Virtual Internship, Real Experience: Amid Pandemic, Interns Dive into NVIDIA’s Online Workplace

NVIDIA’s always been known for an internship program like no other.
Now, with internships across the world on hold amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, we’re continuing to welcome interns in a way few other companies can.
“Of everyone in my group of friends, I’m the only one who still has an internship this summer; all of theirs fell through” says John Mulliken (pictured, above), an undergraduate at Loyola Marymount, in Los Angeles, who will join NVIDIA’s consumer marketing team this summer.
Teams across the company — from research to software development to marketing — have already begun working with the first of the more than 500 university students and summer hires arriving at NVIDIA over the summer.
They’ll participate in a virtual program that’s been put together in just a few short weeks at a time when companies around the world are canceling and postponing internships.
A survey of students by College Reaction showed half of those responding reporting their summer internships had been disrupted — and half of those had already been canceled.
Future Leaders
But Jennifer Armor, who leads NVIDIA’s internship program as part of the company’s college recruiting team, sees no other choice but to move forward.
“These are our future leaders,” she said. “We need to do what we can as a company that’s doing well, and part of that is continuing to invest in our people.”
NVIDIA isn’t alone. Certain other Silicon Valley companies — Apple, Facebook, Google — are moving forward with internships even as they’ve closed their offices and asked employees to work from home.
An Elite Group
Pablo Cargnelutti is among the many NVIDIA interns who are pursuing advanced degrees. NVIDIA’s internships have become some of the most widely sought out in the technology industry — with NVIDIA’s college recruiting team making contact with more than 10,000 candidates over the past year.
Many interns, like Pablo Cargnelutti, an incoming intern who is pursuing a master’s degree from the University of Central Florida in computer science, already have years of work experience.
More than a third of NVIDIA’s interns are pursuing Ph.D.s, and another third pursuing master’s degrees from universities around the globe. Like them, Cargnelutti sees internships as “crucial” for building a career.
And NVIDIA’s internship program has a strong word of mouth reputation in the AI and machine learning field. It was a close friend of his, Cargnelutti says, an NVIDIA intern last year, who urged him to apply.
Real Work, Real World Experience
NVIDIA’s interns are embedded into teams across the company, even leading projects that are presented at our annual GPU Technology Conference .
But while NVIDIA relies on interns, our interns also rely on us. Many count on the pay from their internship to help fund college, Armor says.
Some even rely...