Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships • Hacker News Board

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#21

Post by irishstu » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 11:22 AM UTC

zeemonkee wrote: post #14

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…

I did raise the point about discrimination at the end but it's easy to miss in the wall of text. I fully agree with Intern Aware http://www.internaware.org/ on the issue of discrimination

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#22

Post by zeemonkee » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 11:23 AM UTC

irishstu wrote: post #21

zeemonkee wrote: post #14

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…

I did raise the point about discrimination at the end but it's easy to miss in the wall of text. I fully agree with Intern Aware http://www.internaware.org/ on the issue of discrimination

Sorry, thanks for pointing it out. Good article that raises the issues with this appalling practice.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#23

Post by dadads » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 11:24 AM UTC

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.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#24

Post by JoachimSchipper » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 11:26 AM UTC

wccrawford wrote: post #11

JoachimSchipper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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).

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#25

Post by stevenwilkin » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 11:28 AM UTC

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!

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#26

Post by klbarry » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 11:32 AM UTC

wccrawford wrote: post #11

JoachimSchipper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Especially in the case of liberal arts internships. A programmer is one story - paid internships for essentially unskilled labor are very rare.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#27

Post by hvass » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 11:32 AM UTC

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.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#28

Post by rb2k_ » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 11:33 AM UTC

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.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#29

Post by officemonkey » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 11:35 AM UTC

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.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#30

Post by zeemonkee » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 11:36 AM UTC

hvass wrote: post #27

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.

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