Summer Intern

I managed to get my oldest son a summer intern position where I work. When I was going to college, I never thought about working as an intern. I was too busy trying to make money to pay for school. It turns out, you can actually get paid for some internships. That is the case with my son and he is really happy to be working with Dad as he thinks I work at cool place. It is hard to tell him that this is work when he has managed to get a whole bunch of free swag, leading-edge hi-tech toys, and invited to a number of after-dinner parties. It is a good thing he is staying in the Bay Area this weekend or he might go home to Utah and tell everyone that we play more than we work.

I have found that it is really difficult to break into the video game industry. Everyone is reluctant to hire people from outside the relatively small industry. I still don't know how I found myself where I am, but I am glad to be where I am. An internship is a great way to get started. There are a number of kids that come back after graduating from college.

So what does an intern do? My son has spent a lot of time doing on-the-job training. While he has experience with a fair number of programming languages, he needs to dive deeper into the one he will be using this summer. He is also working with a specific framework and is running through a number of various examples before he gets his proverbial hands wet. Next week that will happen. The idea is to have him complete it before going back to school. That way, we get something from his experience and he gets the experience of seeing something go from prototype to production.

If you are young and want to work in video games, you should definitely think about applying for an internship. The competition is tough as my son was selected from a pile of 51 other applicants. However it is possible to land a really sweet summer job.