alt Hacker News> Managers are literally asking whether people need AI credits or interns over summer
That's a bit like asking them to choose between AI credits and a visit to the dentist. No engineer has ever hosted an intern in the hopes of improving their project's velocity; people host interns because "it's the right thing to do" for the industry, because it's psychologically satisfying for many people, and to build cred and/or experience as a mentor. And companies nudge their employees to host interns to hopefully influence potentially-valuable-in-the-future smart youngsters to come back as a year or two later as full time employees.
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Where I work, interns are hired to work on projects that a senior person could do and failure won't wreck us. And your last sentence is where we see the real payoff: the bright ones come back and become valued team members.
> And companies nudge their employees to host interns to hopefully influence potentially-valuable-in-the-future smart youngsters to come back as a year or two later as full time employees.
And there's less incentive to do this when you anticipate needing fewer employees.
In my experience, the reason why my teams have hired interns is to get a solid, multi-week preview of their potential quality and abilities. During the hiring phase for juniors, the signal-to-noise ratio isn't very good, but a good intern can get a lot done in one summer. You can easily pick the best one or two interns to hire when they graduate. Then you dramatically reduced junior engineer hiring risk. Also, if they suck or are disappointing, then the loss is minimal -- don't hire them. If they are really awful, then just throw shit work at them and don't waste time trying to mentor them. Really, it goes both ways.