> top firms pay interns around $10,000 a month

Source ?

Intern at a top tech company like Google or FB, and (I’ve heard as of this year) you’re looking at like $8-$9k/month plus housing and even your laundry taken care of for you (specifically FB here).

Meanwhile, the top HFs and prop traders will pay the same or better (often higher pay, no housing). Jane Street is a big one (esp. if you go to Brown), Citadel isn’t even top-notch and will offer that, and then obviously D.E. Shaw, Renaissance, Two Sigma, and so forth.

Two Sigma and Jane Street are known to pay their dev interns $10.4k monthly ($125k annualized). You can find this in #talkpay on Twitter and on Quora, and I can corroborate one of them. I don't think those are the highest, either.

Allegedly they've increased it to 12.5k this year

The # sounds about right, I work at a big well known company.

Check Glassdoor if you doubt it.

Numbers probably aren't including housing, which in Silicon Valley puts a ~$7500 monthly salary roughly up to $10k.