10 companies with the highest paid interns

Tell people you're an intern, and most will assume you're either working for free, or barely scraping by. After all, interning is about gaining experience, and that in itself is valuable to the future employee. But tech giants and financial powerhouses are willing to pay big bucks to get the most talented interns. Here are 10 companies that offer some of the highest intern salaries in the U.S. today.

10 companies with the highest paid interns
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10 companies with the highest paid interns

9. Quora

Not unlike Google, Quora is a search engine that delivers results based on the questions you ask. And as it's a tech firm, you know by now what the highest paid interns there are doing: software engineering. A typical intern in this position at Quora can expect upward of $8,000 per month, but there are also positions in product design, data science, and product management. The company appears to have an excellent culture, too, with great employee feedback and solid growth.

Potential Earnings: $8,086 per month

(Photo by Joe Corrigan/Getty Images for AOL)

7. Pinterest

Coming in at more than Facebook and Google, Pinterest is offering a combined $11,040 per month ($132,480 a year) to interns who have a talent for, you've guessed it, software engineering. Described as a "catalog of ideas" by CEO Ben Silbermann, Pinterest was started in 2010 and is relatively new to be a giant in the app scene. Certainly, it's not as ubiquitous as Facebook, Google, and Twitter, and yet it is forking over more than all of them to acquire top intern candidates. And as it is located in both New York and California, that $3,000 a month to help with housing is definitely a huge plus.

Potential Earnings: $8,040 per month (Plus $3,000 per month for housing)

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

6. Two Sigma

If you haven't heard of Two Sigma, you will soon. And the reason they top the list of intern salaries, by quite a margin if you include the monthly housing reimbursement (and additional $5,000 relocation expenses), is that they are at the intersection of technology and finance. Two Sigma is an investment management firm that uses science and technology to make people some serious money. What's more, they're currently hiring for over 80 positions at the their offices in New York, Houston, London, and Tokyo. If you're in the business of software engineering or trading, you may want to hit them up.

Potential Earnings: $10,400 per month (Plus $5,000 per month for housing)

(Carolia via Getty Images)

5. Snapchat

It's an app that is dominating the social media world, and the company behind it is making news for its internship programs. As hard to believe as it is, Snapchat not only pays interns up to $10K a month, but it adds an additional $1,500 per month for housing expenses! As that is usually the biggest expense any of us have to pay, the interns at Snapchat have the bulk of that $120,000 annual salary to spend on pretty much whatever they want. If this is making you think about re-evaluating your career choices, you're not alone.

Potential Earnings: $10,000 per month (Plus $1,500/month for housing)

(Photo Illustration by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)

3. Google

If you're seeing a trend in the high paying tech internships, you're not mistaken. Tech companies are looking for good software engineers, and they're ready to pay big bucks for them. A software engineer intern at Google can expect to earn over $7,000 per month, with some internship positions coming in at $113,000 per year! Of course, you need to be very savvy in the tech industry's most wanted positions; this is not something you can land straight out of college with a sociology degree. But for those with the right skills, the money is there at Google. And it is also famous for treating its employees very, very well.

Potential Earnings: $7,152 per month

REUTERS/Morris Mac Matzen

2. Amazon

If you have worked hard enough to earn your MBA, Amazon is a good place for you to get your internship. Glassdoor data shows that an Amazon Summer MBA intern earns $9,053 per month, which equates to over $108,000 per year. Just behind, at $8,934/month, is the product manager intern. And if you look at the list of internship positions and salaries at Glassdoor, you can see that overall, being an intern at Amazon is very lucrative — with dozens of positions reporting between $8,000–$9,000 per month. Considering how massive Amazon is, and how it continues to dominate the way we spend money and consume entertainment, it's clear that the company is investing heavily in talent now to continue this success.

Potential Earnings: $9,053 per month

REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo

1. Facebook

Currently worth over $350 billion dollars (and expected to one day be worth $1 trillion), Facebook has the money to pay interns well. Glassdoor reports that a Ph.D. software engineer intern can expect to earn around $9,000/month, with a regular software engineer averaging $8,467/month. If you're curious, that equates to over $100,000 per year… for an internship!

Even on the lower end of the spectrum, an analyst intern can make $3,000–$4,000/month, which is still way more than minimum wage. When you consider most interns are still living at home with their parents, it's not a bad gig at all.

Potential Earnings: Up to $9,000 per month

REUTERS/Stefanie Loos

Salary data found on Glassdoor.

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