Hourly rate negotiation tips for paid internship
Interns are not hired to do work, they are hired so that people at the company can get a look at their abilities in a real situation (not an interview) before hiring them for real. This way instead of 30% of your new hires being a dud, it's more like 5%, because the bad ones were filtered out in the intern process. If you are self-motivated and good enough, then it's quite possible that you will start getting real work while you're at the company, as opposed to throwaway assignments that nobody cares about. Once you're in that position, it means they trust you to actually accomplish something, and you will be viewed as a hopeful hire. Assuming you like the company, getting into that position is half the value of the internship. So I'd take it as-is with one caveat - ask them about schedule flexibility ahead of time, explicitly for the purpose of making sure your class schedule works. If they're a decent place to work for they will probably grant you that point outright. EDIT: One more note. If you've got a favor to burn, save it. Use it if you like the place and need to ask them for an H1B sponsorship, or any other kind of immigration assistance. "I am not sure if I would get any benefit besides the hourly payment as   an intern. What are the benefits I can expect while working for this   company (or any other software company) Probably none. Changes from company to company but usually only full-time employees are entitled for benefits. For example, could I ask them to reimburse my bus fare or fuel costs   in addition to the hourly pay? You can always ask:-) If it's not in the offer - better ask now, you'll get paid what is written in the offer you accepted. Highly unlikely though. What kind of an ""employee"" is an intern? (Read about exempt and   non-exempt employee, but that's all very confusing) As intern you're non-exempt. As a professional (i.e.: Not part of internship) you would be exempt. Since this is the second time, since my interview, that I have   requested, and been offered a higher rate, should I continue to ask   them for a value near a $35/hr rate Have you asked them for $35? Or just for more? Anyway, I don't think that if they raised the offer from $17 to $21.75 that there's a chance for you to get $35 from them." They likely have an intern (job title) pay-scale that maxes out somewhere below $30/hr in order to meet the FLSA (that exempt vs non-exempt stuff you were seeing). As a PhD student, you could probably negotiate up into the ~$25/hr range, but from a benefits standpoint, they might not be able to pay you $35/hr without making you an exempt, full-time employee.
10 years into my career.  Here are my notes:  1. Don't work overtime as a salaried employee.  If there's more work than people then management needs to hire more people.  Sure, there are times when shit hits the fan and there's no other option, but that should be a 'once every two years' event, not a 'once every week' event.  2. Be a rockstar.  If you're spending time 'looking busy' because you finished a 3 hour job in 1 hour ship the results to your manager and ask for more.  Those results will be noticed and will move you from entry-level to mid-level to senior.  3. Skills pay the bills.  Always work on learning new things to bring value to your employer.  This is also required to move up the chain in your career, and leads into my #4.  4. Get paid what you're worth.  Maintain an understanding of what similar skillsets are paying in your area and either maintain or exceed that.  Your employer has an incentive to pay you as little as possible.  Show them comparable salaries for the same position paying more and make them match it.  If they won't match it find someone who will.  5. Don't correct your boss/salesperson when they are presenting to management/customers.  Instead, let them know after the meeting.   Your #2 points (both of them) are something that I struggled with when I was new in my career.  It was incredibly frustrating to *know* something, but not have anyone listen due to the fact that I was a 'kid'.  Unfortunately it's a part of life.  If you can do #2 and #3 on my list for a couple of years people will start listening.  It's a great feeling being a 24 year old kid in a room full of my boss's bosses, and my boss's boss's bosses and having them listen and consider my opinion, but it's not something that's given to everyone. You need to earn it. "Hi guys, hopefully someone reads this even though this thread has gotten kind of old. Might ask again next week.  Anyway, I'm a finance student and currently an intern for a big FS company. My internship is pretty fun and I'm learning a lot, but very little technical skills (the internship is in compliance and that's not where I want to end up after I graduate). My question is, over the summer, what should I learn? As in, take online courses on coursera or by reading a book. I know you'll probably answer ""Whatever interests you"", but with limited knowledge on the matter, it all seems equally interesting to me. Should I try myself at programming? What language? Should I learn excel modelling? Does anyone have any suggestions?" But I'm not choosing to forgo negotiating on my own. Someone else with ties to the listings is giving special access to my negotiations. Given access I can't get.  I'd rather negotiate on my own, usually adding someone in the middle of a conversation between 2 individuals is bad for everyone.  I'm not being given the option to negotiate on my own, I either take the artificially inflated rate or skip investing all together because I can't get the access that HFT's have, nor can I negotiate around them. "This isn't negotiations anymore. They are trying to change the deal after the fact. Stop negotiating and tell them they are bound to the agreement they signed. They are leaning on you because they know you are small and likely can't fight them. Document every conversation. Do not allow them to keep pushing after they've signed the agreement.  They accepted your bid (after giving your pricing to a competitor, which is shitty and should have been your first red flag). Then they started working on you. At that point your answer should have been ""we have a verbal agreement of x services for y price. A different scope of work is not scalable and would require a new quote.""  At this point you can either accept that they will continue to beat you up, or you can jam the contract down their throats until they agree or walk away.   I've been in a situation like this before. A major multinational asked for bid pricing that was agreed to be estimated only based on very loose requirements. Then they handed us a contract with that pricing included as ""not to exceed"".  We ended up walking away. It sounds like you may want to do the same if you can. Big companies often will have legal and payables departments that basically exist to fight any obligation to pay out money. In our case shortly after we ran into someone in our industry who'd worked with that company, and they said to assume that company would reject 30% of all invoices we sent. If nothing else, to delay payment just a bit longer so they could keep earning interest on the money.  Also, in the future I wouldn't turn away work until you are under a signed contract for a big project like this. You can't rely on such a contract to come through. If they drag feet and your schedule is full that's on them, or you bring in additional help or subcontract the work to deliver." This guy is doing you a *huge* favor by taking his time out to talk to you. These people are under enormous time constraints and you need to act accordingly. Don't babble on about what you're doing as an intern; the company could have hundreds of interns doing this exact same thing, and it's probably boring as hell.   Focus on asking high level questions about his career, his lessons learned, and his vision for the company. This man is going to be a treasure trove of advice and knowledge. Don't waste it talking about the LBO model you cranked out last week. Tons of resources out there for you. Look up guides on wallstreetoasis, vault, or mergersandinquisitions. Think of it this way. People tied to market hours aka trading floors have the best work life balance. The people working extreme hours are those in IB. Those are the guys doing M&amp;A, IPOs, debt issuances etc. I'm in America on student visa and I can have 12 months of paid internship. I'd rather not waste the 12 months on a sophomore internship, you know? Of course, I'd still love to be paid for what I do and think that might make me try harder. As a developer in a former life, I would not even get out of bed for $50 an hour. My normal charge out rate for ANY computer work at all is $100/hour + 15% tax. Don't want to pay that much? Find someone else.   I never ever had anyone ever try to negotiate a deal, and I only ever worked on an hourly basis. And only when it suited me.  I struggle to understand how anyone could ever accept any kind of coding job for $15 an hour - *even if they lived in India*. "You have to be firm. Refuse to work excessive overtime. This is why I switched to consulting. 16 hour days suck, but if you're billing for 16 hours, it makes it more bearable.   I've recently switched to the ""I only care about money"" mode of thinking, and switched to hourly pay after being salaried for almost 10 years. And it's not that it's the only thing that matters, but a lot of the rest of this stuff falls into place. It really simplifies things. You don't work for free. Your time is seen as a commodity. You are given goals and targets. You're not dragged into unnecessary meetings. Your opinion is respected. If you have to work saturday, you're sure as hell billing for it. If I take off at 2pm because I want to watch a hockey game, I just stop billing at 2 and there isn't this ""I'm not getting my money's worth!"" feeling from the manager." The sense of entitlement absolutely horrors me. Suck it up, do whatever work they need you to do for the time being. You're an intern. AND you're getting paid.  Believe you me, there are a million others that would kill for a position like that and are in much worse circumstances. Don't take it for granted. What are your alternatives? If you have something else lined up that is better than this internship, then yes, you should jump ship. Remember, you are your first priority. Don't worry about getting burned, and don't necessarily trust someone's promises. Many people in your life will overpromise and underdeliver.  With that said, if you don't have something to fall back on (that can provide relevant experience that you're looking for), then stick it out. Selling (including cold-calling) is an extremely important skill to have; there will be many times in the future where you will have to sell something, whether it's yourself, or an idea, or some other product. Use this internship as an opportunity to improve your sales skills, your English, and overcome your shyness. Take time to learn as much as you can - whether it's about running a business, your boss's previous experience, or anything else that may come in handy in the future.  Good luck! Also, take advantage of off-season times. I say this because anyone from senior associates (fancy way of saying second years isn't it?) to managers will have free time for a little chat here and there. These brief moments helped me get an e-mail or some way of contacting them after I left the internship. Definitely helps. Rule of thumb: Double your hourly rate to get a yearly salary (in thousands). Halve your yearly salary to get your hourly rate. (assuming a 40hr/week job). eg: $50k/year = $25/hr. "If you're really a part-time worker, then there are some simple considerations.... The remote working environment, choice of own hours, and non-guarantee of work availability point to your ""part-time"" situation being more like a consultancy, and that would normally double or triple the gross hourly rate. But if they're already offering or paying you a low hourly figure, they are unlikely to give you consultant rates." Good deal - glad to help.  It seems little is discussed and even less is actually known about this part of the back office. I've found a bit of recon and certain other ops exposure is invaluable no matter where you want to end up in a firm.  [FINRA 4523 \(pdf\)](http://www.finra.org/web/groups/industry/@ip/@reg/@notice/documents/notices/p123733.pdf) was the latest buzz at the office earlier this year.