I'm applying for internships these days. What's your thought on Startups? Is it better if I want to learn new technologies?

It you want to learn new technologies, learn them.

Don't make it dependent on the company.

I'm not a fan of startups as most startups are illegal slavery

I am working for an open source startup. Super fun. I was able to bring in libraries I want to try, but i did a bunch of unpaid work to get everything working. Not a job you want to work long term though

In my opinion the best place to do an internship is a company just big enough to have a fulltime HR person. That's usually around 20-50 people.
That way you're getting the right amount of support and freedom to learn.

I'm in charge of interns at a startup. My advice is, if you're willing to commit time and effort to deal with small help and chaos for no payment, then it's a place where you can learn about and work in the entire system.

Thanks guys! I'm new to this community... This is great

A more detailed response to help out:

There are many learning styles, and many motivational styles. However, I think that these two claims apply to most of the population:

- If you read / watch / hear / learn something, you're going to forget it in 2 days UNLESS:

--- It's hella interesting / relevant to you

--- You apply / practice the knowledge

I don't think reading a documentation of a library or framework will be particularly interesting, so the only real way of retaining that knowledge is by practicing it.

Its hard finding the motivation to do a solo-project, especially when you're an inexperienced dev. There's millions of devs and someone already thought of your idea, and they did a much better job at it, and you're likely gonna use that stuff instead. When you become more skillful, you might contribute to open source.

Part 2:

So if you wanna learn new technologies and you're a junior, the easiest way is through a job or internship. You're right: big companies will probably make you focus on one piece of the code whereas startups will give you more diverse tasks. They won't sit down to teach you everything, but they'll provide an opportunity for you to practice the knowledge so you retain it - plus give you a certification that you did so.

If you do get an internship at a startup, I recommend this:
Read and unerstand their entire code base and dig deep into the frameworks and libary that they're using in your own time. Suggest improvements, ask questions, ask for more diverse tasks. Big companies might turn you down for bringing chaos ("We already assigned someone else", "That's part of another team"), but startups don't care that much about organization and instead will welcome any help that you can give. They'll let you help in whatever way you can, but you won't be rewarded monetarily for it.