Internship Problems

I have this internship problem and would love to get some input about what to do.

I'm a computer science grad student and want to find a job as either a desk quant or software developer for a prop trading desk after graduation. But competition for internships is intense and the bar is set very high, so I've had to take an upaid internship at a tiny investment banking firm (literally just the 2 principals) this semester to try to gain real-world programming experience. The internship ends on May 30th.

The issue is that my boss--one of the principals of the firm--is an extremely nasty, argumentative, petty, angry person who likes to take his anger out on interns. I know this is nothing new, but my situation is a little different from other interns. I'm a web developer with 10 years' experience trying to break into finance. Today he screamed at me because the designer he is paying did a crap job on the designs and I didn't catch the blurriness in some of the images. I explained calmly that there were hundreds of images and this is the designer's job, but he doesn't listen to reason. To top it off I haven't done any real programming work like he said I would at the beginning. He doesn't realize I'm not a college student desperate to work in IB. I could be doing this work for $90K a year and not for free. I'm only here to gain hardcore programming experience in the financial industry (which I'm not getting).

My question is: What would you do? Does having industry experience matter that much?

2 Comments
 

Yes, it does help. That said, I would push him to give you meaningful experience work. When it comes time to interview for other jobs, pitch it like you worked mostly on the relevant stuff. It's about how you sell yourself and having 10 years programming experience, you should be able to manage.

 

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