

Ubuntu's Community team offers 2 full-time 6-month unpaid internships - dropTheBrown
http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/03/19/two-ubuntu-community-team-intern-opportunities-available/

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samd
_"Like most internships, these roles are unpaid."_

Apparently he hasn't read Joel on Software: _"I need to clarify something
about internships in computer science and software development. In this day
and age, in this country, it is totally expected that these are paid
internships, and the salaries are usually pretty competitive."_

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evdawg
If you have excellent Django, PHP, HTML, CSS, etc skills don't just give them
away. It's great if you want to help out with the Ubuntu project, but make
sure it's on your terms. Someone riding you 9 to 5 for no pay is called being
taken advantage of.

~~~
endtime
Agreed. Six months of full time work is ridiculous. That's not even an
internship, it's just unpaid labor.

Shameless plug: If anyone with excellent Django, HTML, and CSS skills is
interested in actually being paid for an internship in New York, Track.com is
hiring. Contact rich@

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tptacek
This is way, way over the line. "I want to be clear that my team is a fast-
paced, hard-working, hectic environment. I am going to work you hard...".
There are places where you can lose your job for publicly describing an
internship that way.

~~~
andyking
Working from home, you're not even as likely to gain the valuable contacts
that are a genuine benefit of office-based internships. You're basically just
bashing away in a room on your own all day.

I frequent a UK-based media website that offers job postings. Some time ago,
they banned unpaid "work experience" and "internship" postings (except for
genuine non-profits like community radio stations) because of UK minimum wage
laws. Good summary here: [http://www.mediauk.com/article/32681/media-uks-
policy-on-adv...](http://www.mediauk.com/article/32681/media-uks-policy-on-
advertising-un-paid-jobs)

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mapleoin
It's really strange to see this little respect for people's livelihoods from
the guy who wrote _The Art of Community_. His post looks more like a joke made
by people who say that open-source is communism with people doing slave work
for free.

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bryanh
Is it just me or are unpaid internships a way to prey on the not-so-savvy
young person, especially those indoctrinated at universities to find any
internship come hell or high water?

I dunno, it just seems like a scam to me.

~~~
ambiate
I currently cannot complete my degree. Practicuum - Internship - n/a.

I put in 22~ hours/semester for a year in 8 week courses at Navarro College in
Corsicana, Texas. While I was finishing the program, the partnership doing
internships (Northrop Grumman) had a breakup with the college and left my 6
man class without a place to call home for the final part of the course. Now,
we have a wasted year of work, no certificate, and no law suit (they relisted
the course load this year in their catalog and really tempted me (it clearly
states they still have a partnership)). 0 of the credits transfer to my
university.

So, an e-internship sounds like it would be the final piece for me to complete
that certificate. I have given up on it for the most part though and just
regard that year of work as my first taste of the business world. Some of us
are desperate! Especially with some of the horrid Dallas internship offers...
(ruby internship offer @ 70+ hours a week unpaid)

~~~
techiferous
Sorry to hear about your bad luck. :(

"ruby internship offer @ 70+ hours a week unpaid"

Wow. Just wow. Why would anyone choose to program Ruby for 70+ hours a week
unpaid when they could launch their own Ruby web app instead? Either way you
get business experience but if you launch your own web app at least you have a
chance at revenue.

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mattchew
Asking for half a year of full time unpaid work is asking for an awful lot. I
think it's fine to ask, but I wonder who Jono is imagining when he's thinking
of potential applicants.

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robryan
Doing an internship that was required for completion of my course I got $10 an
hour, it was good experience and over a full time week was enough to get me by
while I did it.

There is a big difference though for most people in receiving about $400 to
reviving $0 in terms of getting by. You could justify it if you were going to
come away with a lot of new skills but to be honest here it looks like their
looking for someone who already has the skills required to do a lot of hard
work.

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jemfinch
Unpaid internships are illegal if all of the following conditions are not met:

1\. If the training, even though it includes actual operation of the
facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in a
vocational school;

2\. If the training is for the benefit of the trainee;

3\. If the trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under close
observation;

4\. If the employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage
from the activities of the trainees and, on occasion, the employer’s
operations are actually impeded;

5\. If the trainees are not necessarily entitled to employment at the
completion of the training period;

6\. If the employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not
entitled to wages for the time spent in training.

From
[http://www.cohenandwolf.com/CM/EmploymentLaborPublications/E...](http://www.cohenandwolf.com/CM/EmploymentLaborPublications/EmploymentLaborPublications68.asp)
. The specific provisions listed are derived from the 1947 SCOTUS case Walling
v. Portland Terminal Co., <http://supreme.justia.com/us/330/148/case.html> .

Since the "interns" are to be "working on awesome solutions to help make
Ubuntu an ever more compelling community to be a part of" it's pretty clear
that the fourth provision above is not met: Ubuntu _is_ deriving immediate
advantage from the activities of the trainees.

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jff
Or, or, or, and this is the tough part, I could get an internship at a
national lab, working on more interesting OS stuff, for $24/hour. Damn, what
to choose.

Honestly, who does unpaid engineering internships anymore?

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edge17
6 months of intense, hectic, and hard unpaid work? You'd learn more by
spending 6 months on your first software or web startup for probably roughly
the same cost. If you make no money, you'll still learn a ridiculous amount of
stuff in those 6 months.

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Silhouette
I think the whole "internship" house of cards is already falling, but those
inside haven't noticed yet. For example, there has been concern expressed
recently in the UK (where there are minimum wage laws) that describing
something as an internship is being used as an attempt to circumvent those
laws. If the BBC News story was even close to accurate, then the view from
just about everyone who matters (government, trade unions, etc.) was that this
is just a con and won't stand up if challenged, and that organisations found
to be abusing the idea of internships would be removed from government
programmes.

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luckyland
It's just simply rude.

