Interns at these companies can take home six figures

Interns at some of the world's largest technology and financial companies can earn more than $100,000 a year, according to a Glassdoor study released this week. 

The career research firm ranked the top 25 companies according to where interns earn the most, using wage data that they self-reported between February 2021 and February 2022. Topping the list is online gaming platform Roblox, where median monthly pay for interns is a hefty $9,667 before taxes — about $116,000 a year.

At both Uber and Capital One, median pay for trainees is $8,333 a month, while at No. 3 Salesforce interns said they earn $8,167. Rounding out the top 10 were Amazon, Meta (formerly Facebook), Nvidia, LinkedIn, HubSpot and Expedia. 

By comparison, the median salary for an Uber employee is $99,680 and $83,628 at Capital One, according to company data. Employees at Salesforce earn $154,800.

One reason these interns earn such high wages is because they're working in specialized tech areas like software engineering, user experience design and machine learning, Glassdoor economist Lauren Thomas, who compiled the data, said in an analysis. 

Students are mostly interning remotely, although many would rather be in the office, Glassdoor found.

"Although many workers prefer remote work, interns feel differently," Thomas said in a statement. "Internships are often packed full of engaging activities designed to immerse interns in a real-world work environment and attract them back to the company post-graduation. But with the onset of COVID-19, many of these in-person events were suddenly no longer possible."

Many employers halted their internship programs when the coronavirus pandemic began, depriving thousands of college students of the chance to jump-start their careers. But companies are now resuming internship, according too Glassdoor.

About half of those students who were lucky enough to snag internships during the pandemic had to complete them remotely, according to a 2021 workforce study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Remote interns reported lower satisfaction in part because managers were less likely to assign them "high-skill supervised work," according to the study. 

Tech isn't the only industry offering plum internships. The study also found that interns working in banking, marketing, product management, and diversity and inclusion also tend to get higher pay.