

Unpaid internships in San Francisco - CosmicShadow
http://fucknointernships.tumblr.com/

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iuguy
We decided to test an internship programme at Mandalorian and we found someone
that we really wanted to take on as an intern, but I felt that there were two
things we needed to do:

1\. Pay them a graduate starting salary for the duration of their internship.

2\. Make sure we had the time to invest in helping them grow before going back
to university rather than just giving them shit jobs or using them as cheap
labour.

Unfortunately number 2 was derailed by the fact that we took a full time
graduate on and felt that this combined with illness meant we couldn't
guarantee the mentoring that we wanted to provide. We felt that we couldn't do
right by the intern we wanted, so we postponed the programme.

We set up a hack week for next month in order for our geographically disparate
team to get some time together and some proper training. In addition to
bringing the team we invited both the intern we had to cancel and the student
we wanted to intern with us for next year (as we found him this year but he
was a year early). Our plan is to spend a week breaking stuff and training
each other up on core pentesting areas. The students get to come along and
join in on that as well as take part in ad-hoc hacking sessions. Both students
took us up on it and we're covering their costs. Our not quite intern will
probably be offered a job around graduation time, the other lad will almost
certainly be our paid intern next year.

There's a right way and a wrong way to do internships. If you can't do it the
right way I believe you shouldn't do it at all.

By all means offer them opportunities if they're genuine, but don't dress them
up as internships. Just be straight with them. The students attending hack
week will go back to Abertay Uni to do their ethical hacking degree projects
having spent the week living with a pentest team and hacking all the things,
something none of the other students will have done. While they haven't been
paid they won't pay a penny for the week. I will reluctantly let them chip in
for beer if they insist, but everything else is on us. It just wouldn't be
right any other way.

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mdip
I write software. The work I do is difficult for "most people" (outside of
this community, perhaps). If you're any good at it you have any number of well
paid opportunities. If you're a recent graduate who's very green and looking
for experience, you'll _still_ find any number of paid opportunities.

At the previous company I worked for, I had managed quite a few _paid_
interns. I love managing, but I've always turned down serious management
positions out of fear that I'd fall behind from a technical standpoint. I have
never turned down an opportunity to manage an intern and my company took the
relationship seriously. Interns negotiated salary just like any other
employee, however, they were treated as a short-term contract so as a manager
I was not able to see salary specifics. Despite that, I've been confided in
and they were doing quite. Minimum wage was nowhere to be found.

Purely for CS grads looking to land a career in software development (and I'm
not in The Valley where things are arguably quite different): Don't take an
unpaid internship. If the place is incredible and you _really, really_ want to
work there, ask yourself why they're not willing to pay you. My former company
hired some of the greenest interns* from colleges you've likely never heard
of. They were paid and they were all very good after a couple of months of
apprenticeship. They also never worked a minute over 40 hours (by design, they
were paid hourly as my former company had a fear of overtime).

I haven't had this opportunity at my current employer, but if offered a "free
intern" to manage, I'd turn that option down. Anyone willing to take a job
where I work (an aside: good job, good company, but not the sort of thing that
a recent grad would consider exciting enough to skip the paycheck) is probably
going to cost _me_ more than just doing the "intern work" myself.

* I don't mean this condescendingly. We all start somewhere. I've have the privilege of managing incredibly intelligent people being an "intern manager" and _every_ experience, thus far, has been rewarding for both of us. I keep in touch with them (some are likely reading this) and they all, currently, have well paying jobs as professional developers.

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jamesjguthrie
They're illegal in the UK now unless performed as part of an official
college/university placement.

As a small business owner I'm not yet in the position to employ others yet I
have work that could provide decent training/work experience for somebody. I
feel like an internship programme at my company would be mutually beneficial
for us and the intern. Alas, for now, I'll be working alone.

Edit: This country has almost NO skilled workforce. I could help out if they
would only let me.

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phamilton
While unpaid internships are sad, I would be really interested in seeing how
many of these positions would not exist otherwise. I'm sure some of them
exploit interns to save a few bucks, but I can guarantee there are other
situations where the company would just go without for the summer if they
couldn't do unpaid internships.

An unpaid internship is better than doing nothing. It might even be better
than working at McDonalds.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
People keep throwing McDonald's around as if it's some kind of horrible, dead-
end place to work. The truth is that McDonald's will not only pay you, but
will teach you a ton about customer service, food safety, work ethic, and team
building. Does it really make sense to work for free getting coffee for devs
and scheduling conferences when you could be making money and gaining
experience by working on your own side project? Hell, work part time at Mickey
D's and you're _still_ better off.

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kmfrk
ProPublica is doing a Kickstarter now specifically to do a report on the
intern economy:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/propublica/investigating...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/propublica/investigating-
the-intern-economy).

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druska
To be fair, a lot of these companies may not have the funding to hire paid
employees. It is also often more of a burden on the technical manager to
manage the interns in the first place. It really is good experience for the
intern, and if they actually had experience in the first place then they
likely won't be applying to unpaid internships.

~~~
vkou
Unpaid internships are a gross circumvention of minimum wage laws.

Either the interns are there to learn (In which case, they should not be
working on anything that provides the employer with value) - or they are
employees. If your business can't afford to pay its employees, you should
probably not be in business.

~~~
jdreaver
Why is circumventing minimum wage laws a bad thing? If you don't have the
skills to be paid $9/hr (or whatever it is nowadays), then unpaid internships
are awesome, because they help you get there.

How about this idea: let people offer unpaid internships, and let potential
employees _willingly decide for themselves,_ based on their _own circumstances
and free will,_ whether or not to take them. I don't see any harm in two
human's voluntary reaching an internship agreement if they both benefit from
it.

~~~
jiggy2011
Because those who might benefit most from unpaid internships are often those
from disadvantaged groups and the lower classes seeking social mobility.

But doing an unpaid internship necessarily demands an external source of money
to cover living expenses. So there are many people who would in theory be
happy to do an unpaid internship but are unable to do so practically.

~~~
jdreaver
> So there are many people who would in theory be happy to do an unpaid
> internship but are unable to do so practically.

Indeed. However, there are yet others who would benefit and _can_ do so
practically. The fact that they exist and positions get filled means people
are getting experience and making ends meet. By forcing the minimum wage on
these internships, they don't reappear with a higher wage, most of them simply
disappear. The opportunity is totally lost.

~~~
jiggy2011
Assuming that the demand for _real_ jobs in the sectors that are hiring
interns remains constant without the unpaid internships then this might in
fact be a good thing.

An opportunity that is only realistically available to those from more
affluent backgrounds (who already have a bunch more advantages) actually
translates into a disadvantage for those who are unable to take them, so it is
somewhat a zero sum game.

Especially if they become a defacto requirement for the best jobs in some
sectors.

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timack
Coming from a country with minimum wage laws I don't understand how you
survive when doing an unpaid internship. Do you just have to live at home and
sponge off your parents while you are interning? Or do you just have to get
deeper into debt while you are interning? How long does it take before you
start getting paid?

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yogo
I don't support these _internships_ but "There's a sucker born every minute."

Edit: I think this might have come off wrong: I was saying that's the mindset
of these employers. They put these jobs/internships out there because they
know someone will take the bait. I am don't condone this behavior.

------
aresant
There's been a lot of debate over the past several years as to whether or not
unpaid internships are even legal.

The clearest outline is from the FSLA, and the criteria is outlined below:

"If all of the factors [below] are met, then the worker is a “trainee”, an
employment relationship does not exist under the FLSA, and the FLSA’s minimum
wage and overtime provisions do not apply to the worker:

1\. The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities
of the employer, is similar to what would be given in a vocational school or
academic educational instruction; 2\. The training is for the benefit of the
trainees; 3\. The trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under
their close observation; 4\. The employer that provides the training derives
no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees, and on occasion
the employer’s operations may actually be impeded; 5\. The trainees are not
necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the training period; and
6\. The employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not
entitled to wages for the time spent in training. "

EG if an internship meets those criteria, you don't need to be paid.

(1)
[http://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/TEGL/TEGL12-09acc.pd...](http://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/TEGL/TEGL12-09acc.pdf)

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cuttooth
If you are making someone a profit in any context you deserve a paycheck,
simply put.

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yoster
Unpaid internships are bullshit. If they want you to work a 40 hour workweek,
then they need to fucking pay minimum wage at a minimum.

~~~
shardling
They're also generally quite illegal for exactly that reason.

There's a list of requirements you need to meet to not pay an intern, and it's
actually pretty stringent. The problem is most interns feel they're not in a
position to actually do anything about this. :(

Most could probably sue for back wages if they didn't fear reprisal.

NYTimes did an article on this a bit ago:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html?pag...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html?pagewanted=all)

On a similar note I've seen the same thing with servers: employers will pay
below minimum wage even for hours that tips don't make up the difference, or
dock pay for customers that run out. Both of those are against the law (at
least in my state) but employees fear that they'll be fired if they speak up.
(The flip side is that they generally don't report cash tips on their taxes.)

