I’m looking to do an internship with AMD in Summer 2024 (yes I can work multiple internships back to back). I would like to know from former interns about how difficult/competitive getting an internship with them is.
Here is me :
age: 21, not in college, currently studying C, C++, and C#, intend on studying Python, Java, and Linux, will have certificates with large companies (like Microsoft and AWS). All of this (including proficiency with the languages mentioned above) by March 2024.
What are my chances?
Hi, I’m a former intern and current employee at AMD.
I interned remotely from the Austin location. My interview to get in was fairly straightforward, though I did meet a recruiter first at a career fair at my university.
I programmed with C++, Verilog, and Python to generate stimulus for test chips (chips that weren’t for production but rather to test the capabilities of the silicon).
Your list of skills you intend to learn just seem like a laundry list of various things you’ve vaguely heard of without considering their uses and strengths, or how AMD might use them internally (if at all).
Especially since you are not going to college, recruiters will usually prioritize college students first. You need to set yourself apart. It’s not the amount of different things you “know”, but the quality of the knowledge. Focus on a few specific things you’re interested in, and make projects related to that.
I can only really speak on the hardware side of our products. It’s a lot of low level or high performance code, so you will probably want to get really good at C or C++ and get yourself an embedded dev kit. That way you can practice with real world low level programming and have something visual to show for it. Maybe try dabbling in game dev or osdev.
We also do the chip designs in Verilog. This is a hard skill to learn outside of college, but you can try learning it. Maybe start with the Nand2Tetris tutorial. Get an FPGA dev kit for this.
Internally we use a lot of Python and Ruby for scripting and automation, it would be beneficial to at least be comfortable with one language like this.
Most of the hardware teams develop on Linux, whereas most of the software teams I know develop on Windows. This is a skill you can probably just learn on the job. Just get good with a terminal, doesn’t matter the OS. The skills will transfer over.
I don’t think certificates really matter, and I haven’t heard of C# being used here but I can’t be sure of that. I know the yield analysis team uses Java though that’s the only one I’ve heard of that does.
Hopefully this helps. Best of luck to your journey. Remember, quality over quantity.