Full time position or internship

jjwooyoung

I just graduated, and I guess the most obvious choice would be take the full time job. But because of several reasons, I'm having a difficult time deciding...
The full time position is a QA Engineer while the internship is a Software Test Engineering internship.

The QA Engineer Pro(s):

1. Full time and better pay
2. The people seem really nice
3. Aside from doing quality assurance, I'd also be involved in some architecture and collaborating with other software engineers and designers

The QA Engineer Con(s):

1. In another city, so I'd have to move there or spend a few hours driving
2. The company focuses on manual testing right now. This is a problem because the majority of jobs (related to software testing) that I've seen, focus on automation, so I'd lack that experience. There is a "possibility" of switching to automation, which would be great, but right now it's still a possibility
3. They use Visual Basic - I'm not saying this is a bad language.. It's just the majority of the companies I've seen/applied to, they all use languages like Java, C#, etc.. So in case something doesn't work out, it'd be hard to find a new job because I might get rusty over time and not have the experience required with those languages..

Software Test Engineer Internship Con(s):

1. Paid part-time, so pay is obviously a lot less than the full-time position
2. It's another internship, so it's not absolutely guarantee that it'll lead to a full-time job. It could even be only for a few months - but I've been told it can be extended.

Software Test Engineer Internship Pro(s):

1. It's 15 min from where I live
2. It's mostly front-end testing, but I was told that if I was interested in back-end as well, they'd train me in automation testing. One of their automation engineer just left, so they're currently in need of more
3. The people seem nice. They said it's not google, but it's a lot like google there (I'm assuming the laid back environment etc)
4. They use Java, which is more widely used. So I'd get experience working on larger applications

So, can anyone provide some input for me?

networker050184

Personally I'd have a hard time passing up a full time job for a part time temporary internship, but if you have the financial freedom to take the internship it seems like it would be more inline with what you want to do.

I don't know much about the software side of the house so I can't comment on which technologies would be better career wise.

Soliton

Take the full-time position. It may not be your field of choice, but when you're fresh, you take what you can get and eventually move on to something better. Many people in IT first start in help desk or something annoying like that. The intership is nice but you have to decide if you want a better money, or better experience.

jjwooyoung

Yeah my initial choice was the full time position.

But I did some forward thinking, like what if I lose that job in the future, then it'd be difficult to find another job. Because I'd have experience working with larger applications using a language that's not commonly used, whereas about 98% of the jobs that I've seen (software engineers, test engineers, qa, automation, etc) all use the commonly used languages like Java, C#, etc

That is probably the main reason why I'm having such a hard time deciding..