This CEO suggests freshers pay Rs 40 lakh to intern with 'the right people'. He interned with Steve Jobs

Chet Kapoor, the California-based chairman and CEO of generative AI company DataStax, was once an intern under former Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Now, while enjoying an illustrious career in Silicon Valley, the Kolkata-born tech leader has some advice for young graduates fresh out of college: bag an internship with the right people even if you have to pay $50,000 (about Rs 40 lakh) for it. Kapoor insisted that this early investment would pay off further down the line and help freshers build a good foundation for their careers.

“Here’s what I tell everybody that’s coming out of college, and wants to look for a gig,” he told CNBC Make It. “Find a set of people that you think you can learn from. Don’t worry about the titles. Don’t worry about what company they work for. Convince them that they need you and then pay them $50,000 a year so that you can work for them. It will be the best $50,000 you’ve ever spent in your life. Certainly better than the college education you just funded.”

He also explained that the first few years of one’s career “dictates your future” and that most young people are too distracted by the brand name they work for. “People get stuck on the brand you worked for. ‘Oh I worked at Google’ or ‘I worked at AWS.’ The point is: who did you work with and what did you learn from them? Because that will actually set you on the right course,” Kapoor told the publication.

Speaking about his time as an intern at Steve Jobs’s NeXT, the tech leader said: “I was one step below the person that opened doors but that didn’t matter because I worked 20 yards away from him every day.”