Internships during CS PhD program

[CSallday]

How common is it for someone in a PhD program to do summer software engineering internships? Are PhD students expected to work during the summer, or do they get the summer off for things such as internships?

[dat_nerd]

Leaving for a software engineering internship is, in my experience, uncommon. However, a summer research internship is not uncommon at all. Most students in my program are advised to intern at a research lab at least once, maybe twice, over the course of their PhD. If we're not interning during the summer, then we're either teaching or continuing research.

 

It's a good question to ask your advisor -- how frequently do they recommend that you intern? Or, if you're not attending a PhD program yet, ask students at the schools you visit. They can give you an idea of what's expected at their program.

[Icydubloon]

About 3/4 of people in my current lab have interned at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. as a non-research software engineer.

[dat_nerd]

About 3/4 of people in my current lab have interned at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. as a non-research software engineer.

Interesting! I hadn't heard of that. What research field are you in?

[Icydubloon]

Interesting! I hadn't heard of that. What research field are you in?

 

Machine learning. The new Data Scientist industry role caters perfectly to ML/big data students.

[DeleteMePlease]

Does this differ from institution to institution?

I am doing a lot of internships in my undergrad studies and I think it has benifited me a lot. There are also small projects that I brought to my schools from my employers. I would really like to continue this in my doctrol studies as I want to go into distributed systems and networks, which is very practical field imho.

Edited February 5, 2014 by GermanStudent