Imagine making more money than your parents — before even finishing high school. For some tech-savvy kids that dream of financial independence is more than just some fevered reverie: it’s a reality.
According to Bloomberg, tech companies like Facebook and Twitter are scooping up teens for internships that sometimes pay more than your average parent’s salary. Twitter interns earn $6,791 per month — which is the equivalent of a yearly salary amounting to just over $81,000. Facebook shells out $6,213 per month ($74,556 per year) to college-going students and the top-earning interns, from software company Palantir Technologies, rake in $7,012 per month ($84,144 per year).
For comparison’s sake, a software engineer at Twitter makes around $121,556 per year, while a Facebook software engineer makes around $118,259, according to Glassdoor.
Granted, interns don’t usually work on a yearly basis, but given the fact that the median U.S. household yearly income between 2008 and 2012 was around $53,000, according to the United States Census Bureau, the amount of cash earned by those code-slinging teens is pretty striking. Also, there are tons of interns out there who will never see a dollar for their work, so it’s safe to say this crop of young people’s situation is special.
The teens chosen are, then, appropriately special as well — not simply copy-makers and coffee-slingers. For example, 17-year-old Michael Sayman, Bloomberg reports, was recruited by Facebook after creating a top-selling mobile word game. “He was the one paying for everything in the house, at 13, 14, 15,” his mother, Cristina Sayman, said.
Your summer job is probably looking a little bit shabby now, huh?
Image courtesy of Grand Velas Riviera Maya
Brenna Ehrlich
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