A “good salary” in the United States depends on where you live. For example, $40,000 in Kansas might give someone the good life while $80,000 in Manhattan means you are only getting by. (Note: Those aren’t real stats; I’ll pulling it out of my arse to illustrate a point). Of course your education level and experience also factor into the equation. However, generally speaking, $50,000 per year is considered to be a decent salary if you live in the United States. $50,000 for people out of college, working full time jobs. What if I were to tell you interns at some tech companies make more than $50,000 a year?

Glassdoor.com, which describes itself as a “a free jobs and career community”, conducted a survey asking thousands of interns what their pay is (or was). Glassdoor went back as much as three years worth of data and only used the results if a company had twenty or more respondents. The results of the survey show that, on average, interns at Google make $5,678 per month, interns at Apple make $4,914 per month, interns at Microsoft make $5,936 per month, and interns at Facebook make $6,056 per month. And that isn’t even the highest average base pay; the highest goes to VMware interns at $6,536.

The following is the full list of top 20 average intern monthly pay at tech companies:

• VMware – $6,536
• Facebook – $6,056
• Microsoft – $5,936
• LinkedIn – $5,808
• Adobe – $5,757
• Google – $5,678
• Amazon – $5,366
• NVIDIA – $5,215
• Yahoo – $5,191
• Apple – $4,914
• Intel – $4,749
• Qualcomm – $4,560
• Autodesk – $4,559
• Netapp – $4,559
• Intuit – $4,427
• Dell – $4,024
• HP – $4,008
• EMC – $4,004
• IBM – $3,942
• Cisco Systems – $3,930

Of course it should be noted that the data was collected from voluntary surveys submitted by people who worked or work at the internships. And it is known that people often boast about their salaries when no one can prove otherwise. So there probably is a margin of error in the results. However, fixating on the possibility of false reporting defeats the big picture: the fact that tech jobs are highly competitive and, to get the best talent, tech companies are willing to pay big bucks. After all, imagine if interns are being paid this much then how much full time employees make.

…So, how much do you make per month? Don’t worry, you don’t really have to tell me.

[via Forbes]