What is an injected defect in Software Engineering?

What are the pros and cons of choosing Dropbox or Facebook for a summer internship in software engineering or data analytics?

• Hello World, I'm a sophomore from a top-5 CS program and have been lucky to get offers from Facebook and Dropbox for internships this summer. I've done research the last few summers, but I've never worked in industry and have no real software engineering experience beyond class projects. Long term I'm more interested in AI / data analytics than in software development. What do you think would be more valuable as a first internship experience-- a Software Engineering project or a Data Analytics project? Pros SWE project: - learn how to write production-quality code, which is something I haven't learned in school - gain experience working with large codebases / large systems - try something I have never done before, maybe I'd really like it Cons: - Probably less interested in software dev long-term - Getting software dev experience is easy / many internships would offer this Pros AI-related project: - Long-term interest in this area (at least I think so... I'm AI track and like it so far. There are lots of amazing coders and I don't think I'd be a significantly-above-average software engineer, but I like to think I could have an impact in the AI world, given a decade or two of work/study ;) - Would gain more relevant experience for future AI-related projects / internships / research - Only a few companies have really good data teams - I'd get to see what doing AI in the real world is really like, so I could make sure it's something I actually want to do Cons: - As a sophomore, I'd be significantly less qualified / able to contribute to projects than most people working on these projects (many Masters / PhD students) Basically if I were doing a Software Engineering project, I'd go for Dropbox... people I know who interned there said it's an awesome place to work, it's smaller than Facebook with high impact intern projects, intern pay is extremely good (I don't need the extra cash, but presumably this means they'll get a great group of interns to work with), ... not that Facebook isn't a great place to be a software engineer :) However, if doing an AI project would be a more valuable first-internship experience given my interest in the subject, then Facebook is the place to go to. Of course, generally there's no guarantee that an intern would get a data-related project.... but if I'm 100% sure that I'd take a Facebook data analytics project over the Dropbox offer, I have a contact who would try to set me up with a team before I commit. Also, since Dropbox is offering waay more ca$h than Facebook, this would be extra leverage to say, "try to get me a data project pretty please, or I'll be really tempted to take the dropbox offer." Your thoughts, haikus, and general life advice are all appreciated :)

• Answer:

  I interned at Dropbox in 2013, and Facebook (Seattle) in 2012. First, congratulations on receiving these offers, either company will be an amazing experience! It sounds like you're thinking along the right lines. I'd like to add a few things: I really enjoyed both of my internship experiences, but I liked Dropbox much more. Since Dropbox is a much smaller company, it is a fundamentally different environment than Facebook. I learned a lot at both companies, but because Dropbox was less established and smaller, I learned much more at Dropbox then at Facebook. It is also important to remember that since Dropbox is smaller, there are fewer PhD's, so you'll have more opportunities to work on cool stuff. This translates to more opportunities to learn. Obviously, there are less advanced things going on in AI at Dropbox than at Facebook, but at this point in your career, I don't think that really matters. Writing production quality code is a skill that you'll likely benefit greatly from. You say that you can learn software developer experience at "many internships", but I think Dropbox's engineering team is much more skilled than most companies, so keep that in mind. I did, however, like Facebook's culture much more than Dropbox's. (I don't know how important this is to you). Facebook's culture seemed much more engineering focused, and I really appreciated this. Since you're just a sophomore, I'd urge you to not lock yourself into AI at this point. It's possible that your interests will change in the future!  Lastly, I'd urge you to ignore the pay difference. The experience you'll get at these companies is worth much more than whatever you'll be making, so don't let this sway you! Both pay very well!