

The Unpaid Intern, Legal or Not - eekfuh
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html

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eekfuh
I thought this article would be beneficial to the many who are pursuing an
internship. Interns should know their rights and that most of the time, if
working for for-profit company, they should be paid.

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geebee
It would be interesting to see a breakdown by major and industry. For
instance, how many computer science majors do unpaid internships? How many
film studies graduates?

One of the best things about a CS major is that it enables you to enter the
workforce in a high-value way. Some people would argue that it limits you
later, that you become a technical resource without a business background, but
I disagree completely. You get incredible exposure to business through
software projects. And if you don't (ie., they hide their programmers off in a
cubicle farm somewhere), it's probably not the kind of company you'd want to
be working for anyway (nor is it a company likely to be producing good
software).

I don't want to be too hard on college students/grads who are struggling, and
I find the trend toward _paying_ for work experience to be kind of disturbing.
But can we expect students to make an effort to acquire skills that employers
will pay for?

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karzeem
I spent a couple years of my errant youth in the entertainment industry, where
unpaid internships are the standard way to enter the business. But those jobs
aren't worth anything like a minimum wage to the employers, so if they weren't
unpaid, the jobs simply wouldn't exist. For people looking to get a job in the
industry after graduation, their best shot is to get an internship in college,
do a great job and meet lots of people, and parlay that into an offer. Those
"vulnerable" young people should be the first to object to a crackdown on
unpaid internships.

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isleyaardvark
This article makes me think of a previous article discussed on HN:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2406328>

There were quite a few comments supporting working for free/on spec. I have to
wonder if we'll hear any talk about "your existing business model is
disappearing" or "you're being disrupted" or "This is a huge opportunity for
anyone trying to break into the business - college kids, amateur designers,
the unestablished."

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reemrevnivek
I see these articles constantly, and wonder which interns _don't_ know that
they should be paid. Unpaid internships are next to nonexistent in my major at
my school.

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billybob
Why are we seeing this article a year after it was published?

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younata
because it's the time of year where students are about to go on internships.

For example, I have 4 weeks until I'm back in Silicon Valley and doing a paid
internship.

