First of all, I think you should first what understand what an intern for a computer engineer looks like. It is of course not a kind of job, so that they don’t expect much from you and you should also not expect much money as your salary for your intern. There are lots of companies that pay you good enough even for intern and on the other hand, there are even such companies they actually pays you a small amount and even there is possibility that you will have to work for free during your internship period.

The reason is simple, internship is actually for making you pro in the field, you will get a lot to learn and much less to work. To be eligible for internship, all they expect from you is basic concepts in that field. For example, if you’re about to do intern in a telecommunication corporation, they expect you to have some basic knowledge regarding networking, encryption, encoding, etc. If you’re about to do intern in a software organization, they require you to have the basic knowledge in programming, especially the fundamentals of Object Oriented Programming, Design And Analysis. They first teach you, and give you some tasks on that. You will have some deadlines and you will have to accomplish those tasks within the specified time.

So, the short and sweet answer to your question is , the computer engineers actually learn instead of working. What they will learn obviously depends on the field they are enrolled in as I explained earlier.
My last words for you is that you should not be afraid of whether you’re eligible for intern or not, don’t think you can do intern or not. Don’t think that you don’t have much knowledge if you’re a computer engineering student whether passed out or still running. Don’t miss the opportunity if you’re getting intern from any company. Just dive into it, and take all the knowledge in that field. Sooner or later, you will be pro, learning a lot from there.

Good Luck!!

That's a pretty broad question; I'll try to answer it based on my experience and that of others around me.

Allow me to rephrase the question a bit: "What do computer engineering students do in (1) "core" CS internships and (2) non-CS-related internships ?"
I make this classification because I've seen a lot of computer engineering students opt for other internships (mentioned later). I'll only touch upon the second type at the end, and answer in length about the former, which is the one I can speak in better detail about.

1. Core computer engineering internships
   An internship is technically supposed to be a "trailer" of what your work-life is going to be. If you're working at a good place, you'll be allowed to work on real-world problems, live projects, or some sort of a research-based project. (A "good" place isn't necessarily one which pays a lot. It is the one that gives you interesting work to do and where you learn a lot from).
   
   What you'll "do":
   You could be working on real problems (ranging from 'how do we get this to work faster, given the constraints', or 'how do we improve an algorithm to provide better results' to more user-facing ones like 'how do you effectively revamp this so that users like it', to 'develop an app for that', etc.) You could be working on making great web services, maybe.
   In a more research-oriented internship, you'll likely end up devoting a lot of time to, well, researching- reading up, finding alternatives, testing viability, innovating.
   
   Just a heads-up: Back in India from where I am, "internships" have become ways of getting cheap ways to "make a website" or do "search engine optimization". I'm not saying these are not good things to do/learn, but you're not likely to learn much if working alone, independently in a contract-based thing masquerading as an internship.
   As a side note, the following things also count as "things students do in an internship", so- apart from gaining technical expertise (duh!), things you definitely want to try and gain:
   
1. Corporate workflows-
   If you're interning at a big company (let's say, typically with more than 10 people), they'll have set processes to get stuff done. Learn those. Learn why the processes are the way they are.
   If you're working at a relatively small company, you're a significant contributor. Think of what workflows can be set at the place (of course, without inducing too much of an overhead).
   Most engineers hate this kind of stuff, but the earlier you learn it, the better. And if you give it enough thought, it makes a lot of sense.
2. About the "industry"
   If you're working in the CS department of a bank, you'll likely learn about finance and pick up stuff and jargon related to that area. If working for something like Google, it will be core technical stuff- how things integrate, version control, software development lifecycles, how stuff shapes up eventually.
3. Your interest-
   Your experience here will (or should) tell you whether you'll like doing the sort of work you are doing. If corporate internship, whether that setting works for you. If research-based, whether you have that temperament. (I had the prejudice that all corporate work is boring, my internship experience invalidated that, if nothing else)
4. Network
   Interact with people at your workplace (and even otherwise), learn what their area of expertise is. Help them. Make friends.
   
2. Non-CS related Internships
   These can be many different types- I've had friends do journalism stints, random marketing internships, and even business development. They may be good things to try out if you want to- I've had a couple of friends with amazing experiences and value-gain from these, and then I've known others who (IMO) gained nothing apart from two lines on their CVs.
   Regardless, quite a few points of "things to do" in the above list are applicable here too.

Source: I interned as a SDET (Software Development Engineer in Test) in the Microsoft India Development Center after my third year. I was given a project to solve one of the teams' problems involving loads of manual work- my project reduced the amount of time from 2 hours (of manual work) to a few minutes (of automation). I'm not much of a 'efficiency' person, but heck- everyone loves to know the impact that their work had ;)

The job of my interns at my company are to learn how to do things first using our team and business needs as the guiding factors and write stuff for work purposes second.

Will we assign interns real-world work? Sure. But very limited and controlled exercises in order to have them learn how to do stuff. We are, in many ways, acting as a paid extension of their education. No one in their right mind assigns an intern business-critical work for them to complete on their own. I assign them work I can do myself but structure as a means for them to grow their skills and learn how to do it in a corporate environment with requirements and deadlines.

My job is to not set my interns up to fail. My job is to grow their knowledge in a controlled fashion so as to not overwhelm them and build their confidence in their abilities as they learn how to apply them in ways they’ve never seen before. You’d be amazed at the number of software interns who know nothing about real-world software development. Classroom and office are two completely different environments.

Long-term we are trying to groom our interns for employment within our team. We are investing in them. Often for several years. We make no guarantees but that is our goal. To raise them to the standard of a junior engineer by the time they graduate and having a few years of experience with us makes them a safe hire. They know our culture and how we operate. We’re not gambling on an unknown person by that point.

I retired about 15 years ago and I worked in an engineering organization. Our product was software. Keep this in mind in reading my answer.

1. There was no altruism in our hiring of interns. Every intern was a potential future employee. If you weren’t interested in working for us, we weren’t interested in hiring you as an intern. We did not have a special budget for interns. The pay for any intern hired came out of the particular project or departmental budget. And we paid our interns.
2. We only hired interns from school that had a high quality department of Computer Science or Software Engineering. In general interns were hired for the summer between their Junior and Senior year. The first filter before an interview was GPA of at least 3.5. As we were located in Minneapolis an intern had be willing to survive the Minnesota winter.
3. Every task that we assigned an intern was something that needed to be done by the department or project. A task that could be completed in 2 or three months. Sometime we didn’t know what the solution was, it might have been “impossible”. But our interns were hard charging and didn’t know any better. They usually came up with a solution. Every intern did something different.
4. By interning with us the student learned about the how to dress and be part of a professional organization. They learned technical stuff and the culture of our organization and determined if they could work in such an organization. Likewise we evaluating the student for his fit and competence.
5. We usually offered jobs to the successful interns. And most of the interns were successful. Over the years many of our most successful employees had been interns.
6. A software engineering internship does not necessarily mean that you will be designing programs and writing code. My last project in which I hired interns was a SCADA system to manage the power for a heavy rail urban transportation system. We had just about completed development and were in the factory testing phase. So I had the two students do much of the FAT testing. FAT testing involves running tests of the system at the user interface level. It is pretty interesting if you are a college student who has never done it before. They had other miscellaneous tasks to complete I don’t remember what they were. But there last assignment was to write a report about the good things and bad things of their internship. I always asked my interns for this report. One of the guys asked me “how many pages?”. I replied, “this is work, not school. Say just what you need to say and no more!”
7. So what do software engineering interns do? They learn about software engineering in a technical organization.

TL;DR | Computer Engineering Students can either find paid or unpaid internships that deal with computer hardware, computer software or an unrelated topic. A large portion of computer engineering students find software jobs because their is a much higher demand for programmers than hardware engineers. Typically, hardware engineering internships are harder to come by for computer engineers and are thus more highly sought after.

To start, most of the answers here don’t even know what computer engineering students do and just assume them to be programmers. In reality, computer engineering students learn about computer hardware as well as computer software and typically find jobs outside of programming. If you’d like to find out what jobs are typical for computer Engineers to achieve you can check out my answer to What careers can I have with a degree in Electrical Computer Engineering, and you’ll find that most of them are not software related.

Even after I said that, it is important to note that most internships that computer engineering students obtain are software related positions. This is due to abundant need of programmers and computer scientists by large/small companies today. Think of it this way - In order to create hardware engineering positions, a lot of pre-existing equipment must already be owned (Oscilloscopes, signal generators, fabrication machines, circuit testing design suites etc.) which cost companies millions of dollars. In order to create a software engineering position the only thing a company needs to provide is internet access and cheap laptop.

Computer Engineering internships can be classified and placed into two separate categories; technical and non-technical internships.

Technical Internships: In the computer engineering field, it is common to find internships that are paid at $20+ dollars per hour anywhere in the United States. When you take a job out west at companies like Apple, Nvidia, Google, etc it’s more like $30–$40 dollars per hour. Technical internships are much harder to get than non-technical internships and the work you do over the summer will benefit the company in a significant way. Some possible tasks/projects that could be assigned to you at a technical internship are:

• Circuit Design Layout for New tech (Hardware)
• Reorganize database structure (Hardware/Software)
• Automation scripts to control processes/production/testing (Software)
• VLSI & VHDL work (Hardware/Software)
• Develop Back-end/Front-end software for websites (Software)

Jobs as a hardware engineering intern are likely to be found at bigger companies like:

• Lockheed Martin
• Apple
• Global Foundries
• IBM
• Cisco Systems
• Google

and software engineering internships can be found at all the big tech companies above (and more) as well as smaller startup software engineering companies with a much lower company evaluation. (thumbtack for example is a small software company that create a website to hire local professionals and would hire software engineering interns)

Non-Technical Internships: These types of internships are a lot easier to obtain because they do not require technical knowledge in the field of engineering. An example internship that is non-technical would be working at a local flower shop working on their marketing campaign. Non-technical internships are almost always unpaid unless you get a job at a financial company, Goldman Sachs/Wells Fargo/Metlife etc. I’m not going to write anymore about non-technical internships, just try to avoid them as an engineer.

Why should you value my opinion?

Well, I’m currently a rising junior studying Computer Engineering & Mathematics in New York. This summer I am working as an intern at Global Foundries, a semiconductor foundry, as a Design Enablement engineer. I have done plenty of research figuring out what types of positions are available for computer engineering students, and applied to a lot of companies. Oh yeah, and I got one of those highly sought after hardware positions!

I’ve interned at a few places before starting full time as a software engineer

Typically software engineers will act like a full functioning member of the team. They will participate in stand ups, planning meetings, and all other functions of an entry level software engineer.

The work they do is typically bug fixes and a small project that covers the length of their internship. The work they do, however, is never extremely high priority or mission critical. They’re features and issues that are on the backlog that was de prioritized through the year.

This last part really depends on the company, some startups expect interns to be pushing real code and be part of the team, others know they are temporary workers and are there to pick up extra tasks.

Many companies treat internships similar to an extended interview. At large tech companies a certain percentage of interns will be able to receive a return offer, some companies (Facebook) reportedly decide starting pay off of internship performance.

As others have pointed out, it varies a lot. One common thread I had in an internship years ago and some interns that have been hired to teams I'm on or work with is the opportunity to try something new that falls into the "nice to have" category for the team.

What I mean is there are problems with solutions in place today that might not be ideal solutions, but the time needed to try a new solution has been too big of a hurdle to change a team's approach to that problem. In such a case, the intern can be mentored about the work surrounding the problem that they're trying to solve so that they get some experience, then they have an opportunity to contribute their fresh mind to find a better way to solve the problem. If successful, the intern would present their new method of solving the problem to the team and would help train teammates on the new flow.

This is a win-win since the intern gets experience and the team gets a better way to solve a common problem without having to take the time to write the script/program/etc themselves to make that happen. If the new solution doesn't end up working, then there isn't a ton of time/$ lost for the company and the intern still got good experience.

Usually when considering an internship opportunity in computer science or computer engineering. Most companies would give a general overview about what its objectives are and the qualifications needed for the job. That is how Human Resource would try to find the perfect candidate for their postings.

From my observation , you would think that interns would dive right into hardware design and physically building things. However, I’ve noticed that a lot of interns would work on things such as:

Product enhancements

Debugging

Algorithms

Patching

Prototyping

It is rare that companies host jobs for innovation, unless stated in the objectives.

That doesn’t mean that companies don’t hire interns to lead product development or create new things. Startups are the most ideal way to go if you want to be design and innovative new products.

Computer Engineering is a broad field. So it would be difficult to generalize what interns do without heavy statistics and data analysis. Plus the market is huge.

Thanks for your A2A.

Depends on the company, the internship, the project and even you. Companies of different sizes or in different industries are going to be different, and even different teams within the same company are not always similar.

At heart, there will be one constant: software. You will work on developing new software, maintaining existing software or deploying/supporting existing systems. (I've done all of these.)

Beyond this, the specific things you work on and the organization of the program can vary wildly.

At some companies, especially smaller ones, being an intern is not all that different from working full-time: you're like a contractor, but perhaps with more mentorship and flexibility. I worked at a few early stage (< 10 people) startups like this, and often ended up doing whatever needed doing:

• actual development: I worked on specific features in the product or new internal tools
• existing code: I extended code from the existing backend of the core product
• ops: I set up continuous integration for the whole company

While I certainly had help and support when doing all of this, it rarely felt any different from being an entry-level developer.

At other companies, usually larger ones, being an intern is much closer to being a student, just more project-oriented. There's a lot more structure to the program. You get assigned a specific, usually self-contained project, have some explicit mentoring and even structured lectures and classes.

At Jane Street, for example, interns had classes on everything from systems programming to finance to linear algebra to game shows. (Some of the classes were actually quite advanced and aimed at full timers as well as interns.) Additionally, there were exercise and games designed to teach trading concepts and even a mock electronic exchange on which teams of interns competed. This all surrounded two specific projects, each designed to take about half the internship period.

Most of the time, you end up working on a project mostly by yourself. You will likely have a mentor of some sort, but chances are you will not share a codebase with anyone else. However, even this is variable: sometimes multiple interns end up working on the same project (as I did for my first internship) or even work directly with a full time engineer on the same code.

Ultimately, the point is that the actual work you do and the structure you have throughout your time in the program depend on the sort of company you choose as well as your role. There's very little that's certain beyond the fact that you're going to be working on some kind of software. (Otherwise, of course, it's wouldn't be a programming internship!)

Software engineering internships vary between companies, but at the heart of it all, software engineering interns get the chance to write code, execute challenging projects, and help build incredible products.

A lot of this is going to vary between companies. Usually, interns are assigned a project or they might get to choose from a predetermined list of projects. In some rare cases, an intern might have more say in what they want their main project to be, but in my experience that usually only happens for returning interns (and even then, you still might not have final say). Interns are usually also paired with another engineer who acts as their mentor or host. If a company is smaller, it might be the case that an intern doesn't have a designated host, but at least has a person or group of people they can go to for help. So, after a project is chosen, interns work with their mentors to start their project. Interns come to companies from different backgrounds and skill levels. So, some interns might sit down with their mentors to sketch out a general plan, others might just jump right into the code base and start working.

In terms of the actual work, software engineering interns write code to work towards completing their intern project. This also includes writing tests to ensure a robust finished product and, of course, debugging and finding out what parts aren't working and why they aren't working. The code that they write usually gets reviewed by their mentor or another engineer on the team, which helps the interns develop good software engineering habits and learn from mistakes (or even learn a new way of doing something!). It's a very rewarding process!

Software engineering interns get to work with other members of the team when a problem or ambiguity arises (usually with the help and participation of their host). They'll attend meetings with the team and essentially be a part of the team as it exists in day-to-day operations. When I did my first internship at Google, my host would often times help me if I needed to talk to another team and was too shy to email them or would at least vet my emails before I sent them.

Outside of coding and work, interns usually also have extra benefits like classes and social events. At Google and Facebook, there were tech talks that were separate from the company wide tech talks that were geared towards interns or new employees. So, software engineering interns also get a chance to learn outside of their team too! Intern events are also a lot of fun - it's a really great chance to meet other interns from around the country and to network. There are also often panels from former interns about how to be successful and sometimes even alumni events. Those are always really fun, because you get to talk to people who went through the same classes and similar college experiences that you'll go through!

For a more streamlined description, I wrote an answer after my last internship at Google describing my normal day as a software engineering intern:
Elynn Lee's answer to What is a typical day like for a Google undergraduate intern? Specifically, a software engineer.

I can’t speak for the FAANG companies, but I can speak for many others. As an intern, you’re going to be doing whatever the project you’re assigned to requires. The person/people responsible for tasking work will be evaluating your competencies and playing to your strengths. Because, again, you’re being given tasks the project requires in order to be delivered successfully.

Gone are the days when interns were treated (and “paid”) like volunteers. When you’re hired as an intern, it’s because you’re a potential full-time employee. In fact, you’re likely not going to be hired unless that was the determination in your interview process.

So, you’re merely going to be treated like a junior member of the team. The work you’ll be assigned will depend entirely on how competent you are and in which areas you are competent.

-coffee/donut run
-wash boss's car
-sort invoices
-complete my grinding Achievements

j/k!

If you intern at a software company, you'll do work that is either just real work that needs to be done anyway, but in a way that multiple features can be scoped and managed as a cohesive, overall project, or you might work on something that is a sort of like a side project, but one that the team would still feel is really useful. Some examples of these are things like some kind of internal or customer dashboard, an improved logging system, or a fun, nice-to-have feature set for the product that might not ordinarily get the priority to be made any time soon. It really depends on the company and the team though. There are all kinds of things that could be done. You should expect that you will be doing real work with real engineers and designers.

The internship Raiyan described sounds pretty bad in terms of actually learning how to be an engineer.

Hi,

Internship is not specific to computer engineering. Students of any field can do internship. Which proves to be beneficial for students and gives them the knowledge of the practical world. The implementation of what you have been learning in your degree. Which helps you select your field of interest and then after your degree you can go for the domain you find interest in. By internship you get to know things more clearly therein helps you increase your knowledge, Perspective of thinking, handling things more wisely and yes ofcourse understand the corporate world and the deadlines, which are taken so seriously during the academics. So there are paid internships and unpaid internships, whichever you do, but you must do to enhance your skills.

Thanks.

I received a BS in Computer Engineering from Clemson University in 2014.

I interned at an embedded systems design and manufacturing company. I was a test engineer and learned all about digital and analog I/O. My tasks ranged from writing test plans, testing hardware, and all the way to assembling prototype systems for customers. This was a hardware type gig...

I used this internship to leverage my way in to a full-time job at The Boeing Company as a software engineer. I was working with MySQL, database design and website development. This was a software type gig...

I started my company at the same time I started working at Boeing. I started with iOS apps to boost my object oriented programming skills (something NOT taught as a computer engineer) I have written two apps, sold one and am priming the other for sale soon. This is a software type gig...

After 7 months of software development at Boeing, I transferred internally to a role as a Robotics Engineer. I worked hand and hand with Kuka robots, even went as far to use a rivet gun to assist in the completion of the first engine inlet built by a robot. Computer Engineering was super helpful here because I was on a team of mechanical engineers, where they taught me Mech Engr principles and I taught them code. This was a hardware gig..

Now I am running my own research company to build the first Thought Recognition system. This is a beautiful blend of software and hardware, where I use cutting edge hardware and state-of-the-art software principles to make my prototype. Plus I get to work with a ton of people smarter and more skilled then my self. I was able to fit right in because the open source project I help with needed a Node.js module written for communicating with an OpenBCI device (it measures brainwaves). This required using all those bitwise operators and such that you learn so well in computer engineering to turn 1s and 0s into numbers a web developer could use.

Computer Engineers can do it all, plus our major is harder than computer science, so you can hold that over your buddies too :) We are the blend and fold between software and hardware. I always explain our major with this simple example: The case for your laptop was designed by a mechanical engineer, the battery, power plant, and circuits were designed by electrical engineers, everything you see on the screen (i.e. UI) was designed by computer scientists, and computer engineers fill in the voids, such as making sense of a key being pressed, or parsing a string of binary data, to the operating system that runs the entire software system.

Well Its not just students of Computer science any guy who does an internship in IT companies works on their (companies) projects.

A lot many varieties of projects are offered! but the prime objective is to see that something productive comes out at the end of the internship. A few examples are

1. Testing a new software
2. Developing android based apps
3. Data analysis & DBMS
4. web development
5. Scripting and automation of some boring routines.

Mostly it all depends on the project on which you are, the background of the intern and the duration he/she wishes to invest in the organization and last but not the least LUCK!!!!!!!

First, I was luckily able to get offers from many companies, including Google, Amazon, etc.

I applied to more than 500 internship positions and heard back and got an interview for around 30 of those 500. The interview processes for most companies were very similar so I will talk about the overlapping interview process step by step. I did not get any referrals, and did not reach out to any recruiter. I applied to 500 companies on their website.

Recruitment Cycles
The internship recruiting process is in two cycles.

1. First cycle is from late August to early December.
2. The second cycle (less popular) is from January to April.

--I recommend applying on websites as much as possible in August and sending out emails to recruiters that you have contact with. This gives you a headstart in the interview process, and if you have expiring return offers from previous internships, you must act fast and interview fast with other companies before it expires. --

Here was the interview process for most companies, and if you have questions about specifics, I can try to answer those in the comments.

Application Platforms

1. Linkedin - linkedin has a lot of internship application reccomendations. I would look into this platform
2. Jumpstart - not the best platform, but also another way you can apply to some companies
3. Intern.supply - this has a long list of companies that are hiring for cs majors
4. Handshake - Your school might have a platform where you can apply directly to companies
5. Career Fairs - If your school is large, then this might not be a great way, but if you can get a contact information from some recruiters you meet there, that is always great!
6. Manual Application - If you have any companies in mind, go on their website and see when their application opens. This is usually the easiest/best way

Internship Interview Process

1. The first part of hearing back from a company was being sent a coding challenge either from Hackerrank or some other third party coding platform. I noticed that you usually move on to the next round by getting a perfect score on the coding challenge. However, there were times where I didn't get a perfect score and I still moved on to the next round and there were also times where I got a perfect score and was not moved on to the next round.
2. The next part was usually a ~1 hour phone interview consisting of a technical coding challenge. None of these interviews asked for my knowledge in complex algorithms like bellman ford or hopcroft karp. They were purely testing my problem solving ability and my ability to write code. Also, they sometimes asked for my knowledge in simple data structures that are taught in all undergraduate data structures classes. For example, they will ask what a HashMap looks like and how that is implemented, etc.
3. Usually when you do well on the phone interview, there are either more phone interviews, or an onsite interview. 9 companies out of 10 do not have onsite interviews. They usually have 2-3 phone interviews and once you do well in those interviews you are accepted. The onsite interviews were much longer (~3 hours minimum). You were expected to be there at a certain time and go through multiple back to back interviews that consisted of technical and behaviorial interviews.

My Preparation
My preparation for this recruiting season was not that rigorous. This past summer, while I was interning at a company, I solved around 1 or 2 LC Medium or Hard problems a day. I did not code up any problems. I solved the problems on the commute to my internship on pen and paper. I did hear from others that this is a good way to practice for a whiteboard interview. In total, I think I solved around 50 Med/Hard problems. I recommend solving around at least 200, and recommend solving 500+ if you want to get into every company you ever want.

Advice

1. Luck: I think there is a huge portion of luck involved with finding an internship. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and if you get a question that involves your weakness, thats very unlucky. I would not worry too much about rejection, as I also was rejected hundreds of times in the past.
2. Game of numbers: There are thousands of opportunities out there so apply to all of them. Even if you don't see yourself working there, the interview experience if valuable. Remember that most people only hear back from < 1% of applications.
3. Preparation: Leetcode is a great platform, so set a goal and practice! Start from easy, build your way to medium, and go to Hard. There are some easys that should be medium, some mediums that should be easy, and etc. Don't get discouraged from not being able to solve a easy/medium/hard. Set a daily goal for X days and try to reach it! Don't burn yourself out so make the goal realistical and doable.
4. Have FUN have fun learning and solving questions! They're all very fun and wonderful and the more you have fun the more you learn and get better!

If you have a question about a specific company, leave a comment down below!

Good luck everyone and enjoy the upcoming Holidays!

To quote the ex-NASA engineer next to me (who was wondering what I was doing at this instant): There are no computer engineers in NASA. And in a way that’s what I was going to say. Well, at least not as civil servants (this we agree). You might have temporary contractor computer engineers who work to do the “all important” job of systems integration. You might or might not like that.

You won’t be designing new computer architectures. NASA can’t afford that. You might design part of systems which contain approved flight and/or space qualified computer components (e.g., radiation hardened (I can’t say too much about these), lower density, slower, rather expensive) working with teams of other instrument designers, experiment scientists (they might be civil servants “ranking” over you. Some of this will depend if you work on crewed or manned projects versus unmanned projects. Read the singulars and plurals in these sentences carefully; they are deliberate.

Some of these people go along with Wintel architectures, while others might go with the flight architectures used by Boeing Aircraft, or VxWorks, and still others might use military (MIL-SPEC) hardware using Ada. Only a few schools in the USA teach avionics (is this a new word to you?). Expect a lot of signatures required. Competing ideas may engender a lot of arguments. Expect to lose many. If you are lucky, you will win a few.

It’s not that NASA doesn’t have engineers, it has all kinds of other engineers: mechanical engineers (mostly) who know little to nothing about computers, aeronautical engineers, aerospace engineers, optical engineers, non-computer electrical engineers, thermal engineers, ad nauseum. Some of these may make it into management and be your boss.

Expect to write a lot of documentation. Systems have to work independent of you. A few people actually might work with a soldering iron (you might work more on the board level). Expect to spend a lot of time testing: environmental testing, temperature, gravity testing, vacuum testing, etc.

You are more likely to work on ground systems for analysis, simulation, command, control, communication than flight hardware. Flight hardware you sometimes get 1 chance. And 1 chance only. You may have to prototype many times.

You may have people actively opposed to you. You have people (on ground or in orbit) who don’t like computers/robots, or have their own views on computers and robots. They can be scientists, other engineers, technicians, flight crew, etc.

If you think, I’m kidding, I recommend Eric Chaison’s book The Hubble Wars. He was the chief scientist of the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute out of GSFC.

Thanks for the A2A.

First things first, Computer Engineering is a very broad spectral field. Starting from a simple C program (HelloWorld.c :D ;) ), the field spans through a plethora of Engineering domains such as Computer Architecture, Very Large Scale Integration, Digital Signal Processing, Industrial Optimization Techniques to even Six-Sigma.

So next time you ask a person and he replies he is a Computer Engineer, please dont think he is into Coding. He could still be one of the following people:

1. He/She could be working for Qualcomm's Snapdragon soC, in its design/verification of design.

2. He/She could be analysing a circuit and drawing a Physical Design layout in terms of the components present in it such as a transistor (FET), capacitor etc,.

3. He/She might also be doing research on Noise Cancellation techniques that may have the potential to be included in the next generation production of JBL stereo headsets/ headphones.

4. He/She may be doing analysis on numerous images and thinking about how its clarity can be improved even after compression (P.S without image compression, there is no Internet/Web Pages)

5. He/She might be teaching about Computer Arcitecture in a college. Yeah, an engineer can still be a teacher for they are the intellectuals striving hard for the betterment of humanity through technological enlightenment.

6. He/She might also be designing a new embedded system that could be incorporated in a Robot thereby enabling improved capabilities for the same.

7. He/She can also be monitoring Quality Control of the products being manufactured by a top notch company and suggesting measures to decrease the cost of production.

So as you can see a Computer Engineer can be into a wide range of activities other than writing code.

PS: I am not saying that writing code is completely out of the picture. It may manifest in some form or the other. However the bulk of the work done need not necessarilly be coding as you had mentioned. Tomorrow's technology and its improvement has a lot to do with the hardwork and efforts put in by today's Computer Engineers. :D :)
Cheers !!! :)

I can answer that. According to me the zeroth thing you gotta do is decide - Job or Further Studies. You can't do both.

If your decide to go for CS related job (assumption), then:

1. Have your Data Structures & Aptitude ready. No matter which CSE related job you interview for, you'll be judged on these two things first.
2. Polish you english and confidence. You don't need to be an oxford grad. If you are not stammering and making sense, you're good enough. Speak everything with confidence. Confidence will come through practice.
3. Have a story to tell. Something about you. Your interests, your plans for future, what are you good at and bad at. Practice telling that story.
4. Choose a field of interest. Data science? Web development? Application programming? Any. Have atleast one basic project ready on it. You'll be judged on your understanding of the domain. Having the knowledge of latest domain tools will be appreciated but its not mandatory.

That just about covers everything you need to get a job as a freshser. These are the things you should be able to do before 4th year, but people usually start concentrating on them after they've got an interview scheduled.

Nope, I did not get any internship as a Computer Engineer.

The reason is whenever I opted to do internship the pay was too low or not pay at all.

Hence, I started working hard and learning things in a more professional manner at home.

I used to do Blogging those days and my blog was doing quite fine for a newbie blogger.

Seeing the stats of my blogs, the company where I am working now hired me for decent pay which was great for me as a fresher.

Well, it's my 2nd run with this company. I left this company after working just for 14 days as I got a better offer. I talked with the boss and he happily let me go.

As a result, he called me back 2 weeks back and I am working here as a Senior now.

Now, let me tell you what Internship means.

Internship means the companies teach you to do work in a professional manner and as you are fresher, you are not paid or paid too little.

But FYI, you work as a full-time employee and contribute to the company little or more.

Sometimes the companies teaches you from scratch regarding their work, so they don’t opt to pay you.

My suggestion for you is to work hard during your college days and learn professional skills. Just don’t learn the programming languages for the purpose of academics, build some projects and showcase them.

I can assure you will get a full-time good paying job instead of an internship.

Interns tend to be college juniors (3rd year students) in the summer break before beginning their 4th year.

They probably have some CAD and “computer office suite” ( word processing, spreadsheet etc) ability, but little “real world office” experience.

So…

They are given tasks like reviewing the “bill of materials” produced by the CAD system and asked to verify the manufacturers have not changed their part numbers. Or maybe they are given sketches from senior engineers to detail on CAD, properly file and organize title blocks etc.

Basically, learn all the office stuff they don’t teach in engineering school.

Maybe most importantly, how to make a proper pot of coffee, how to assure the mini-fridge is stocked in the break room, how to arrive at work on time, how to act in a meeting…. The social stuff that really is best learned by observation and doing.

Good luck!

You could study the Osmosian Plain English Compiler and Integrated Development Environment, top to bottom, inside and out, from “Hello, World!” all the way down to the machine code. At the end of the summer you’ll not only know how a compiler works, but you’ll be able to separate the wheat from the chaff in a field that is currently chock-full of chaff.

Start here…

The Osmosian Order of Plain English Programmers Welcomes You

…and write me directly (gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com) if you’d like a free email tutor to guide you in your study.

To become excellent, you of course need to have the time to practice and mentorship, and for that you’ll eventaully need a job. Even if that job comes in academia, after you complete your PhD, the job is necessary. Getting a good job, especially if you want to work in software with a bachelors, which is the path I took and most people take initially, is helped a lot by an internship. Where I’m located, having an internship was necessary to find a job straight out of college, but I can’t imagine there is a place it’s not a tremendous benifit to you and your career. It becomes less important the more advanced your degree. You would likely find a job with a masters and no internship in the market I work, but you’d have more choices and more confidence entering the workplace if you’ve first had an internship.

In India alone, there are millions of students pursuing computer science engineering every year. Which means Computer Science internships can be quite competitive. Therefore, to get the best internship in the field, the idea is to stand out from other applicants and make your mark.

Here is what you can do as an undergraduate Computer Science student that will give you an edge over other candidates and help you get an internship:

Work on Side Project Independently

In addition to adding value to your resume, working on side projects can help you acquire new technical skills. It can work as a good conversation starter during the internship interview.

It also shows the dedication and portrays you as someone passionate about Computer Science who is willing to work on things outside of his/her academic responsibilities.

Grow Your Network

A good way to grow your professional network and meet professionals in the field is by going to hackathons. Hackathons attract some of the big names from the industry and help you get familiar with them.

This will help you a lot because when an internship opportunity comes by and you apply for it, chances are that the person working at the company already knew who you are and have already witnessed your skills at the hackathon event

Maintained a competitive GPA

Marks do matter. Period.

And it always works in your favour if you have a competitive GPA. Even when not, you should always try to be consistent and maintain a GPA that lies within the range that is required to be eligible for all the internship and job openings.

If there are two candidates with similar skill-sets, the one with higher GPA will always be preferred.

Apply, apply and apply some more

You cannot apply for 1 or 2 internships and expect getting shortlisted. In order to increase your chances of being called for an internship interview, you should apply to as many companies as possible. Register at a trusted internship platform and apply to all the relevant openings. Similarly, use other platforms such as LinkedIn, company pages, and references from friends and families to apply to internships.

The more you apply, the better are your chances of ending up with a great Computer Science internship.