

Is Your Unpaid Internship Illegal? - talos
http://www.internlaborrights.com/2013/09/19/is-your-unpaid-internship-illegal/

======
throwaway172
If anyone in the HN audience is participating in an unpaid internship — which
I doubt, but … — please stop immediately. In this industry (software
development) there is absolutely no reason to accept being stepped on like
that.

You can easily find a paying internship at any half-decent tech company, just
interview around at a few places. Speaking as a developer, mentor, and
interviewer: internships are where we get our best hires and are an extremely
good deal for us — paying $25+/hr no benefits is a STEAL for us. And you
should name and shame your current "internment" office, for being total
assholes.

My 2¢.

~~~
mikeryan
The flip side of that is if you're a startup in the Bay Area if your interns
are doing work that hits production start paying them before you piss one off
and they sue you. $10 bucks an hour (mimimum wage) is cheap...

~~~
throwaway172
~$1600 gross per month doesn't really seem like a living wage for Bayarea; in
Seattle you could probably get by. I think even startups up here usually pay
north of $20/hr. I've heard of Google/FB paying north of $30/hr for interns.

$10/hr may dodge a lawsuit, but I think you'll have your interns bought out
from under you by someone less cheap.

------
mattzito
Very important resource, but what a terrible interface for the questionnaire.
Sliding and bouncing balls don't add any real value over just showing the flow
chart along the side of the questions.

~~~
the_watcher
Yea, this was a great idea, but wow was it hard to use as you answered more
questions.

------
ghaspland
I don't think unpaid internships should be illegal. I worked in a lot of
unpaid internships early in my career, and it helped me build my skill set. In
some cases, a position didn't exist, I just asked if I could work for free to
learn. Those are jobs I wouldn't have had, much to my detriment, if the
employer feared being sued or fined for not paying me.

I think this is particularly important if you're trying to learn how to run a
company rather than learn specific job skills.

~~~
chasing
The problem is that internships can very, very easily turn exploitative -- not
just to the individual but to an entire class of individuals.

If this company just let you tinker at their offices so you could learn, that
seems fine. If you were producing production-quality work for free, well,
that's a more complex problem. In that case, you're devaluing the work itself
(giving away for free what would normally be sold). And while it's not going
to have a huge effect if just you do it, if this scenario was allowed to
become the norm it would impact the paychecks of everyone in your industry.
Except the owners, who would love the overall cheaper labor.

And, just to say it: It's this sort lack of labor protections that lead to
ever-widening income gaps. If companies aren't bound to pay employees fairly,
the middle class gets poorer and the wealthy owner class gets wealthier.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
Unpaid internships cannot reduce lifetime income by more than about 1%, and
might increase total income by providing higher quality training than would
otherwise be economically viable.

------
tokenadult
The United States Department of Labor fact sheet[1] on internships is perhaps
more user-friendly than the website kindly submitted here, and is an
authoritative source of information. Bottom line: if the worker is providing
economic value to your for-profit business, you had better pay the worker at
least minimum wage.

[1]
[http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf](http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf)

------
hvs
"Is your flowchart a usability disaster?"

------
grecy
I thought any unpaid work in a Developed country would be illegal.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Why? Shouldn't I be free to work for no charge if I really want? AREN'T WE
SUPPOSED TO HAVE "FREEDOM" IN THIS COUNTRY? (the US, that is.)

(Postscript while comment score at 0. I take your downvotes to indicate 'no'.
Which is about what I figured. :P)

~~~
hack_edu
The USA has a century long precedent of certain protections for laborers.
Child labor protections and regulated overtime pay are just as non-free than
the "equal work, equal pay" mentality when it comes to intern abuse... For
better or for worse.

~~~
NoPiece
There is also a century long precedent of unpaid internships, apprenticeships,
etc.. This is a recent change in the workplace. I find it very odd, and
restrictive that I can't work for free.

------
jaredandrews
I haven't met any programmers with unpaid internships but I have met
individuals in other fields who did them. If I recall correctly it was an
internship for a television company (not public) and was just a part of the
culture of their industry. A "paying dues" if you will. What exactly are you
supposed to do in that situation?

~~~
yogo
It seems to be the norm in radio too. I've noticed in talk radio there is
always an unpaid intern. You will always hear on air personalities talk about
when they were interns too. I'm not sure if it's just deeply ingrained in the
culture or that's what the industry considers a good/real education in
broadcasting. It kinda makes sense because with software you can build
something and use that to show skill and experience but I can see how that's
hard to do in other industries.

------
andrewflnr
Ok, so I had an "unpaid internship" that essentially consisted of hanging out
on this company's couch and working on an open-source project
(github.com/andrewf/pcap2har), with occasional mentoring, on hardware they had
lying around. This resulted directly in a) a paid internship with this company
the next summer, working on different stuff and b) an internship with Google
the next next summer, working on pcap2har.

Am I supposed to be angry about this? They thought they were going to use
pcap2har in their for-profit product, but in fact they didn't. Does that
change anything? Today, I certainly wouldn't take an unpaid internship, having
already been measured and found adequate. But for the company that first gave
me a chance, I have nothing but gratitude.

------
mapattack
Why don't people understand it makes no difference if the internship is paid
or unpaid? If you are working for an org other than the government or school
the rules are the same. Interns don't actually exist as a class of worker and
labor code is based on a 1946 supreme court decision that referenced
bricklayers.

I'm being sued by a former intern whom we paid a very respectable $15/hr for
part time work over the summer; she's coming after me for like $100k because
she alleges I wilfully misclassified her as a contractor rather than employee.

Bottom line: I won't use ANY interns. I say blame it on the millennials and
generation entitlement. Drives me out of my mind that this person is trying to
get rich off the back of a start up.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Wait a second, you had somebody you (a) call an intern, and (b) classified as
a contractor? And you cry about millenials?

------
justintocci
I tried to get an unpaid internship once but the guy wouldn't even consider it
seriously. I was trying to switch fields and felt that if I had a month or two
I could learn it and apply for jobs in the new field. In most areas we'd be
able to deal with liability with a contract. Unfortunately, labor contracts
seem to be illegal now. Somehow that feels wrong to me but no one talks about
it.

------
yetanotherphd
Not labeling the start node in their diagram, and having overlapping circles
so you can't see the arrows, should be illegal.

------
narfquat
This has got to be one of the worst implementations of d3.js I have
encountered in the wild...

------
jackmaney
"Is Your Unpaid Internship Illegal?" If not, it sure as hell should be.

------
madlynormal
Is this diagram horribly put together? Quite possibility yes.

~~~
anonymoushn
I thought it was pretty awesome.
[http://i.imgur.com/Zzxp7aC.png](http://i.imgur.com/Zzxp7aC.png)

------
jacques_chester
Never mind illegal, it strikes me as unalloyed exploitation.

