A furnished apartment in NYC probably adds a lot to that salary. The unfortunate part is that the cost of that benefit is also considered income and the taxes for it would come out of the $6K. I interned at Microsoft years ago with similar benefits (good salary, furnished apartment, prepaid rental car, relocation costs & 2 gym memberships) but they paid extra cash to cover the taxes on the non-monetary benefits.
There's no way I would've turned down the Fog Creek opportunity back then, though, it sounds like a very well planned program at an awesome company. There were many internships in the Philadelphia area, for developers, that paid half that salary with no perks on top of the pay at all. On the other hand, the interview process at nearly all the companies consisted of sending a resume and sitting down for 30 minutes to talk about past experience. I interviewed at 4-6 companies a year to get my 3 internships, with a ~75% acceptance rate (offered the internship), and not one involved multiple interviews or a single code screen. The west coast interview process just doesn't exist out here.
I had the exact same experience with interviews in the Midwest. Nothing rigorous at all, very high offer rate, and about half the compensation. I made a more in-depth comment, but just wanted to note that.
There's no way I would've turned down the Fog Creek opportunity back then, though, it sounds like a very well planned program at an awesome company. There were many internships in the Philadelphia area, for developers, that paid half that salary with no perks on top of the pay at all. On the other hand, the interview process at nearly all the companies consisted of sending a resume and sitting down for 30 minutes to talk about past experience. I interviewed at 4-6 companies a year to get my 3 internships, with a ~75% acceptance rate (offered the internship), and not one involved multiple interviews or a single code screen. The west coast interview process just doesn't exist out here.