
Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships - EamonLeonard
http://www.irishstu.com/stublog/2011/06/30/calling-bullshit-on-unpaid-interships/
======
zeemonkee
Unpaid internships are essentially a form of serfdom.

The serf system in Russia IIRC started with free peasants who sold themselves
into slavery to the landowner when they fell into debt - unlike African slaves
in the US, who were essentially kidnapped into servitude.

In the same vein people are taking up voluntary servitude in order to get a
paid job - sometimes even paying for the privilege.

Moreover - a point not raised in the article - in expensive cities the only
way a fresh graduate can survive without salary is if their parents subsidize
them. Who can afford to do so ? Rich families. So it's a form of
discrimination.

A company has _no_ excuse for not paying at least minimum wage. If you can't
afford the employees you need you shouldn't be in business, period. Any
company that uses unpaid internships is morally bankrupt and should be
boycotted.

~~~
cturner
There's a temptation in politics to see patterns and then fit language to it
that kind of fits. It's important not to do this, because it ruins the sense
of scale. For example, when someone describes a politician they don't like as
a "fascist" it's disrespectful to the memory of people who are squashed under
tanks and who are taken in the night by state agents, raped and murdered.

Along these lines, it doesn't fit to equate unpaid internships to serfdom.
Serfdom involves effectively permanent, near total servitude to a landowner
for most aspects of life. You don't travel. You don't get educated. You don't
have upside. You can't escape. You're screwed. An unpaid internship is not at
all like this. Unpaid internships are not "essentially a form of serfdom".

If your labour has value then you can find work that pays you a rate for it
(except for minimum wage - more about this shortly). You have the opportunity
to expose yourself to experience by doing internships. If you don't have
anything better to be doing, then it's a win-win situation for you and the
person you're doing internship.

When I was young I worked in a computer assembly shop for basically no money.
In the course of this work I plugged a power cable into a motherboard and
fried it. I probably rubbed customers up the wrong way, and certainly did dumb
things. My labour was worth less than nothing, and I was lucky to have the
opportunity to be allowed near the place or customers.

As I became valuable I struck a private agreement with the owner and spent a
summer working full-time, for which I was paid one gravis ultrasound ACE. I
think I ended up better on the deal than the owner, but it was a close-run
thing.

Another time I was contracted to do a job for an oil company. It took me a
month to do something that would now take me a day, and the end result was so
bad that they got no return on investment of the the AUD 300 they paid me for
the job. Note that in the case of the oil company work, I already had most of
a computer science degree, and so was more qualified than the average kind of
person who lives on minimum wage and still near-worthless.

After spending some time working to build up my skills, I'm now happy with my
career. I wouldn't be here except for working in situations where I was
earning less than minimum wage, often with people giving my low money on the
offchance I might not be incompetent.

The minimum wage is a horrible stain on a free society. It traps people with
low skills out of work and cements them into an underclass that's much more
difficult to break out of. It prevents business that are operating on the edge
from continuing to operate. It's a classic example of do-gooders riding in and
creating damage.

There is an argument in favour of minimum wage, and it's this: some people are
too incompetent to be capable of standing up for themselves, and these people
would be easy to take advantage of for malicious bosses, of which there are no
shortage. The minimum wage is a blunt force mechanism that aims (and fails) to
protect this set of people. The reason it fails is that in protecting low-wage
employed people, it locks out people who are in a worse situation -
unempployed.

It's a ridiculous solution that hurts the people it claims to represent. There
are much better avenues that would be cheaper and have more positive effect on
people: basic risk, valuation and business skills being taught in early high-
school, television campaigns that encourage people to think about how their
labour is used, what they could do to make themselves marketable. Mechanisms
to get people speaking English more effectively. Lower taxation. Effective
technical colleges.

The minimum wage system is a mechanism designed by the elite to allow that
elite to paper over things and sleep at night pretending they're doing the
right thing. It hurts the people it claims to protect.

~~~
zeemonkee
_Along these lines, it doesn't fit to equate unpaid internships to serfdom.
Serfdom involves effectively permanent, near total servitude to a landowner
for most aspects of life. You don't travel. You don't get educated. You don't
have upside. You can't escape. You're screwed. An unpaid internship is not at
all like this. Unpaid internships are not "essentially a form of serfdom"._

No, but that's how serfdom _started_ \- through voluntary servitude.

The point isn't to equate 21st century Europe or US with pre-19th century
Russia. The point is that serfdom is a form of voluntary servitude which
people entered into out of desperation. Likewise, nobody works for free
(outside of charitable work) unless they are desperate (or they are rich kids,
and don't need to care). Companies exploit this through unpaid internships -
assuming they can get away with it.

Saying "you're free to walk away" is not a moral argument; if the only way a
young person can find work is through doing voluntary servitude then they are
stuck in that position until they do so.

Minimum wage laws exist for a number of reasons. If people don't get enough
from employers, who pays ? The welfare system, i.e. the rest of us. So
employers can exploit the system to boost their profits. Second, how does it
fail to protect people ? Since when did a living wage for a day's work become
a controversial issue ?

~~~
yummyfajitas
_If people don't get enough from employers, who pays ? The welfare system,
i.e. the rest of us._

If a potential employer chooses not to employ someone, who pays? The welfare
system.

For either low pay or no pay, low value workers will require welfare. I don't
see how this is a valid argument for a minimum wage.

~~~
zeemonkee
Well, the employer gets cheap (or even free) labour - and therefore higher
profits - paid for by the taxpayer. In essence, the employer is exploiting the
system as much as any "welfare queen".

Sure, workers on minimum wage may receive benefits - but they would require
less benefits than if there was no minimum wage.

~~~
pessimizer
"In 2004, a year in which Wal-Mart reported $9.1 billion in profits, the
retailer's California employees collected $86 million in public assistance,
according to researchers at the University of California-Berkeley. [...]In
2004, Democratic staffers of the House education and workforce committee
calculated that each 200-employee Wal-Mart store costs taxpayers an average of
more than $400,000 a year, based on entitlements ranging from energy-
assistance grants to Medicaid to food stamps to WIC—the federal program that
provides food to low-income women with children."

<http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/01/america-195-week>

And this is with a minimum wage.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Bull. The store didn't create the problem. The numbers may be correct; the
conclusion is yellow journalism.

The store may even help alleviate the problem, by providing Some income for
these people.

Its not very clever to ask WalMart to just pay these people more; how about
UCBerkely show some sincerity and pay them themselves?

~~~
pessimizer
The numbers are the only thing that's quoted. The conclusion is that if they
paid lower wages, the amount of government support to employed people would
rise unless those policies were changed also. Government support paid by
taxes, including the taxes of those who work at UCBerkeley.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
The statement was squarely that it cost the public money to have WalMart in
our town - they expressed it as the cost per WalMart.

For example, they could have expressed how much is Saved the public per
WalMart. They didn't express it that way. Because it made a more
sensationalist article the other way.

------
wccrawford
And as usual, I disagree.

When I was just starting my career, I would have gladly worked for free as an
intern to get my foot in the door of the industry. Now, I wouldn't have done
it for -long-, but internships aren't supposed to last a long time. As it was,
instead I spent a year unemployed, and then took a job as a stock clerk at a
grocery store. That time would have been much better spent as an intern...
Especially since I think I could have found a job after 3 months of being an
intern. 6 at the most.

The reason his entire post is wrong is that the person DOES get something out
of it. They get training (whether it was structured or not is a different
matter) and they get experience. Guess what helps you get a job most in the IT
industry? Experience.

As for being hired, any company worth their salt will offer a real job to
anyone who shows skill. Job offers should never be automatic.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
_You_ may have been better off as an intern, but I could see the argument that
if nobody's willing to work for free companies will have to pay a decent wage
- a degree of collective bargaining by students and recent graduates who are
unwilling to sell their summers for almost no money.

~~~
wccrawford
Interns don't produce much output. They're inexperienced. What would take a
professional a day to finish might take an intern 2 weeks, and take time from
others to boot.

In that situation, the intern should be working for free (for the experience)
and the company should consider any actual output to be compensation for the
time spent having to help the intern along.

As the post's author noted, the 2 job descriptions he linked to do not fit the
above criteria.

Any company that expects actual productivity from an intern is in the wrong.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
I'm not a software developer (researcher), but are there really no tasks
simple enough for interns in your average software company? When I worked as a
sysadmin for a couple of months, the two (paid) intern programmers seemed to
do most of the work on some (small) contracts. They definitely had some things
to learn, but they got it done (with some help) and were absolutely net
positive.

Maybe we just had unusually good interns, though (this was in the
Netherlands).

~~~
wccrawford
Tasks that simple don't provide them any experience and we're back to paying
them for work done.

Complicated tasks need guidance and take time. But they're great for
experience.

It's not even that they're really hard tasks, but that there are so many
little details to software develop that everyone treats like common sense, but
it's not... Until you have experience.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
In this specific case, they created some simple Rails websites - one seems to
have basically been a simple CMS (with a nice design) for a customer, another
was an internal time tracking tool. Both had at least one (more-or-less
harmless) WTF [1], but the customer seems to have been happy, time tracking
worked, and they definitely learned something.

[1] To be fair, one was putting my sample code in production.

------
nicpottier
Perhaps it is different for design, but taking on an intern for a software
shop is almost always a greater burden than benefit.

I interned at a few different places while in college, and I was definitely
way ahead of the class as far as writing useful code. Regardless, the overhead
of people bringing you up to speed on their specific projects and processes
for only three months of work just doesn't match what you are going to
contribute. The cold hard fact is that you are still junior, very junior, no
matter how much a hotshot you think you are. So the time they put into you
makes it a pretty even trade for it not to be paid.

Though come to think of it, both internships I went to were paid. But the
point stands.

To put it simpler terms, ask any company whether they find new college
graduates effective and worth the overhead for the first few months they work.
I doubt many would say yes, and those are people more qualified than those
seeking internships.

~~~
dkersten
I did a six month (paid) internship when I was in uni and after two weeks of
"training", we were pair programming with the fulltime employees. By month
three, I was working on core services that are still in use by the company
now.

So, interns are definitely _not always_ a burden, but I certainly do
understand that they often would be, but to be honest, you get what you pay
for - if it had been an unpaid internship, I'd have had very little incentive
to really put much effort into it. I mean, months of unpaid work would be
demoralizing and I'd probably quickly have ended up producing little of
value.. Luckily it never came to that and I ended up going back to work at the
company for another 1.75 years, before I left to try out the world of
freelancing and startups.

For the record, that company hires between two and five interns every year.
They find it effective enough to keep doing it. They treat it as much as a
hiring thing as a cheap labor thing and they find having (paid) interns to be
pretty effective.

~~~
nicpottier
Six months is definitely different, I would agree that in that time you can
become effective.

In a way you are agreeing though, as you said, it took two months for you to
be working on core services, so there is a significant ramp up time. If we are
talking about a summer internship then it is questionable whether you will
really add more value than extract. This is irrespective of ability level and
just the reality of getting to know an organizations processes, codebase,
etc..

In any case, I'm not quite sure what the article's beef is. If there was no
market for unpaid internships, then there wouldn't be any. Clearly some
interns are finding it worth their while enough to go work for free.

Do totally agree that it is an absolutely awesome funnel for candidates
though, and worth drawing those candidates in via pay or other fringe
benefits.

~~~
dkersten
Well, I was working on core services, together with fulltime employees (pair
programming), after the first two weeks and at the time, they did a lot of
pair programming anyway. After two months, I was basically working on my own,
but I like to think that I added value much sooner.

Having said that, I don't disagree - it definitely does have a rampup time and
I don't disagree with that theres a market and value in unpaid internships,
especially short term ones - I'm just saying that I also think theres value
for employers and candidates alike in paid internships too.

------
officemonkey
At my organization, we used to have unpaid internships for college students,
but they would receive college credit. We thought that was still kinda B.S.,
so we found some money and created paid internships.

Back in the day, when I started my career, to get my foot in the door, I
worked at a temp agency. "Word processing" was all the rage and they needed
people who knew how to use Microsoft Word. After a couple of months the boss
noticed I knew how to spell "glaciolacustrine" correctly, so he asked if I had
a degree. A couple months later I was hired. All the time I was getting paid
$10/hr.

That's the way firms should be finding and cultivating young talent: paid
internships, temp services, and recruiting. Unpaid internships are indeed
bullshit.

------
WillyF
I didn't realize that the unpaid internship situation is as bad in Ireland as
it is here in the U.S. My startup helps college students find entry level jobs
and internships, so I'm constantly aware of what the latest trends are.

One trend that really scares me is that there are some "career experts" whom I
interact with regularly who offer their own unpaid virtual internships (I've
seen lots of other internships like this, but the fact that career experts who
are supposed to help interns are offering these really blows my mind). These
are people who don't have the ability to offer many of the benefits that do
come with an unpaid internship such as making connections, learning what it's
like to work in a real office, having a recognizable name on your resume, etc.

Another trend that scares me is that we're seeing more and more internships
auctioned off in charity auctions. Rich parents actually pay for their kids to
get some experience.

Unfortunately, interns aren't going to be the ones to stop this trend. Unpaid
interns do benefit from their internships. They mostly accept it as something
that they have to do, and they know that if they refuse to take an unpaid
internship, there are thousands of other students who will snap up the
opportunity.

Change is either going to have to come from employers or the government. I
strongly believe that offering paid internships is more favorable to employers
because they get better quality interns who are more motivated, and the
employer has a stronger incentive to use the intern's time well.

Here in the U.S. there are already laws against unpaid internships. I wrote an
article on it here: [http://www.onedayoneinternship.com/blog/are-unpaid-
internshi...](http://www.onedayoneinternship.com/blog/are-unpaid-internships-
illegal/)

There's actually an excellent and fair standard for determining when an unpaid
internship should be allowed; however, I've never heard of an employer's being
prosecuted under the Fair Labor Standards Act for having unpaid interns. And
if the law were to start to be enforced, I'm not sure the outcome would
benefit students in the short-term. There would be a lot fewer opportunities
as many employers would get rid of their internship programs. This would
result in even more competition for what paid opportunities were left.

I really hate unpaid internships, but I still haven't figured out what it's
going to take to make them a thing of the past. They've become an essential
part of the transition from education to employment, and messing around with
that in a time when really talented grads are struggling to land jobs probably
isn't a good idea. We may have to wait until the economy really heats up
again.

~~~
rmc
_I didn't realize that the unpaid internship situation is as bad in Ireland as
it is here in the U.S._

Ireland has been hit by a strong recession. Unemployment is high (~15%), and
particularly high amount young people. Many are emigrating to find other work.
The media is full of stories about how there are no jobs.

Which is a shame because there is a massive skill shortage if you know
programming/sysadmining in Ireland. Companies spend months trying to find
employees.

~~~
ivanbernat
Wow, how can I move there?

~~~
ianterrell
Some friends of mine (first degree friends, this is verified) moved to Dublin
and just, well, didn't leave.

At least in 2006 it was rather easy to get a tax identification number (I
forget what it's called) with a signed affidavit and a witness saying you live
at some address, and you can use that to get work. Now, without better
documentation the government taxes you at the highest rate possible, and since
you won't file you'll never get a penny back.

Also, they worked in card houses, so maybe the documentation requirements
weren't as strict as a professional programming environment. Oh, and I'm sure
it's all sorts of illegal. But just doing it is easier than it seems. :)

~~~
rmc
_tax identification number (I forget what it's called)_

PPS Number

------
Confusion
If you're not paid, you're not valued. Nothing you produce will ever be good
enough. Nobody will make time for you, because they have more valuable things
to spend their time on. No money is lost if you're struggling to do your
assignments; no money is lost if you don't learn anything.

A company should be invested into their interns and the best way to be
invested is by paying them a wage and expecting decent work in return.

------
hugh3
I work in academia. In academia, we pay crap, especially to the people at the
bottom of the totem pole.

But even _we_ pay our summer interns.

------
dmoo
As this is Ireland I've got to assume there is also an element of trying to
reduce the numbers who are technically unemployed and so make things look
better. It sounds very familiar to the community employment schemes etc. from
the '80s where people basically worked for their unemployment benefit so as to
gain work experience / help the community. I can even remember being turned
down at an interview for one of these way back when and feeling pretty bad. In
the end some people will gain something & some people will be exploited but it
wont make much difference to the economy other than to help drive down wages.

~~~
irishstu
I'm not sure if you can be on the unemployment register and still work in an
internship. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the government isn't looking
too deeply into the situation because it keeps the dole numbers down.

------
Produce
Companies tend to save money at all costs, even at the expense of decency and
Doing The Right Thing™. It's the same reason a lot of them have clauses in
their contracts forbidding people from discussing their wages, even though it
is in the employees' interests to do so.

I figured something out when thinking about this one day - where you're going
is how you'll get there. If your goal is to make money, your goal is greed and
your path will be a greedy one. If your goal is to make a positive
contribution to those around you and get one back in return, then you will
still make money but won't step on peoples' toes in the process.

------
GvS
It's not a problem for IT students. I could choose from many offers in my
city. At our forums we laugh from low paid offers and I haven't seen unpaid
one. I ended up going to different country and earn 1,1k euro with no real
experience at all and I extended it during crisis (it was few years ago) so I
guess I was useful.

If you really can't find anything it's better to make nice portfolio projects
for yourself at home or work on some opensource project. It's similar
experience but feels much better than working as slave for some awful company
that can't even afford small wage.

~~~
Argorak
My experience is that a number of larger companies is paying rather well for
internships of people 1 or 2 years from graduation. I had a great half a year
in southern france on the cost of one of them (small flat, benefits and a
final performance bonus included).

They see it as gambling money: if they find a good guy, they will try to hold
on him. Otherwise, even a 1k wage doesn't really cost them much.

Also: Good interns usually are not available for hire after their studies, so
its money well invested.

------
noarchy
Even Wal Mart will pay you while training you. If a company cannot meet that
standard, something is wrong, imo.

------
stevenwilkin
The place I'm currently contracting in (mentioned in article) has their summer
intern programme in full swing.

Not only are the guys getting decent pay but they are building a useful in-
house app while getting trained up in technologies like OS X, Linux, Git,
Ruby, Rails, MongoDB etc.

Win-win!

------
chrisclark1729
Perhaps this thread has gone too long, but the comments are overwhelmingly
against doing work for free.

TL;DR - It’s an interns fault for taking crap free work, in essence putting
their future in someone else’s hands.

My experience: 3 years ago I was an accountant and thought about killing
myself nearly every day. It used to take me 10 - 15 minutes to get out of my
car every morning just to walk inside. I was able to use free work to
transition from a boring career to one I enjoy in an incredibly short amount
of time.

Rather than go back to school only to finish in debt and start at the bottom I
was able to trade valuable work that I could do (finance/accounting) for
experience in work that I wanted to do (development/data analysis). I would
always suggest short projects so as not to overwhelm either party, but this
turned out to be very favorable in the long run. One major caveat is that
these were not company created internships. I wasn’t in the business of
letting a company compile all of their shitty work only to pass it off on
someone to do for free. THAT IS WHAT NEEDS TO BE CALLED BULLSHIT ON.

If a job seeker shows just a little initiative they can force free work to
have a training component that is defined in advance and one from which they
will benefit. Too many workers put their future in someone else’s hands by
assuming the company has some training program mapped out for them. Not
surprisingly, these are exactly the types of employees who continue the cycle
of useless and exploitative internships that you rail against.

If you are doing work for free, YOU are on the hook. You hold most of the
cards because there is nothing forcing you to continue working.

------
epo
30-day free trials are for software. People deserve more respect.

~~~
jasonlotito
But interns aren't producing anything (if they are, it's not an internship).
The idea is they are learning. If they are producing things the company then
uses to sell, they should get paid. But I've seen interns that literally
follow around, take notes, ask questions.

So, why should someone be paid for not contributing to the bottom line?

~~~
tkahn6
> But interns aren't producing anything (if they are, it's not an internship).

That seems like a false dichotomy.

I'm at an internship right now getting paid quite well and I'm contributing to
their bottom line (albeit indirectly since I am working on internal tools).
I'm also learning quite a lot.

~~~
jasonlotito
Sorry, I should have been explicit (though, I feel I was fairly obvious).

 _unpaid interships_ aren't producing anything. If you are getting paid, then
it's not really relevant to the discussion of "unpaid internships."

~~~
mattdeboard
Whatever point you thought you were making, you weren't. And even if you were,
it certainly wasn't obvious.

~~~
jasonlotito
No. I was correct. Interns producing something of value to the company have to
be paid, otherwise it's illegal. If you are getting paid, then the discussion
doesn't involve you.

Sorry if you don't understand. Your ignorance doesn't make me wrong.

~~~
mattdeboard
I know, I know, it's everyone else's fault they misunderstood you.

~~~
jasonlotito
Everyone else?

Regardless, being right has nothing to do with popularity. I mean, enough
people watch Fox News. Besides, I'm not the one support unpaid interns doing
illegal work. And before you try to chime in with some quip about straw man,
unpaid internships are the topic, not paid work. It's what my comment was
about. A few people disagreed.

Whatever. Go back to your "popularity makes it right" way of life.

------
gorog
This past year I followed a web development course. I'm now supposed to work 3
months for free. I don't mind it because I've been jobless for a long time
before. The problem is, I just can't find an employer (in France). I get the
interviews, but my interviewer always assumes that I'm supposed to know
everything by heart, have nothing more to learn, and more importantly, they
want to see a portfolio of sites I've done before other than the one I've done
in class. Basically, they don't want an intern, they want a real, super-fast
worker for free. So I'm going to fail at my diploma because nobody wants me to
work for free for them. To make it worse, I'm the best student of my class.
Those who can't code found an internship. Are we supposed to lie and bluff to
be allowed to be exploited?

~~~
nagnatron
Did you try remote work?

------
davidw
0 is just one number along a range of numbers - it's not particularly special.
In some cultures, it's considered normal to exchange not just free labor to
get your foot in the door, but to actually pay cash to do so.

I am not convinced it's a net win for society.

------
rb2k_
While I think it's horrible if companies don't pay interns, I can see how the
"you're learning things!" angle could seem more reasonable in the US.

My outside view is that a lot of Americans pay thousands of dollars to go to
university.

Universities are, for a lot of people, just a means for learning a discipline
and giving them more/better possibilities in a future job search.

While most internships aren't as "prestigious" as a university degree, they
probably don't cost as much either.

In the end, both of them will have allowed you to make some new contacts,
learn trade-specific things and add a new slot on your résumé.

p.s. this certainly doesn't go for all professions/internships. But the
general direction seems about right.

------
synnik
Wow. We hire almost every intern that works for us, unless they suck.
Internships are also normally done pre-graduation from college. It is not a
job, it is in exchange for college credit. We hire the day they graduate.

But it is also up to the intern to decide whether or not our internship is
right for them. A overgeneralized diatribe like the one posted is aiming to
get people to not intern at all, whereas the appropriate act would be to
critically evaluate your options, and make an informed decision about each
specific company.

~~~
mitcheme
In my school, we call them "co-op jobs". If you sign up for co-op, you get
college credit for them, but either way you get paid. And of course if you're
any good, your co-op employers will want to hang onto you after you graduate.
I didn't bother signing up for co-op because co-op or no, it's impossible to
complete all the other graduation requirements and not have enough credits. So
the credits you get from a co-op job are useless. Students pay money to the
school to be part of the co-op program, and that's not unusual. Here, it's
$400 for a once a week class that teaches you how to make a resume plus an
additional ~$100 fee if you find a job, even if you didn't use the school's
connections to find it. If your internship results in college credit, its
likely that students are actually losing money by working for you. I think
that's absurd.

~~~
synnik
You also inadvertently prove a more subtle point of internships. Employees who
offer the greatest value are ones who are engaged with the company and want to
be part of it. If someone doesn't think enough of us to want to go through the
trouble of an internship, and think working for us is absurd, then they would
not have been a good fit anyway. No loss to us if they don't work with us.

~~~
mitcheme
Paying money to work for anyone is absurd. I don't care if your company is the
best thing since sliced bread. It isn't worth going homeless, nor is it worth
taking on tens of thousands extra in loans to (a) support myself while
providing you with free labor and (b) cover other expenses I could've paid for
out of pocket if I'd been paid fairly, such as tuition. If free internships
became standard, it would put students from low-income families at a serious
disadvantage. Who needs meritocracy when we can make a caste system?
Hopefully, your company will be successful, so you can afford to pay all your
kids' expenses and put them through unpaid internships of their own.

I want to be able to buy gas and keep my car maintained so I can actually come
to work, so I'm not "engaged". If I want to pay enough of my tuition up-front
so that when I graduate I can afford to work for small companies doing
interesting projects, instead of auctioning myself to the highest bidder to
cover my loan payments, then I'm a "bad fit". So be it, I guess.

------
kosei
Personally I got a lot of value out of my unpaid internships (Kate Spade &
Sports Illustrated). Though I understand the reasons against it, I got to a)
work with a great team, b) make some great business contacts for future job
referrals, and c) get experience that looked great on my resume.

That said, I completely understand that my experience was the exception rather
than the rule. Plus, both companies I interned at most likely could have
afforded to pay me too.

------
erikb
In Germany I often see unpaid interns, but actually not in a bad situation.
There are 2 situations in Germany when an unpaid internship will happen: One
is, when the students working as interns are still going to their schools and
maybe are first or second semesters. So actually they don't really create
value, but they cost time, energy, working hours of coworkers, electricity,
rent and so on. The company basically already pays a load to have this intern
sitting there and a high chance to get no value back in return. I think in
this situation it is quite fair, not to pay wages.

The second situation is, when students try to get a job, which a lot of people
want to have, like at Google, Price Waterhouse Coopers and so on. In this
situation the brand alone will help them out later to get better jobs or even
give them a chance for a full time job in this company that others can't get.
It's a little like doing a start-up. You put in a lot for the small chance to
get a unnatural big payoff.

In both situations I can't disapprove of unpaid internships. I hope with
sharing these experiences, other readers might get a more objective point of
view. It is not all bad about unpaid internships!

------
amirmc
I've had friends who wanted to get into journalism and publishing and the only
way they could do it was by working for free for several months. Not even
'internships', just free work. Eventually, there were vacancies and they were
the obvious hires.

I'm not suggesting this was fair but it was a pretty clear case of supply
outstripping demand, which meant that employers could afford to let the system
develop this way.

------
apinstein
I can't find the article right now, but there have been studies about and
there is evidence for that many people will do something for free, but if
offered to be paid a market rate that is low for the same work, will _not_ do
it. In fact, they'll be insulted by the low value ascribed to it.

Personally I would feel like an a-hole offering someone minimum wage to do
intern-level work at our startup. Nor would I want it on my resume that I
worked as a web developer for $8/hour. They do _not_ want a market price that
low on their skills. They'd rather have a free internship on paper.

That said, it does all depend on context. In fact during high school I worked
in a bio lab for free for about 50 hours and then asked for a paid internship
(which was minimum wage) during the summer. However I was a high-schooler, so
this was cool. But I would not have taken (and in fact turned down) low-paying
jobs after college. So I can see that context does matter, and I don't think
it's fair to rip on all unpaid internships with the same stroke.

~~~
icegreentea
The whole low pay versus free psychology thing is tricky. It also depends on
how the pay is structured. If you offer it as a low hourly rate, it'll
probably be rejected, as opposed to working for some lumpsum at the end (or
split into two). The second is typically more acceptable. Then instead of
feeling like their labour is worth minimal wage, they feel like they're being
paid for finishing a job.

 _shrug_ worked on me. 600 dollars for a parttime research thing during school
for a term that worked out to $9 an hour, felt way better split into 2x300.

------
jasonlotito
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the idea of an internship about learning,
not about producing? If your producing for the company something they are
selling (or creating net value), don't you have to get paid? I mean, people
here are talking about actually working on projects the company is earning
money for. That's not an internship.

Am I clueless, or are other people just ignorant?

~~~
xsmasher
Are you making a moral argument, or a legal one? If legal, what country?

The "idea of an internship" is experience and networking if you're the intern,
recruiting if you're a smart company, and free/cheap labor if you're a dumb
company.

~~~
tiddchristopher
It's a matter of legality in the United States.

"Among those criteria are that the internship should be similar to the
training given in a vocational school or academic institution, that the intern
does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer 'derives no
immediate advantage' from the intern’s activities [. . .]"
<https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html>

------
andrewflnr
Last summer, I took an unpaid internship at a software company, if it can be
called an internship. I was introduced to someone who worked there, and he got
it worked out for me. I didn't work on core stuff for the company, so maybe it
was less an internship than just hanging out in the offices while I worked on
an open-source project relevant to them, specifically
github.com/andrewf/pcap2har .

I learned a crap-load of stuff there, technical and otherwise. I am enormously
better off having taken that opportunity. Would I have been worse off if I had
worked on stuff that directly made them money? No.

My friend has left to work on his own startup, but I started this week as a
paid intern. I hope to keep working part-time when I start school again.

I cant speak for other people's experience with less-scrupulous employers, but
I have nothing but gratitude for the people who gave me my unpaid internship.

------
jeffchuber
Companies often don't pay interns for 2 reasons: 1\. They don't think they can
afford to give them responsibility, and with no responsibility = no pay. This
is a terrible relationship. (no pay = no responsibility as well) 2\. They know
that if it's unpaid - it's likely that only people very interested will apply
- and this signal is, supposedly, very strong.

The 3 MAJOR problems are: 1\. The company is sending a signal that says, "we
don't trust you", "we don't think you can do valuable work", "and we don't
value you enough to pay you" 2\. The company gets lower skilled people,
because the good ones get the jobs with good experience AND pay 3\. Have you
EVER tried to get a volunteer to do anything?! It's impossible. Incentives are
not aligned.

------
studiofellow
Passing judgment on all unpaid internships in all situations is unreasonable.
When deciding whether to accept an unpaid internship, common sense is the best
guide.

I've seen both unpaid and paid interns treated poorly. I've also seen both
thrive. I personally had 2 paid internships before I graduated college. One
was demeaning and the other an incredible learning experience.

If an unpaid opportunity offers a lot and you can afford to take it, why not?
How is this different than contributing to open source or doing pro bono for
charities?

However, if a company doesn't want to pay, I'd suggest more caution. Ask lots
of questions, and if you end up just getting people coffee, quit. Interns are
working professionals just like anyone else and deserve equal respect.

------
phxrsng
In the US at least, there are many opportunities for paid internships. All the
major tech companies offer them - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Zynga,
Boeing, Lockheed, etc - and many of the smaller ones do (though in smaller
numbers). At almost all of them, interns are treated as normal engineers and
put on teams as basically full time employees with an end date ~3-4 months
after they start. They are paid very well (competitive with what a FT employee
would make for 3 months). The internship can, and in many cases, does result
in a full time or reintern offer.

The thing is, you have to be able to cut it and basically interview as someone
who they would WANT to hire as a FT after a year or two more experience.

------
yellowredblack
This is what I learned from a half-day legal seminar in california aimed at
startups:

In California, unless the work is for course credit at an established
institution, an intern must be paid minimum wage. If not, the intern can do
the work, and then file with the state, which will then do all the
investigation. The intern doesnt need to get a laywer. They get the state's
lawyers looking for a hefty fine, back taxes, and the opportunity to audit the
hell out of someone. Start-ups are especially vulnerable to this because
programmers who would normally be exempt probably aren't making enough and
should be paid overtime. The state doesn't care what those programmers want.
They want their back taxes.

------
joe8756438
There's a great book that came out recently, Intern Nation, it's the first
exposé on this issue that I'm aware of. It is fantastic, totally engaging,
covers all of the many aspects of the internship problem and its genesis.

------
scottseaward
The CV still rules when it comes to getting past HR departments and into
interview. The HR departments (and employment agencies) I've worked with look
directly at the Work Experience section of a CV and then tick off a bunch of
boxes for the job they're trying to fill. Unpaid internships are one way to
fill a CV with relevant experience. Find a way to bridge that gap and you
don't need to do an unpaid internship. I went through 3 months of unpaid work
with an ugly little company for exactly this reason, and it paid off, but
those were the most trying 3 months of my professional career.

------
walexander
I had a paid internship but would have gladly done it unpaid if I had to. I
interned at a big name place, so YMMV, but I can say that senior year when I
was looking for jobs _no one_ cared about what I did in school and _everyone_
cared what I did at that internship.

You are not going to work there to do slave labor, you're getting bullet
points on your resume, mentorship from senior engineers, as well as taking in
the business environment which you've probably never seen before.

I hope no college student who can't find another option has decided to stick
his nose up at an unpaid internship because of this post.

------
conjectures
The problem is part informational. Grads take internships in the _hope_ it
will lead to a job. For most it doesn't. Hope is perennial, so more bums can
always be found for seats.

Banning them is unlikely in most countries as it's politically unrealistic.
Exhorting companies not to do it is unreliable. So not easy to close off
intern demand.

Tackling the supply side might be a better bet. The answer might be in
educating grads to mentally file internships alongside diet pills and pyramid
schemes. Providing alternatives also good (but more difficult).

------
bugsy
In the US there's two very different sorts of internships.

The first is what you describe, scamming desperate people during a economic
depression out of free skilled labor that has monetary value to the company.

The second is internships at places like magazines, newspapers and politicians
offices. These ones are more interesting. Poor people and minorities can't
afford to work for a year for free. But the children of the rich can. The
internship provides cover to avoid having to hire minorities since hiring
takes place from the internship pool.

~~~
hugh3
_Poor people and minorities can't afford to work for a year for free_

Poor people _and_ minorities? So minorities, even if they happen to be
individually rich, can't afford to work for a year for free?

~~~
bugsy
Thanks. To clarify, certain classes of minorities, because of endemic racism,
are statistically less financially able to work for free for a year. These are
the sorts of types of minorities that certain kinds of firms don't want to
hire, but also don't want to be held accountable. Unpaid internships, to which
said minorities, and the poor (including white trash) do not apply, act as a
filtering mechanism to make sure only the right sorts of blue blooded folks
end up getting hired.

------
jvandenbroeck
Totally true; I did an unpaid internship for a startup and didn't learn a
thing(actually they where doing a verrrry bad software engineering job). The
advantage was that I didn't really had to work much & I got grades for the
internship @unif. But I wouldn't do it again.

I felt under valuated, I can make really complex s/w architectures, solve
complex, challenging problems & I was doing work that I could've done as a 14
year old during the internship..

------
zachcb
I'm very desperate to join a startup as an intern or employee. Some of us (me)
have been dreaming (literally) about being in a startup that it doesn't matter
what we do, as long as we get in one. It's gotten to the point where I would
even pay to be in one. What I get out of it is that I will see if a startup is
right for me, and at this point that's all I can ask for.

------
alanorourke
While in college i chased a small design studio you have never heard of to
take me as an unpaid intern. I learnt loads just watching them run a studio
and work with clients. I do not see how they could possibly have justified
paying me for the little value i gave back. Still gratefull for the
opportunity they gave me.

------
threejay
I'm currently in my sixth and final year of pharmacy school which consists
entirely of clinical rotations at different practice sites in the area. Not
only are these internships completely unpaid, we have to pay ~$30k for the
priviledge which equates to almost $1000/week (6 x 6 week rotations). It's a
complete scam.

------
afterburner
Are CS students not cynical enough? Compared to, say engineers (non-software)?
Or is it just the effect of fierce and deep competition?

Or perhaps the potential for learning a lot (practical knowledge) in a short
time is greater in software dev work than others?

------
hvass
The only reason for me to do an unpaid internship would be to do it a 'brand-
name' company. You do see the best practices, meet an amazing team and it
might lead to an eventual job with the company.

For an unknown company - not a chance.

~~~
zeemonkee
A "brand-name" company that can't even afford to pay you minimum wage is not
worthy of that brand.

------
int3rnaut
It's all relative and depends entirely on how much you put into it and how
much your employer does the same. I've had friends who've taken unpaid
internships and have gotten entirely different experiences out of it.

------
perl
If someone tells me I wont be paid..but still i want to take up that work ?
why blame

But if someone fresh grad is duped into believing doing unpaid work will get
him something else then its bad.

------
dadads
I have to disagree with calling unpaid internships a rip-off.

As a student, I see this as a way of getting something on the resume to break
the catch-22 situation of having zero experience.

~~~
Argorak
As a student who worked during most of his studies: a low-paying job gives you
as much experience and is definitely preferable.

With most of my bosses, I had the following deal: "I have no experience, so
every task lasts as long as I think I need. You pay a low wage, so if you hit
one of the points where I am actually experienced: you make a good cut. If you
assign me to tasks where I have to learn everything: you make a bad cut." It
worked great, if you know the line where you shouldn't force those terms.

Its a business and working for free is harmful to everyone who wants to make a
living from it.

------
ThomPete
If products can be free so can interns.

Look at it as a freemium model.

~~~
omouse
People are not products.

~~~
rick888
technically, you are when you are looking for a job. You need to market and
sell yourself to the highest bidder.

------
walkon
I'm confused. Who forces people to work for free?

~~~
walkon
When down voting, please explain.

If working as an unpaid intern is indeed horrible and so incredibly lacking in
non-monetary value, then people will learn there is no reason to voluntarily
engage (or continue) in such a relationship.

------
paolomaffei
This guy clearly never had a company.

We do not pay our interns and still lose money in the process if we don't hire
them after because we have lost too much time not just training but also
fixing errors people at their first experience will do.

Nevertheless we still invest on internships because that's the only way to
snap good talent just out of university.

So please, stop the bullshit. Yeah, and downvote away.

------
maeon3
If you become an unpaid intern, then you better be learning 10 new things per
day that you couldn't have learnd any other way. I can see where interning
where be beneficial for both individual, company and society. However in the
vast majority of cases the intern is just getting ripped off.

------
georgieporgie
I don't know why there aren't more low-level tech jobs for college students. I
paid for a couple years of state school by working in a deli. The only jobs I
saw that would hire a "college kid" were _on campus_ , and those basically
boiled down to having the right connections as soon as you arrived. No longer
a freshman and nothing related on your resume? Not interested.

