
Ask HN: Unpaid internship followed by unpaid work with equity. I'm a student - _t1mq
preface:<p>- I still have 1 year to go in my CS degree from a Top 5 university in Canada that is not Waterloo or Toronto.<p>- Canadian citizen<p>- Living in Canada in a big city<p>current situation:<p>- The only opportunities I got from any place for the summer are unpaid ones in start-ups that have no founding. 3 weeks of &#x27;seeing how things work out&#x27; time and then no payment &#x27;until they get funding&#x27; but an offer of ~1% equity. I got three offers like these and went with one of them.<p>- Let&#x27;s not kid ourselves here, my GPA is super low, going from 3.5x to an atrocious GPA after a break up.<p>- I am no rock star developer but I am diligent in what I do. And frankly, I can code at least a little, had OK grades before messing up my life, and I answered the simple interview questions that they gave me.<p>my ideas (options):<p>- Suck it up for 3 weeks, learn tons and be 100% honest that I won&#x27;t be staying, even as a part-time person because it makes not much sense to do so.<p>- Suck it up for this summer, improve my code, make personal projects and actually show that I could be hired by a bigger corporation.<p>- Still be honest and stay even after the 3 week trial, if they let me<p>more details:<p>-I have lived very comfortably for around ~8k per year for the past two years, including rent, as a student.<p>-I live at home now. I have no student debt, and 20k in the bank from inheritance.<p>therefore:<p>Minimum wage is fine, but I didn&#x27;t interview with any big company or anything because I really feel inadequately bad compared to other developers out there. I would also not mind ending up cleaning or anything like that, but I just really like coding and stuff.<p>bottom line:<p>what&#x27;s your advice for someone in my position?
======
JoshTriplett
You're being massively exploited. You'd be better off spending your time
working on some visible Open Source project that you can later hold up as an
example of your work, which will have a far higher expected value than equity
in a startup that's not even bothering to pay their developers.

Make a significant contribution to an existing project, which carries a lot
more weight than starting a new one unless you create something earth-
shattering. Talk with some of your professors, who will likely have some
experience and connections there, and who might be willing to suggest a
project; also seek out prominent projects with TODO lists.

And in your remaining year, do whatever it takes to get your focus back and
improve your grades. Remember, there _is_ a grade above A+; it's "hey, I have
this project you might find interesting". Half of the value of your education
will occur outside of your classes. Depending on just what you mean by
"atrocious", you might also want to retake some critical courses, both for the
grade and in case you missed something foundational.

Also, don't sweat the "rockstar" thing, and don't undervalue yourself;
diligence is a critical skill that people often undervalue, and well-applied
diligence plus experience makes for an exceptional engineer. I'll take
diligence over half of the "rockstars" out there any day.

When you go to build your résumé, highlight the project or projects you worked
on and the impact it had.

~~~
_t1mq
Well, now that I think about it I also undervalued myself and almost didn't
apply to university thinking that I would not get accepted.

I think that you are right in that I should work on a visible Open Source
project, even if only contributing in small bugs and documentation.
Eventually, and with at least some projects under my belt I hope I can land a
small position somewhere.

Yet, I don't feel exploited at all because the money issue was discussed with
me in an upfront manner and I have not done any amount of work yet. And
besides, it is a position that offers experience that I can put later on my CV
and potentially eventually it will lead to a paying job.

So in a sense, isn't it riskier to not accept this offer?

I dunno, I still have some doubts...

~~~
JoshTriplett
> Well, now that I think about it I also undervalued myself and almost didn't
> apply to university thinking that I would not get accepted.

Between that sentence and the rest of your comment, I think you're _still_
seriously undervaluing yourself.

> I think that you are right in that I should work on a visible Open Source
> project, even if only contributing in small bugs and documentation.
> Eventually, and with at least some projects under my belt I hope I can land
> a small position somewhere.

Small bugs and documentation are a good start. You should also consider
working on a more substantial feature, the kind of thing that will take you
weeks or more to complete. Something of the size that you can point to that
project and that feature and say "I did that".

Pick a project you regularly use, that has a friendly and welcoming community
around it. Learn how to build it from source, try a couple of very small
patches at first (much easier for a project that has a very new-developer-
friendly community), and then seek out a substantial project to work on. Most
projects have a wishlist of items that they'd work on if they had more time.

> Yet, I don't feel exploited at all because the money issue was discussed
> with me in an upfront manner and I have not done any amount of work yet. And
> besides, it is a position that offers experience that I can put later on my
> CV and potentially eventually it will lead to a paying job.

They're not being underhanded in the sense of bait-and-switch; they've
certainly told you up front. However, what they're _not_ telling you is how
the rest of the market would value your skills. Internships in CS, as a
general rule, are paid, and reasonably well at that; certainly _far_ above
minimum wage. Go look up intern salaries at major companies. Ask around and
find out what other students have done. (And I don't just mean at your own
university, or even in your own country.)

(Depending on the nature of the arrangement, I'd also be surprised that
they're not in some way violating labor laws by having you work for free, but
that's not an avenue you want to pursue.)

> So in a sense, isn't it riskier to not accept this offer?

> I dunno, I still have some doubts...

You have a year left in school, and you have your whole life ahead of you.
Don't set the precedent of being willing to work for free. And after you _do_
graduate, do some reading about negotiation before you accept your first job
offer. If you go into either an internship or your first job with the stance
you're taking now, you're going to spend your whole career being underpaid.

------
kjksf
Don't do it. Working for free is unacceptable (especially in today's market
for developers). Working for equity is usually a bad idea (the main thing to
understand that equity only converts to cash on sale or acquisition, which are
extremely rare events and even if that does happen, don't count on it
happening for several years).

What to do instead? Either start your own open source project (if you have
ideas for something useful) or contribute to one of many existing projects
(pick something with decent name recognition).

If you're into low-level coding, contribute to Rust. If you're into front-end,
JavaScript, contribute to atom.io (those are just random examples, the point
is that for anything that you might be interested in, there is an open source
project in that area that is desperate for more developers).

A meaningful contribution to a well-known open-source project will be much
more interesting to your future potential employer than random unpaid work for
a random company.

At the same time pick the project carefully. There are many projects that are
not good at onboarding new developers so submit small fixes (Pull Requests in
GitHub speak) to a few that interest you and pick those that are quick
providing feedback (even if it's to reject a PR as long as they do it in a
nice way and explain why) and drop those that are unresponsive.

~~~
_t1mq
I see. Well, atom.io interests me a lot, since I know a little bit of
JavaScript and contributed to a relatively medium-sized game framework
(melonJS). I will try just starting with small bugs and work my way up the
ladder.

I was asked to meet the CEO tomorrow to sign an IP assignment agreement, and I
have not signed anything yet, so I assume I am ok legally speaking.

By the way, the CEOs of these small start-ups were 100% honest with the pay
considerations and I feel kind of bad now that I have to go and say that I
will not be joining their start-up.

~~~
aquark
One other thing to think about would be intangibles the startups can offer vs
open source:

* how good are you at self-motivating * what chance is there of being mentored at the start up? * will the CEO provide a good reference later one: a human reference likely beats pointing out the open source contributions in many jobs in the future

If you are going to work for free anyway on open source then make sure you
have the dedication to actually do it.

Being more directly accountable to someone may be a benefit.

Good luck ... it's a tough call!

------
aurizon
Companies look for people that love code work for it's own sake, they do it
for many hours for fun. Have you ever done any of that type of obsessive work-
of-love type of thing? Companies are built on people who build up things on
small boards like Arduino and create programming problems and solve them - all
as part of getting better at the skill of it. It is a form of self learning or
self studying. After the three weeks, if they see none of that you = history

------
notahacker
Frankly, the mere 1% equity and no cash they're offering if you stay is more
insulting than the initial internship.

Working for free can be a valuable lesson, but working for free for a team
whose offer suggests they have no regard whatsoever for your ability (or are
completely clueless) is unlikely to teach you things you want to learn.

------
rajacombinator
I'm going to be the voice of dissent here and say if you like the team and the
project do it. It sounds like you need to strengthen your resume and this
could be an good opportunity.

