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Big-name global tech companies often hire tech students as interns during summer break, giving them a chance to work before graduation. For students, it’s a way to gain hands-on work experience for when they eventually enter the job market after finishing school.
What these companies pay their temporary interns is genuinely eye-opening when you compare it to salaries in Myanmar. Even by Western standards, tech company salaries tend to outpace pay in most other industries.
According to one salary survey, Facebook tops the list of companies paying interns the most, with an average monthly salary of $8,000 — over 10 million kyats at current exchange rates. Rounding out the top ranks after Facebook are Microsoft ($7,100), ExxonMobil ($6,507), Salesforce ($6,450), Amazon ($6,400), Apple ($6,400), Bloomberg ($6,400), Yelp ($6,400), Yahoo ($6,080), and VMware ($6,080). Here’s a closer look at intern pay at these major global tech companies, based on this report.
Undergraduate students abroad typically take on internships in their field during summer break, before graduating. It’s a win-win: interns earn money while gaining real work experience. Some major companies pay their interns particularly generously — some earn an eye-popping average of $8,000 a month (over 10 million kyats).
According to salary website Glassdoor, Facebook pays its summer interns an average of $8,000, making it the highest-paying tech company for interns. While Facebook isn’t the world’s wealthiest company, it out-pays even giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple when it comes to intern salaries. At $8,000 a month on average, that works out to $96,000 a year. That’s just the average — more than half of interns hired actually earn even more than that.
Microsoft ranks second in intern pay, with an average monthly salary of $7,100 — nearly $1,000 less than Facebook. Amazon and Apple, both major tech names, rank fifth and sixth respectively with $6,400. According to a 2016 survey of college intern pay, the average hourly rate was $16.28 (over 20,000 kyats), which works out to roughly $2,600 a month (over 3.5 million kyats) — meaning Facebook’s average intern salary is at least three times the typical rate.
In 2015, the average annual household income in the U.S. was at least $56,516, meaning a single college student interning at Facebook could comfortably support an entire household on their intern salary alone. For comparison, the average annual salary for an accountant in the U.S. in 2016 was $68,150 — meaning a Facebook intern’s income actually exceeds an accountant’s by $27,850.
Generally speaking, tech and finance jobs tend to pay better than other industries. Pay rates for both part-time and full-time tech interns in the U.S. have also been rising year over year.