
Growth of Unpaid Internships May Be Illegal, Officials Say - tokenadult
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html
======
grellas
Federal law for unpaid interns in for-profit organizations requires that six
criteria be met: (1) the work or training should function as an extension of
the intern's educational training; (2) it should be provided primarily for the
benefit of the intern; (3) it does not replace the work performed by regular
employees; (4) it does not provide the employer with any immediate benefit;
(5) it does not entitle the intern to employment at the end of the internship;
and (6) there is no expectation by employer or intern that compensation will
be paid for the work or training. To have a bona fide intern, _all six_ of the
criteria need to be met.

State law may also impose additional requirements, as for example in
California where the training must be part of an official educational
curriculum at an accredited school - California imposes other restrictions as
well.

All in all, the rules may be well-meaning but they effectively kill
opportunities for students to get training in many situations where the
employer would otherwise normally be glad to make the opportunities available.
In practical terms, it means that an employer wanting to open opportunities to
students needs to pay minimum wage at least. Of course, the idea of the
regulations is to prevent employers from circumventing minimum wage rules by
dressing up what is really a job as an "internship" and in this sense they
serve a protective function.

Mark Cuban once did a piece entitled "Want an Unpaid Internship So You Can Get
Valuable Experience - Screw You" ([http://blogmaverick.com/2009/09/05/want-an-
unpaid-internship...](http://blogmaverick.com/2009/09/05/want-an-unpaid-
internship-so-you-can-get-valuable-experience-screw-you/)) in which he
recounted his frustrations in dealing with the federal regulations, and this
in turn elicited an interesting and lively thread here at HN
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=806563>).

~~~
_delirium
In tech at least, I've always found the "valuable experience" argument to be a
bit of a scam. There are plenty of companies that will be happy to pay you a
_good_ stipend (not even anywhere near minimum wage) for an internship. If you
want something less job-like, you can work informally with lots of smaller
companies, visiting their office and doing odd jobs, essentially as an unpaid
freelancer (e.g. find something crappy about their site and offer to fix it).
But if they want someone coming in to the office 40 hrs/wk, with a boss and
deliverables, they should be prepared to pay them in something more than vague
promises of "valuable experience".

~~~
brettnak
I, too, believe that most technology internships are a total scam. The usual
phrase from a small company is that they want a 'rock star' ( insert your
synonym here ) intern. I'm fairly certain that any 'rock star' intern can
replace many hours of labor spent by an FTE.

To put it in some perspective, and this is all personal point of view, I
believe that a company in three to four months of a full time internship
should be able to teach a computer science student ruby, rails to a working
knowledge extent, the why's and how's of why rails is the way it is (the ups
and downs of MVC, convention over configuration, etc), limited database
knowledge, and some basic UI/UX considerations.

Deeper knowledge into any of those (especially databases with CAP and the
whole sql/nosql argument) would be valuable if there were any time remaining.
And, obviously, the previous paragraph can be replaced by the equivalents in
your specific niche.

EDIT: spelling

------
ladyada
There's a really good ('selfish') reason to properly put interns on payroll. A
tech company that has an unpaid intern working on something 'useful' - like
writing code - is in a terrible position. If the intern is ignorant, sure no
problem. But what if that code makes it into a shipping product, or some other
asset that's sold? And suddenly that person feels like they were screwed over
because they were not paid? Or what if they get hurt at work, or are harassed
and want to bring suit? Its already a risk with proper employees on payroll
but at least you have insurances for that. Or perals - they file for
unemployment and put your company down as their last employer with $0 pay.
(Have any of you had to -really- deal with your local DoL? You'll -wish- it
was the IRS!) This is a very bad position to be in. Isn't $10/hr worth it to
avoid these problems?

------
luminary
I was in the job market for the past few months and stumbled across postings
where even certain well-known tech companies (startups can be considered as
exceptions) were looking for unpaid interns. You could see smell their BS from
a mile.

------
codexon
This is an interesting turn of events.

Just 2 weeks ago when this story popped up on HN recommending unpaid interns
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1202168>) I thought it may have been
legal, but now we know where the lawmakers stand.

~~~
kjhnbnfghj
When I was a student the first year of a UK law graduate's work in a practice
(articles) was unpaid. This was necessary to keep the wrong sort of people out
of the legal profession after they started letting anybody go to university in
the 60s and 70s.

~~~
_delirium
Yeah, this allegedly happens in some areas in the U.S. too, especially
business and law--- unpaid internships as a way to filter out the poor, who
can't afford to work unpaid internships.

~~~
garply
It's not just business and law in the US. When I was a CS student in college
(not very long ago), during the summer students had to make a choice to go do
low-paying internships for brand-name companies like MS, Google, and Amazon or
take real summer jobs that would pay better but not look as good on a resume.
Poorer students with more debt would take the short-term better paying jobs
while students whose parents were footing the bills would take the internships
that would give them better future prospects.

~~~
joshhart
What are you talking about? I interned at Microsoft for a summer 3 years ago
and was compensated almost 20k... Low paying my ass.

~~~
_delirium
Yeah, in my experience it's always been the opposite: internships from
companies like Google, Microsoft, and Intel are about the highest-paying
summer jobs (~$30-50/hr) any college student is likely to find, versus
"normal" summer jobs that pay more like ~$15/hr at best. When I decided to do
a $5k-stipend research internship instead of working somewhere like that, it
was turning down a good deal of money.

~~~
Locke1689
My upcoming Microsoft internship is more than $5k a month. My summer NSF REU
last year was $3k _total_.

------
kjhnbnfghj
No problem, register the internships as training courses and charge the little
idiots/candidates for working there

~~~
fexl
In our town someone made a business of that, starting a technical and
vocational training school many years ago. They're doing quite well trading
knowledge and experience for money.

------
axiom
Ugh. What possible good could it do to outlaw unpaid internships? Do people
actually think the result will be companies deciding to pay interns rather
than just not offering internships?

Just put yourself in the position of a manager making the hiring decision -
suddenly you get word that you may be sued for offering unpaid positions, is
your reaction going to be "wow, we'd better pay them" or "ok, no more
interns."

Who does this kind of crap benefit, other than self-serving politicians
masquerading as defenders of the public good?

Something about laws explicitly framed to protect people from themselves (i.e.
students from accepting unpaid positions) drive me insane.

~~~
argv_empty
_rather than just not offering internships?_

And then, after a little while, it becomes impractical to insist on prior
experience for entry-level positions.

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pw0ncakes
The problem is that large, macroscopically psychopathic corporations
(including universities) have complete control over access to most of the jobs
out there, and so they can dangle "experience" (access) as a carrot that can
be offered as a sole reward to the desperate masses.

------
vv
Doesn't "Growth of Unpaid Internships May Be Illegal" mean it's legal not to
pay interns, but illegal for them to grow up?

~~~
jackowayed
If anything, I'd say it technically means "it was legal when they were rarer,
but now that they're becoming more common, it's illegal" as it's the growth of
unpaid intern _ships_ , not of unpaid _interns_ , that may be illegal.

They were trying to fit the fact that unpaid internships may be illegal and
the fact that they've been growing all into one title, and it didn't work so
well.

But splitting hairs a) is kind of annoying, and b) doesn't add anything to the
conversation about the content of the piece.

