[jollybean]

According to wikipedia they have only 1200 employees.

And 87 interns, that's quite a lot.

Given the level of granularity in that code, I can't imagine what they are all doing.

How do you have 87 people tweak a code-base and then just leave?

There's an incredible amount of sophistication in some of those project, surely they're not all used, but imagine the team you need just to maintain any of that. With only 1200 staffers, how many are in Development?

I think there must be a huge amount of surplus spend here. Basically, they are swimming in cash, hire the best interns, get a few nice things but mostly it's not that important. But if those marginal contributions eventually do provide a tiny bit of value the amount of leverage involved is so huge that it can make them a fortune.

[asurne]

I think at most top of line places, internships are viewed as a two way interview. Firms get to see how the intern performs over 8-12 weeks, and the intern gets to see company culture/fit for 8-12 weeks. The work the intern is doing isn't the goal of the internship.

[jollybean]

I understand that, but $45K is a huge amount of money to spend on that, and especially for so many.

I worked at a blue chip we hired a lot of interns and we put them to work, man they ran a lot of things.

That said, it was hit or miss.

[ghaff]

Well, they're also effectively spending for an extended job interview.