from Hacker News

Ask HN: Should I take an internship or learn skills and build?

by yamirghofran on 5/25/25, 8:06 PM with 2 comments

I'm finishing my second year of my bachelor's of CS and AI in Madrid. Should I use it for internship or focus on improving my CS skills (proper coding, devops, AI/ML) and building projects?

I feel like I would benefit much more, in the long term and probably also short term, by improving and building but am scared of not having experiences on my cv.

  • by seg_fault on 5/25/25, 8:27 PM

    What kept me as an intern during education is the feedback and the nerdy chitchat. Developing as an intern in a team, where you have your own project and the possibility to chat with experienced people from various fields can be a huge impact. I had no deadlines, so if someone proposed a better way to do something I tried it and I learnt a lot from that.

    Besides, talking to other people face to face about your project always gave me a huge motivation boost.

  • by curious_curios on 5/25/25, 8:23 PM

    Do note there’s nothing stopping you from doing both.