporate bureaucracy with the politics you might expect. Much of the engineering work encompasses a fairly narrow range of problems.’’Advice to senior management: “Pay close attention to the work of the design engineers. They are producing the technology that keeps Schlumberger ahead of the competition. It never hurts to recognize that.’’

24. Juniper Networks, Sunnyvale, Calif.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $4,648Recent intern feedback by:Software intern (Sunnyvale, Calif.)Pros: “Awesome Intern program with all kinds of activities for Interns. Highly valued and given challenging work.’’Cons: “Little cultural diversity and high work rate.’’Advice to senior management: “Keep it up. Its time to become the best.’’

23. Intel, Santa Clara, Calif.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $4,648Recent intern feedback by:Graduate intern (Hillsboro, Ore.)Pros: “Good pay. Good work environment for interns. Challenging problems and space to make a impact.’’Cons: “Old-style corporate environment. No freebies. Less fun as compared to new valley companies like google and facebook.’’

22. Autodesk, San Rafael, Calif.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $4,684Recent intern feedback by:Software engineering intern (San Francisco)Pros: “Amazing work environment with phenomenal facility at the San Francisco office. Great company culture. (Comparable to Google/FB w/o all the crazy pressure). Great pay with relaxed hours. (13th highest tech intern pay in Bay Area). Serious opportunities for advancement. Intensely customer driven progress model. Calls with customers to get real world real time feedback to keep your perspective fresh and innovative will be a weekly occurrence. One of the best places to launch a career according to Forbes and I couldn’t agree more. Perks include six week mandatory paid sabbatical every four years in addition to standard paid time off. Ability to work anywhere in the world as you advance and/or move around. Even the meetings with everyone in the same building are often telemeetings because the telemeeting abilities throughout this company are excellent.’’Cons: “Only one employee resource group (ERG) for women. No LGBT. No handicapable. No ethnic ERGs. The didn’t provide housing to the interns and gave us a stipend instead. It created a huge hassle for me since I was only in the Bay Area for 3 months during a [massive] housing crunch. Most of the other tech companies do this for interns because it makes the experience so much less stressful and/or better. HUGE corporate structure. There are literally 100s of VPs, who report to ~10 Senior VPs who report to the CEO.’’Advice to senior management: “None. Keep up the great work, particularly with the ecosystem model. It’s power is really starting to launch things for this company.’’

21. NetApp, Sunnyvale, Calif.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $4,691Recent intern feedback by:Summer intern (Wichita, Kan.)Pros: “Nice people. Comfortable working environment. Competitive salary in Wichita.’’Cons: “Seems to be the only big IT company in Wichita. No a good choice if you’re seeking other opportunities.’’

20. Qualcomm, San Diego

Average monthly base pay for interns: $4,823Recent intern feedback by:Qualcomm interim engineering intern (San Diego)Pros: “Good work-life balance, competitive pay, San Diego is beautiful, brilliant coworkers, housing, and relocation was completely covered, R&D projects are very good, stable job outlook, HR (Campus Team) is by far the best of any company I’ve ever dealt with, great mentorship, executive speaker series, and they even held an intern hackathon.’’Cons: “We didn’t use agile software development, so there was very little flexibility or change as your project progressed. I had a project that was almost identical to the project that I had done the summer before at a different company. Projects are assigned based on what you have a proven track record of doing, and not what you want to do in the future. Shuttles go in loops around campus, and can take 15+ minutes to pick you up if you don’t time it right. You could get banned from using the shuttles if you abuse them by taking them to an office that’s closer to a mall/food court.’’Advice to senior management: “Work across divisions and teams more.’’

19. Capital One, McLean, Va.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $4,850Recent intern feedback by:Financial intern (Richmond, Va.)Pros: “Great benefits, office is very nice. Supervisors are very concerned with your professional development and job rotations are very common, aiming to give young employees the ability to gain a broad base of experience. Hours are very low key, and vacation time/personal days are generous. Similarly, pay is great considering the hours (most people are out of the office by noon on Fri.) and location (Richmond, a major office, has a very low cost of living).’’Cons: “Culture is very unique and can be turn off to some people (myself included). Also, a heavy emphasis on Capital One procedures, policies, and terminology makes your skills very Capital One Specific. It would be difficult to lateral to another company 5-10 years into working at Capital One.’’Advice to senior management: “No real concrete suggestions, what they are doing works for what they are trying to achieve.’’

18. Yahoo, Sunnyvale, Calif.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $5,039Recent intern feedback by:Yahoo tech intern (Champaign, Ill.)Pros: “People are smart and friendly, good pay, free lunch and snakes, doing very interesting project related to Yahoo! advertising.’’Cons: “Champaign is a comfortable and good place to work, but if you prefer big city, it won’t offer the things big city have.’’

17. BlackRock, New York City

Average monthly base pay for interns: $5,049Recent intern feedback by:BlackRock Aladdin Product Group Intern (New York, N.Y.)Pros: “ Good pay for an internship. Growing steadily. The Aladdin side is attracting many new customers. Good place to just show up, sit for 8 hours and go home. The teaching seminar about finance held on our first day was outstanding (The rest didn’t teach me much).’’Cons: “Crowded and noisy offices. You sit shoulder-to-shoulder on a single long desk. Offices are very conservative looking to fit in with the finance culture. High turnover rate on the technology side. The programmers that remain are not the passionate ones. Everything is just hacked together. Hard to learn good programming here. Full time pay is low for a software developer, especially in [New York].’’Advice to senior management: “Perhaps move the technology guys into a completely separate building or more attractive location. The finance culture is overbearing and prevents the technology side from being creative and energetic.’’

16. Salesforce.com, San Francisco

Average monthly base pay for interns: $5,158Recent intern feedback by:Salesforce Summer Intern (San Francisco)Pros: “Salesforce.com interns are contributing real work to the company, and are given real responsibilities. The time and effort invested into my experience at Salesforce made it a wonderful summer of learning that can be applied back at school and in the real world. They pay their interns well at competitive rates. The internship is a full 12 weeks, and full-time. Culture is dynamic and fast, making it a fun place to work. Plus you cannot be the San Francisco office location.Cons:Too many chiefs and not enough indians, so to speak. There is an uneven distribution of work, but it does keep the job interesting, engaging, and challenging.

15. ConocoPhillips, Houston

Average monthly base pay for interns: $5,357Recent intern feedback by:ConocoPhillips Intern (Houston)Pros: “They provide you with real, valuable projects. You also get an extensive overview of the entire organization, and learn of full-time job opportunities with all of the different groups.’’Cons: “I have yet to find a con for working for this great company. I’ll update when I think of one.’’

14. Adobe, San Jose, Calif.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $5,357Recent intern feedback by:Research Intern (San Jose, Calif.)Pros: “Helpful colleagues, good working environment.’’Cons: “Satisfied with everything at adobe’’

13. Chevron, San Ramon, Calif.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $5,357Recent intern feedback by:Chevron IT Intern (San Ramon, Calif.)Pros: “Emphasis on retirement and savings, safety is very, very important to the people at Chevron. Every meeting starts with a safety moment.’’Cons: “Horrible for the environment, not great on your morals. Makes you wonder where the world is headed. Definitely a money-sucking giant corporation.’’

12. NVIDIA, Santa Clara, Calif.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $5,446Recent intern feedback by:NVIDIA Systems Software intern (Santa Clara, Calif.)Pros: “ Good salary Awesome CEO Good perks No hierarchy Start up Culture’’Cons: “Lack of infrastructure to enjoy in the workplace.’’Advice to senior management: “Make the workplace more attractive, looks very stereotype atmosphere. Freak out and make it more fun.’’

11. Amazon, Seattle

Average monthly base pay for interns: $5,631Recent intern feedback by:Software development intern (Seattle)Pros: “Competitive pay, smart and friendly coworkers, young and startup feel, great campus.’’Cons: “Not enough interesting work for the amount of talent in the office, full time employees must go on call.’’

10. Apple, Cupertino, Calif.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $5,723Recent intern feedback by:Software engineering intern (Cupertino, Calif.)Pros: “I worked on a consumer-facing product for iOS, and even as a first-year intern, I was given the chance to work on a high-impact project and take it on myself. At the end of the internship we had the opportunity to present the results of our work to the VP of our department, which was a really fantastic opportunity given that this was my first internship experience.’’ General perks of interning at Apple: They treat their interns really, really well. In addition to providing free housing (which was at worst a 15 minute drive from work) or a $1000 housing stipend, some teams provide free lunches/dinners to employees, and you’re also eligible for all the other employee benefits, like health insurance, fitness center membership, product discounts, etc. More importantly, you get to work in a really flat environment and form a really close bond with your manager and others on your team. Apple also does an “Executive Speaker Series’’ during which each of the Apple executives give a seminar-style talk to the interns about the work they do, where they come from, etc.’’Cons: “This wasn’t my experience, but the truth is that depending on your team, the work might be uninspiring because working on consumer-facing products at Apple is undeniably more fun than working on internal tools or QA. That said, that’s true of almost all product-driven companies, so it’s really just a general point to note.’’

9. Google, Mountain View, Calif.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $5,969Recent intern feedback by:Google software engineer intern (New York, N.Y.)Pros: “Good salary. They paid for the accommodation during the whole internship. I learned a lot from the engineers and made a lot of networking.’’Cons: “If you end up starting your internship close in time the Google IO or the performance reviews you’ll be by yourself for a couple of weeks. Everything moves around Mountain View you pretty much have to work at the time zone even if you are in Europe of Asia.’’

8. Exxon Mobil, Irving, Texas

Average monthly base pay for interns: $5,972Recent intern feedback by:Exxon Mobil intern (Irving, Texas)Pros: “Professional development, pay, and exposure to Fortune 5 Company. As an Intern, I had the opportunity to really challenge myself, work on some weaknesses, present to executives, and get great exposure to a large energy firm.’’Cons: “Hours and culture. I worked 12-13 hour days regularly during my internship, including holidays and weekends. The culture is cultish. Very Texan and/or country. Those who don’t drink the Kool-Aid and show outward enthusiasm and constant positivity are visibly frowned upon. Cosmopolitan, city-esque individuals with even a hint of a sarcastic sense of humor don’t fit in well. Although there is some diversity, it’s a bit of a smoke screen. The cultural and personality make-up of the company is very homogeneous. Safety culture is extreme. There are literally parking ‘hall monitors’ with orange vests reminding you to use the handrail. The safety minute presentations about how to appropriately cut an avocado were too much.’’ The ranking system: “Enron did something very similar to what XOM does in its ranking. Enough said.’’Advice to senior management: “Step-up recruiting outside of Texas and the usual non-Texas schools. Diversity recruitment should include different personalities and outlooks, not purely demographics. Culture is a bit cultish. Look to more progressive and culturally integrated companies like Chevron and Shell as a best practice benchmark.’’

7. eBay Inc., San Jose, Calif.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $6,126Recent intern feedback by:eBay, Inc. intern (San Jose, Calif.)Pros: “Best place to start your career. Good compensation. Good visibility to senior level managers.’’Cons: “Too much ambiguity in projects. Not a clear direction to employees on where the company is going.’’

6. Microsoft, Redmond, Wash.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $6,138Recent intern feedback by:Microsoft research intern (Redmond, Wash.)Pros: “The research internship program is really well-organized. There’re housing, car rental and relocation subsidies, as well as internship only events.’’Cons: “No option for a return offer.’’Advice to senior management: “Consider giving research interns options to work full-time after graduate.’’

5. Facebook, Menlo Park, Calif.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $6,213Recent intern feedback by:Facebook software engineering intern (Palo Alto, Calif.)Pros: “Facebook has a lot of awesome people working there to solve interesting problems at scale. They have over a billion active users a month and a lot of smart engineers working to keep their software great. The benefits and pay are obviously great, and since it’s a well-known company it’s a good place to start if you’re looking to get recognized at other tech companies and startups.’’Cons: “If you’re looking to solve ‘new’ problems and build new things, Facebook is probably not the ideal place for you. They occasionally work on new features but a lot of work is put into improving or rehashing what they currently have. This is what I spent most of my time on while I was there. It was still pretty fun though. “Facebook sometimes claims to be startup, but it’s not in most aspects the average software engineer would be concerned with. While engineers do have access to a lot of information and code, the company is too big for one person to have a major impact on product or engineering decisions.’’

4. LinkedIn, Mountain View, Calif.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $6,230Recent intern feedback by:LinkedIn internPros: “Excellent benefits, nice people, friendly working environment.’’Cons: “The company is getting larger, so it’s harder to make noticeable impact. The codebase is a bit messy and there is a learning curve in some of the teams.’’

3. Twitter, San Francisco

Average monthly base pay for interns: $6,230Recent intern feedback by:Twitter software engineering intern (New York, N.Y.)Pros: “You will ship code used in production, you can have a say in virtually all company decisions, you will be generously compensated, you will learn a ton.’’Cons: “You may find yourself hindered by confusing internal tools that aren’t managed well or well-documented. Depending on your team, you’re likely to encounter a lot of friction before you get to real work.’’Advice to senior management: “Concentrate more resources on dev-prod. There should be teams devoted to evaluating, documenting, and updating all tools used tat the company.’’

2. VMware, Palo Alto, Calif.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $6,966Recent intern feedback by:VMWare graduate intern (Palo Alto, Calif.)Pros: “Cutting edge technology, Virtual machines and the cloud integration is just phenomenal and is the future of technology. HQ at Palo Alto is a fantastic campus and with lots of more facilities under construction. Compensation is upto the mark and company takes care of good bonuses and other perks.’’Cons: “It has now already grown to a significant size, so u may not get a very true-startup experience. So if u want to settle down it’s a best place.’’Advice to senior management: “I think management at US is doing well. But global reputation can be improved.’’

1. Palantir, Palo Alto, Calif.

Average monthly base pay for interns: $7,012Recent intern feedback by:Palantir support engineer intern (Palo Alto, Calif.)Pros: “-Work is motivated by a real mission. Very few people are there just for money. – Being surrounded by very smart people – Pretty amazing perks (Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, massages, haircuts, etc.) – They try very hard to involve interns as much as possible – Complete transparency’’Cons: “- It’s part of the culture to work long hours – Some customer information is sensitive’’